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Timeline

A chronological reconstruction of Minecraft's lore events, from the earliest civilisations to the present day.

Underwater ocean ruins, stone brick walls half buried in sand
Ocean ruins. Half sunk and half buried, which is the closest Minecraft comes to putting a date on anything.

The Beginning

  1. The Overworld Forms

    The Overworld, Nether, and End exist as separate dimensions connected by the Void. Natural processes create biomes, caves, and oceans.

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  2. Life Emerges

    Animals, plants, and passive creatures populate the Overworld. The Nether develops its own unique ecosystems: Crimson and Warped forests, Hoglin herds.

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The Age of Builders

  1. A Civilization Rises

    An advanced civilization (the Ancient Builders) develops mining, crafting, enchanting, and brewing. They build villages, temples, and mineshafts across the Overworld.

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  2. Nether Exploration Begins

    The Builders discover portal technology and establish Nether Fortresses as outposts. They encounter or coexist with the Piglins, who have their own civilization in the Nether.

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  3. Netherite is Forged

    Advanced metallurgy produces Netherite, the strongest known material. Debris from this production is scattered through the Nether's lower layers.

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  4. Strongholds are Constructed

    The Builders construct Strongholds around End Portals, either to protect them or to seal them. Libraries stockpile knowledge. Silverfish are used (or appear) as biological defenses.

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  5. The Deep Dark is Discovered

    Miners reach the deepest layers of the world and discover the sculk network. Ancient Cities are built to study or contain it, with wool-lined pathways for silent movement.

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  6. Trial Chambers are Built

    Underground training facilities are constructed to prepare warriors for unknown threats. Automated Trial Spawners calibrate challenges to the number of participants.

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The Fall

  1. The Wither is Unleashed

    Someone discovers the Wither summoning ritual. The resulting destruction may have devastated parts of the Nether, creating the Soul Sand Valleys filled with the remains of the dead.

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  2. The Deep Dark Claims Its Toll

    The sculk network grows out of control. Deaths feed the sculk, which produces Wardens, which cause more deaths. The Ancient Cities are abandoned. The builders who dug too deep are consumed.

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  3. The Illager Schism

    A faction of Villager-kind pursues forbidden magic. They are exiled or choose to leave, establishing Woodland Mansions in remote forests. Over time, they militarize and begin raiding their former kin.

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  4. Civilization Collapses

    The combined effects of the Wither, the sculk, and possibly other catastrophes destroy the Builder civilization. Survivors scatter. Some flee to the End.

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The Aftermath

  1. Transformation in the End

    Those who fled to the End are transformed by its energy, becoming the Endermen: tall, teleporting, block-carrying beings who speak in distorted fragments of their former language.

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  2. The Undead Rise

    Those who remained in the Overworld succumb to a zombie plague or similar catastrophe. They become the zombies, skeletons, and other undead that now roam the surface at night.

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  3. Piglin Civilization Declines

    The Nether's Piglin civilization falls into ruin. Bastion Remnants crumble. Zombie Piglins wander the wastes. The golden age of the Nether ends.

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  4. Structures Decay and are Buried

    Temples, trails, and settlements are buried by time. Portals crumble into Ruined Portals. The archaeological record forms as centuries pass.

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The Present

  1. The Player Arrives

    A new being spawns in the Overworld with nothing. They rediscover mining, crafting, enchanting, and portal technology. They retrace the steps of the Ancient Builders, eventually reaching the End.

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  2. The Dragon Falls

    The player defeats the Ender Dragon, breaks whatever seal or cycle the End maintained, and reads the End Poem: a philosophical text that reframes the entire journey as a dream within a dream.

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Minecraft has no dates. Nothing in the game tells you that the Strongholds came before the Ancient Cities, or that the Nether was inhabited at the same time as the Overworld. What follows is a reading order rather than a chronology: eighteen events arranged so that each one makes sense of the next, assembled from the structures, creatures and objects covered elsewhere on this site.

Treat the eras below as an argument about sequence, not as a record. The confident parts are the ones where one thing physically depends on another, such as End Portals needing Strongholds to sit in. The looser parts are the ones where two events simply feel related.

How this order was put together

The sequence rests on three kinds of evidence. Structures that contain other structures give a hard order, because the outer one has to be older. Materials that appear in more than one place tie two events together, since somebody had to carry them. And decay gives a rough distance, because a desert temple that still stands and an Ancient City swallowed by sculk did not reach their current state at the same speed.

Where two events could sit in either order, they are placed in the era that needs fewer assumptions, and the pages linked from each entry explain what the evidence actually supports. Nothing here is dated, because nothing in Minecraft is.

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