Forensics - Timeline

Mesopotamians performed animal autopsies in order to communicate with divine forces.

Chinese use fingerprints to sign legal documents.

Erasistratus and Herophilus perform the first autopsies in Alexandria.

Physician to the Roam gladiators, dissects both animal and humans for the causes of diseases.

Roman attorney Quintilian shows that a bloody handprint was intended to frame a blind man for his mother's murder.

King Richard Plantagenet officially creates the position of coroner

First forensic autopsies are done at the University of Bologna

Sung Tz'u published Hsi Yuan Lu, the first forensic text.

De Officia Coronatoris, which describes the coroner's duties, is published in English.

Pope Clement VI orders autopsies on victims of the Black Death to hopefully find a cause for the plague.

Medical schools are established in Padua and Bologna

Ambroise Pare writes extensively on the anatomy of war and homicidal wounds.

Zacharias Janssen designs the first crude microscope with the help pf his father, Hans.

First autopsies in North America are done by French settlers on St. Croix Island.

Francois Demelle publishes the first treatise on document examination in France.

University of Leipzig offers the first courses in forensic medicine

Antony van Leeuwenhoek employs a microscope to first see living bacteria, which he calls animalcules

The National DNA Index System becomes operational