Rabbit holes · Interactive exhibit
Swipe to move. Pinch to zoom. Tap a bar.
On a phoneSwipe to move. Pinch to zoom, or tap + and −. Tap a bar for its story and what else was happening. Tap a place name to see only its row, and the strip above the chart to jump.
With a mouse and keyboardScroll to move. Pinch, or hold ⌘ or Ctrl and scroll, to zoom. Click a bar for its story; double-click it to zoom to its lifespan. / searches, the left and right arrow keys step along a row, and Esc closes things.
Civilizations and states run from 3500 BCE to the present. Rows run west to east, from the Americas across Eurasia to Oceania. Time moves left to right.
A bar is a duration, not a map. Wide does not mean large. Shared colors link an empire to the regions it ruled, so Roman provinces share one color and Ottoman lands share another. Overlapping bars are societies alive at the same time.
Dates are the usual textbook ones. Many early dates are approximate or disputed. There is no year 0. Lengths that cross from BCE to CE leave that year out.
This follows the frame of the poster it was made from. Most of sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Korea, and the Pacific are outside that frame, so they are outside this view. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies, and Māori society, are drawn across the years they span, not only at the modern end.