Industrial AgeEconomy & Trade Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations 1776Turning point Markets, specialization and self-interest can create wealth for all: the founding text of economics. ▲ MattersSaveShareTrace roots Longest chain: The Big Bang → First stars ignite → Supernovae seed heavy elements → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → Apes split from monkeys → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Natufian villages → Oldest known bread → Agriculture begins → Irrigation → Uruk and the first cities → Cylinder seals → Writing (cuneiform) → Babylonian mathematics → Babylonian astronomical diaries → Thales and natural philosophy → Trial and death of Socrates → Plato's Academy → Aristotle's Lyceum → Alexander's conquests → Alexandria founded → Library of Alexandria → House of Wisdom → Al-Khwarizmi and algebra → Fibonacci's Liber Abaci → Medici Bank → Double-entry bookkeeping → Dutch East India Company and first stock exchange → Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations Community notesLoading notes… Learn more ranked by votesDocumentgutenberg.orgThe Wealth of Nations (Project Gutenberg) ↗Editor's pickBookJesse NormanAdam Smith: What He Thought, and Why It Matters ↗Editor's pickVideoSearch on YouTubeAdam Smith Wealth of Nations explained ↗Editor's pick