In the video above, UsefulCharts creator Matt Baker suggests that we not consult with the period spanning the fifth and the late fifteenth centuries because the “darkish ages.” In justification, he doesn’t put forth the argument, now truthfully common, that the time in question was actually stuffed with subtle innovation occluded by modern prejucube. The actual problem, as he sees it, is that the gradualing, if not reversing, of the progress of human society that we’ve traditionally regarded as happenring in what are commonly referred to as the Middle Ages solely occurred in Europe. What’s extra, there have been multiple such eras on the planet: take the earlier “Greek darkish ages” associated with the Bronze Age civilizational collapse of 1177 BC.
All this and extra comes throughout at a look on Baker’s Timeline of World History, whose design is defined within the video. With characteristic UsefulCharts clarity (additionally demonstrated by the World Religions Family Tree and the Evolution of the Alphaguess, previously featured right here on Open Culture), it lays out all of the periods of history we could know guesster by their names than by their relationship to actual occasions.
On the high, it begins with the top of prehistory and the beginning of history: that’s, when writing developed round 5,300 years in the past. At that time, multiple civilizations had already begun to establish themselves around the globe, and it’s their progress and decline repredespatcheded by the thickness of the strains running down the timeline’s regular century-long divisions.
Because the early Bronze Age offers technique to the Bronze Age, the Bronze Age offers technique to the Iron Age, and the Iron Age offers technique to Classical Antiquity, these strains of civilization thicken into these of empire. None come thicker than that of historical Rome, which occupies the visual center of the poster (itself, incidentally, availin a position for purchase from UsefulCharts’ website), however the design’s power lies much less in belowscoring the importance of anybody empire than of revealing how a lot history was occurring all around the world at any given time. Utilizing its vertical strains to hint the rise and fall of the Olmecs, say, or the Aksumite Empire or the Mississippian Culture, one can onerously suppress a really feeling of Ozymandian transience. Nor, for that matter, can one ignore that each one of us stay out our lives withwithin the span of two of its horizontal ones.
Related content:
An Interactive Timeline Covering 14 Billion Years of History: From The Large Bang to 2015
The History of Civilization Mapped in 13 Minutes: 5000 BC to 2014 AD
The Writing Systems of the World Defined, from the Latin Alphaguess to the Abugidas of India
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His initiatives embody the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the ebook The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social webwork formerly referred to as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
