According to Emile Benveniste ( 1954 ), the earliest written occurrence in English of civilisation in its modern sense may be found in Adam Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Civil Society ( Edinburgh, 1767 – p. 2 ): " Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood, but the species itself from rudeness to civilisation.

The earliest attested occurrence of the name, written in Linear B, is Po-se-da-o or Po-se-da-wo-ne, which correspond to Poseidaōn and Poseidawonos in Mycenean Greek ; in Homeric Greek it appears as ( Poseidaōn ); in Aeolic as ( Poteidaōn ); and in Doric as ( Poteidan ), ( Poteidaōn ), and ( Poteidas ).

The earliest occurrence of the term " red-shift " in print ( in this hyphenated form ), appears to be by American astronomer Walter S. Adams in 1908, where he mentions " Two methods of investigating that nature of the nebular red-shift ".

The earliest occurrence of this name dates from the 11th century Song Dynasty, at which time there was already a river confluence and a town with this name in the area.

At the time, this was believed to be the earliest occurrence of life on land.

Fowden however asserts that the earliest occurrence of the name was in the Athenagora by Philo of Byblos circa 64 – 141 CE.

The word's earliest occurrence is in the Rigveda where it is one of several synonyms of soma, the drink which confers immortality upon the gods.

According to the 2003 draft entry for " felch " in the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest occurrence of the word in print appears to have been in The Argot of the Homosexual Subculture by Ronald A. Farrell in 1972.

The earliest known occurrence of the full phrase, in the form " There ain't no such thing as free lunch ", appears as the punchline of a joke related in an article in the El Paso Herald-Post of June 27, 1938, entitled " Economics in Eight Words ".

The earliest known occurrence of the spells included in the Book of the Dead is from the coffin of Queen Mentuhotep, of the 13th dynasty, where the new spells were included amongst older texts known from the Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts.

The earliest occurrence of ß is in the " Wolfdietrich fragment ", which was written around 1300 AD.

The earliest documented occurrence of ancient siege-artillery pieces in China was the levered principled traction catapult and an 8-foot-high siege crossbow from the Mozi ( Mo Jing ), a Mohist text written at about the 4th-3rd century BCE by followers of Mozi who founded the Mohist school of thought during the late Spring and Autumn Period and the early Warring States period.

The earliest reported occurrence of the species is from a late Illinoian deposit in Clay County, Nebraska, and is further recorded from Sangamonian deposits in Nebraska and Medicine Hat.

The earliest known occurrence of the word " avoirdupois " ( or some variant thereof ) in England is from a document entitled Tractatus de Ponderibus et Mensuris or Treatise on Weights and Measures.

In 1771, the second vehicle is said to have gone out of control and knocked down part of the Arsenal wall, ( reported to be the first known automobile accident ); however according to Georges Ageon, the earliest mention of this occurrence dates from 1801 and it does not feature in contemporary accounts.

Statements exhibiting prejudice towards Jews and their religion can also be found in the works of a few pagan Greek and Roman writers, but the earliest occurrence of antisemitism has been the subject of debate among scholars, largely because different writers use different definitions of antisemitism.

Oakley's name has been variously spelt through the ages ( parenthesised dates denote earliest occurrence ): Achelei ( 1086 ); Akeley ( 12th century ), Aclei, Acle, Ocle ( 13th century ); Ocle iuxta Brehull ( 14th century ); and Whokeley ( 16th century ).

Example of a salvaged U. S. Air Mail Crash Cover ( CAM # 24, Indianapolis, IN, Nov. 2, 1929 ) Crashes of flights carrying airmail were a regular occurrence from the earliest days of mail transport by air.

The earliest confirmed occurrence of the name Lavapura is on silver coins inscribed Lava on the obverse and Pura on the reverse in a Pallava-derived script of the seventh or eighth century ; several such coins were reccovered in 1966 from a hoard found in an ancient jar in U Thong.

Bishop J. B. Lightfoot wrote that absence of the passage from the earliest manuscripts, combined with the occurrence of stylistic characteristics atypical of John, together implied that the passage was an interpolation.

The earliest recorded occurrence of the name Joanna, in Luke 8: 3, refers to the disciple " Joanna the wife of Chuza ," who was an associate of Mary Magdalene.

The earliest occurrence of this new fashion trend was evident in the spring of 1977 where Adidas Samba footwear and Adidas t-shirts became en vogue with the Liverpool youth.

# The earliest occurrence of trisyllabic laxing occurred in late Old English, and caused stressed long vowels to become shortened before clusters of two consonants when two or more syllables followed.

Daniel Pipes investigated the origin of the phrase " Satanic Verses ", and concluded that despite Salman Rushdie's claim that he had borrowed the phrase from Tabari, the earliest traceable occurrence is in Muir's Life of Mohamet ( 1858 ) in a passage discussing " two Satanic verses ".

In the earliest known occurrence of this problem, in the medieval manuscript Propositiones ad Acuendos Juvenes, the three objects are a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage.

" Although several twigs of dill were found in the tomb of Amenhotep II, they reported the earliest archeological evidence for its cultivation comes from late Neolithic lakeshore settlements in Switzerland.

The earliest reported example of this musical form is the song " Kalenda Maya ", supposedly written by the troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras ( 1180-1207 ) to the melody of an estampida played by French jongleurs.

The earliest known written account of the creation of a golem by a historical figure reported a tradition connected to Rabbi Eliyahu of Chelm ( 1550 – 1583 ).

The earliest document mentioning a Barnabas gospel which is generally agreed to correspond with the one found in the two known manuscripts is reported to be contained in Morisco manuscript BNM MS 9653 in Madrid, written about 1634 by Ibrahim al-Taybili in Tunisia.

The earliest etymology of " Vinland " is found in Adam of Bremen's 11th century Latin Descriptio insularum Aquilonis (" Description of the Northern Islands "): " Moreover, he has also reported one island discovered by many in that ocean, which is called Winland, for the reason that grapevines grow there by themselves, producing the best wine.

It is the earliest reported landfall from a tropical storm, and the earliest formation of a tropical storm on record in the Atlantic basin.

The earliest galvanometer was reported by Johann Schweigger at the University of Halle on 16 September 1820.

In 1999, Archaeology Magazine reported that the earliest Egyptian glyphs date back to 3400 BC which "... challenge the commonly held belief that early logographs, pictographic symbols representing a specific place, object, or quantity, first evolved into more complex phonetic symbols in Mesopotamia.

A. W. Murray, the earliest European missionary in Tuvalu, reported that in 1863 about 180 people were taken from Funafuti and about 200 were taken from Nukulaelae as there were fewer than 100 of the 300 recorded in 1861 as living on Nukulaelae.

Spanish Hidalgos reported finding the plants growing in Mexico in 1525, but the earliest known description is by Francisco Hernández, physician to Philip II, who was ordered to visit Mexico in 1570 to study the " natural products of that country ".

The earliest courtship has been reported in July.

The earliest known church on the present location was a travertine church which was reported under construction by Aelnoth of Canterbury, a Benedictine monk at the nearby St. Alban's Priory in 1095.

The earliest person reported to have settled on the site was James Lochard, a Revolutionary War soldier, who arrived in 1810 and died about 1815.

The Battle of Mactan on April 27, 1521, is celebrated as the earliest reported resistance of the natives in the Philippines against foreign invaders.

In some of Canada's earliest post-Confederation censuses, some residences in Kent County were incorrectly reported as being in Bothwell " County ", which was a separate electoral district comprising parts of Kent and Lambton counties but not a distinct county in its own right.

From the very earliest years there were problems with seepage of water, with a number of floods, especially in the later years of the 18th century, caused by the surrounding branches of the River Poddle-even in the 20th century, it is reported that the water table was within 2. 3 metres ( 7. 5 feet ) of the floor.

Fall migration is poorly documented, but the earliest date for a migrant in southern Mississippi is July 4, while the first migrants at Key West were reported on July 17.

Elephants are widely reported to have been used to carry out executions in southeast Asia, and were used in Burma and Malaysia from the earliest historical times as well as in the kingdom of Champa on the other side of the Indochinese Peninsula.

The earliest existence of the Panhandles was in 1900 ; the Columbus Press-Post reported Jack Walsh creating the " Panhandle railroad team " consisting of " big hardy railroad men.

For decades chess writers have reported that Tsar Nicholas II of Russia conferred the title of " Grandmaster of Chess " upon each of the five finalists at St Petersburg 1914 ( Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall ), but chess historian Edward Winter has questioned this, stating that the earliest known sources supporting this story were published in 1940 and 1942.

J. H. Davis, an Englishman, was reported to have found gold " in considerable quantities " in July 1852 at Paardekraal near Krugersdorp, which was the earliest discovery on the Rand.

In accordance with apostolic custom, Thomas ordained teachers and leaders or elders, who were reported to be the earliest ministry of the Malabar church.

The earliest reported observations of pollen under a microscope are likely to have been in the 1640s by the English botanist Nehemiah Grew who described pollen, the stamen and successfully predicted that pollen was required for successful reproduction in plants.