| c. 130 million years ago |
Cretaceous: Pinus belgica, earliest known pine fossil |
 |
| c. 75 million : years ago |
pines differentiated into hard and soft types |
|
| c. 15,000 BC |
charcoal from P. pinaster in Lascaux cave |
|
| c. 8000 BC |
evidence for pinewood posts at site later occupied by Stonehenge |
|
| c. 7500 BC |
early inhabitants of usa use seeds from pinyons and other pines as food |
|
| c. 4000 BC |
eradication of Scots pine in most of Britain through demand for timber and charcoal especially for smelting |
|
| c. 2700 BC |
Germination of ‘Methuselah’, the oldest known living single organism, in the Great Basin of Colorado |
|
| c. 300 BC |
Theophrastus describes pine trees and their uses |
|
| 900–1200 AD |
Anasazi settlements in North America make extensive use of P. ponderosa for building |
|
| 960–1127 |
Northern Song Dynasty landscape painting includes many representations of pines |
|
| 1643 |
Wood Tar Company of Stockholm founded |
|
| 1704 |
An Act for Encouraging the Importation of Naval Stores from America passed by the English government, leading to the ‘Broad Arrow’ policy in New England |
|
| 1713 |
P. pinaster used to stabilize dunes in southwest France |
|
| 1753 |
Linnaeus names ten species in genus Pinus |
|
| 1775–83 |
American War of Independence affects British supplies of tar and naval stores |
|
| 1802 |
Aylmer Bourke Lambert publishes A Description of the Genus Pinus, the first monograph on pines |
|
| 1830s |
The rubber industry starts using turpentine as a solvent |
|
| 1845 |
Rapid expansion in coal-tar distilling, replacing many pine products |
|
| 1870s |
Development of Kraft paper process (alkaline) |
|
| 1893 |
Koehne proposes division of genus Pinus into haploxylon and diploxylon, based on presence of one or two vascular bundles |
|
| Early 1900s |
Development of Masonite hardboard from wood pulp and bark chips |
|
| 1905 |
Courtaulds begin producing viscose rayon commercially |
|
| 1937 |
Laurel and Hardy include ‘The Trail of the Lonesome Pine’ in their film Way Out West. |
|
| Late 1940s |
Arizona Chemical Co. develops fractional distillation process for separating tall oil |
|
| 1990s |
Clade analysis becomes a dominant method for evolutionary classification, leading to revisions in thought about relationships between pine species |
|
| 2001 |
The television series The Sopranos uses the Pine Barrens as a setting |
