The history of artificial intelligence did not begin with computers, nor even with mathematics. It emerged from a far older human impulse: the desire to understand thought itself. Long before machines existed, philosophers, engineers, and inventors wrestled with questions that would later define AI. What is reasoning? Can intelligence be described as a system? Might human cognition someday be replicated, simulated, or extended? This timeline traces the long arc of those ideas, beginning in antiquity and moving steadily toward the modern era. It is not merely a catalogue of inventions, but a record of conceptual shifts or moments when human understanding of logic, computation, learning, and perception took decisive steps forward. Each date represents more than a technological milestone; it...