A Timeline of Humanity

How to read it

• Columns are regions, lanes are parts of them. The Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the steppe, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania, and East Asia each get a column.
• Time runs downwards. Deep prehistory is compressed on a logarithmic scale; recorded history is drawn to scale within six bands that zoom in as they approach the present. The scale for each band is printed on the left axis.
• Solid blocks are states and empires, drawn where they ruled. Pale, hatched blocks are archaeological cultures with no known state. A faded edge means the start or end is uncertain.
• Numbered pins lead to the “Did you know?” stories in the right-hand rail. Blue cards in the left rail are turning points felt across the world.

Conventions

• Colour shows who ruled, not who lived there. A conquering or colonial power keeps its home colour: the Mongol Yuan in China are steppe olive, British India is British Isles blue.
• Names: the poster uses the most common English name. Where two names are in common use, both are given (Falklands/Malvinas).
• Disputed territories are drawn by who actually controlled them at the time. Showing a state or an event is not a judgement on any claim.
• Dates are simplified for a poster. “c.” marks an approximation; debated dates and death tolls are flagged as such and given as ranges where the sources differ.

Print it yourself

The poster is designed to be printed full size. Take the PDF to any print shop with a large-format printer and ask for:

Size

1,110 × 1,400 mm, at 100% (no scaling)

Printer

44-inch (1,118 mm) roll or wider

Paper

Matte, 120–200 g/m²

A 44-inch roll leaves almost no margin. If the shop's printer needs wider edges, they can print on a wider roll and trim it.

Printing it smaller works, but below about A0 the smallest text becomes hard to read.

Use and licence

You are free to download, print, share and display this poster for non-commercial purposes, including in classrooms, as long as you credit “Nicolas Goossens, synoptica.ch” and do not modify it.

You may pay a print shop to print a copy for your own non-commercial use.

For translations, adaptations or commercial use, please write to hello@synoptica.ch.

Licence: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0.

How it was made

I designed and edited the poster. The first draft of the data was written with an AI assistant; every regional column was then checked item by item against published sources, chiefly the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Cambridge histories and the UNESCO General History of Africa, with a second check on the most debated topics. Corrections were reviewed and applied by hand.

This is careful work, but it is not peer review by specialist historians. Full sources and credits.

Found an error?

Corrections are very welcome and will go into the next version, with thanks if you wish.

Report an error

Or write to hello@synoptica.ch with the column, the date or pin number, and a source if you have one.