It is the nature of humanity to tinker with the fundamentals and try to make them explode. Attempts to do so are listed below, by era of discovery.
Note that much of the material here is covered also under Trade, Ceramics, Medicine, and Metallurgy. The chronology is the same as in, well, Chronology.
(50,000-10,000 BC)
Cultures across the world have at least some knowledge of gold, silver, copper, tin, mercury, lead, and iron. Iron oxides and manganese oxides are used as pigments.
Silicon dioxide (although not yet known by the name) is much used in two forms: flint (a very pure form, often with white incrustations) and quartz (a more crystalline structure). The former is essential in the lighting of fires, the latter in ornaments; both are used in tools.
Jade, another ornamental and tool-stone, comes in two varieties: nephrite (a variety of calcium- and magnesium-rich actinolite) and jadeite (a sodium- and aluminum-rich pyroxene).
Clay, a hydroxyl-bearing alumino-silicate, is used for sculpting, but also as a medicine.
(10,000-4000 BC)
Cinnabar (mercuric sulphide) is used in painting by Truzithans as early as 8500 BC, and by people in the Yashdar Basin as early as 5500 BC—well before any major cities are founded.
Lapis lazuli (predominantly lazurite) is mined in the western mountains of Aion as early as 8100 BC.
Salt (sodium chloride) is first scraped into storage by humans around 6500 BC.
Bitumen is found in pits across southern Aion, although the vast majority is beneath the prairie of Hathu. The first recorded use as a plaster comes in around the year 5000 BC among the Melerians, but earliest use dates back to adhesive knives in caves in Rhaec.
Pyrites are first used around 8000 BC by the people of Southern Yandjee as firestarters.
(4000-2000 BC)
Kohl (stibium) is mixed with animal fats for eyeshadow as early as the 3650s BC in southern Aion by the Theigar.
The earliest-known copper-zinc mixes—in other words, the first brasses—are made in Verna around 3100 BC.
Gypsum (hydrous calcium sulphate) is used as a plaster (for moulds and sculpting), and as a building material (either for mortar, as in Yashdar by 4000 BC and Nukambi by 2500 BC, or blocks, as in Oma by 2800 BC).
Magnetic lodestones are first used on Eileiwa during the 18th Century BC, apparently to align the position of temples.
The first true glass (sand plus 2-10% lime and 15-20% soda or natron) is made in the Tjiwehng Delta by the end of the 23rd Century BC.
Sulphur sees use in fumigation among the Chalcic Trimarian civilizations as early as 2100 BC; there are references to its use in the Peregrination.
(2000 BC-1 AB)
Marble is used in the sea that will bear its name as early as 2000 BC, but the first buildings constructed of the stuff date back to the 16th Century BC.
In 1376 BC, Cyladon of Impana postulates the existence of seven elements (earth, water, fire, air, sound, light, and soul) which make up all things in the universe. This view informs Omaic alchemy for the next two and a half thousand years.
Pyrites are first mentioned in the works of Acrythos (530 BC) as flint-of-gold, for their occasional use in fire-starting.
Cinnabar is used from the 16th Century BC onwards by the Miano peoples, imported from the coast near modern Palpan.
Chrysoberyl (an aluminate of beryllium) is first mined on Chunari as early as 1050 BC (as cymophane).
The first blast furnaces are created in Gunjha around 850 BC, relying on the strength of the monsoon winds to heat the iron.
In his Dhamundur, written in 814 BC, the sage Rakyeji of Ishtari describes the dhamu or eight elements of the world (light, breath, thunder, shadow, fire, water, earth, and bone/metal), their classification (and movement through time), the importance of duality, and the ultimate origin of all from what he calls the Source.
The process of distillation is first mentioned in Nukambian texts dating back to 800 BC, during the Kamirran Era; this is typically applied to perfumes.
(1 AB-Present)
The means of manufacturing cinnabar—by combination of mercury and sulphur—is discovered during the 250s AB.
Around the year 300 AB, ammonium chloride is procured from ash of longram dung by alchemists; it is used in colouring and dissolving metals.
Zinc is first isolated in Verna around the 650s AB by heating zinc ores with carbon, making brasses more common.
Observing the growth of moulds, Faro Calono of Cuollesa sets forth in his 419 AB work Belas-i Porton Gatrathon a theory that all things in the world have an inherent energy to them.
Zinc is isolated in Paravarn during the 9th Century AB.
A variant of chrysoberyl, known on Earth as alexandrite, is discovered in the eastern mountains of Aion in the year 974 AB.
Nitrocellulose, more commonly called guncotton, is first created by the alchemist Thyrran Mull of Rhaec in 1032 AB as an alternative to gunpowder.
Distillation is rediscovered by 200 AB.
Ammonium chloride is isolated from muttonbird droppings by 600 AB at the Akohng in Mirran.