Horizontal history
January 22, 2016 8:06 AM Subscribe
"An econ buff in the year 2500 might know all about the Great Depression that happened in the early 20th century and the major recession that happened about 80 years later, but that same person might mistake the two world wars for happening in the 1800s or the 2200s.... Likewise, I might know that Copernicus began writing his seminal work... in the early 1510s, but by learning that right around that same time in Italy, Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, I get a better picture of the times. [It]allows me to see the 1510s horizontally, like cutting out a complete segment of the vine tangle and examining it all together."
(Or, more recently, Freud died just as WW2 was breaking out when, you know in my head those are from two separate History Boxes, like the past is a cafeteria tray with distinct places For Things. Anything that helps break that mental construction helps. Everything is touching everything else all the time)
posted by The Whelk at 8:18 AM on January 22, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 8:18 AM on January 22, 2016 [5 favorites]
So this is exactly how historians study history. We don't just study things in geographic or temporal isolation, but also study the context. Historians of Britain are expected to understand the French Revolution, along with the continental Reformation, the history of colonial America, economic development in Italy and the Netherlands - and good ones are also pretty strong on world history.
posted by jb at 8:26 AM on January 22, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by jb at 8:26 AM on January 22, 2016 [9 favorites]
Sorry, I just feel like it's just trying to reinvent the wheel instead of paying attention to what is actually done in the study of history.
posted by jb at 8:27 AM on January 22, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by jb at 8:27 AM on January 22, 2016 [6 favorites]
This is the most challenging part of teaching a survey world history course (well) and is really the key to how history is studied at the professional level. I'm not sure that, ah, all these really intensive graphics actually help create those understandings. In fact, in my own lifetimes, one of the biggest trends that I've noticed in history is more and more about examining systems: climate systems, trade systems, whatever.
Or, on preview, what jb said.
posted by absalom at 8:29 AM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
Or, on preview, what jb said.
posted by absalom at 8:29 AM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
Also, there's still the issue of deciding what slices to look at. I can't help but notice that the one major figure from East Asia is Tokugawa Ieaysu.
Also. This is the history of a lot of white people and Tokugawa Ieyasu? Don't talk to me about seeing the whole history until you incorporate India and China, the two most important commercial regions in the world for basically all of world history.
posted by absalom at 8:32 AM on January 22, 2016 [5 favorites]
Also. This is the history of a lot of white people and Tokugawa Ieyasu? Don't talk to me about seeing the whole history until you incorporate India and China, the two most important commercial regions in the world for basically all of world history.
posted by absalom at 8:32 AM on January 22, 2016 [5 favorites]
Yeah, I mean, obviously, that's the correct way to study history, but aside from some humanities courses I had in school, I fear this way is not at all how we teach and think about history.
I do still, though, also think it quite interesting that Anne Frank was six months younger than Dr. King.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:33 AM on January 22, 2016 [6 favorites]
I do still, though, also think it quite interesting that Anne Frank was six months younger than Dr. King.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:33 AM on January 22, 2016 [6 favorites]
I recall a good long while ago finding out that there's a very good chance that Socrates and Buddha were contemporaries, and that if Socrates and Buddha weren't contemporaries (Buddha's dates are unclear), Buddha was at least contemporary with Pythagoras.
This then sent me into a weeks-long wiki-hole reading about the cultural interchange between India and Greece a couple of generations after Socrates and Buddha, when Alexander weirded everything up by invading everywhere.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:47 AM on January 22, 2016 [7 favorites]
This then sent me into a weeks-long wiki-hole reading about the cultural interchange between India and Greece a couple of generations after Socrates and Buddha, when Alexander weirded everything up by invading everywhere.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:47 AM on January 22, 2016 [7 favorites]
I had a wonderful world history book as a child, which had a visual time-line - much prettier than this because there were relevant pictures for everything. I found it again when I was cleaning up my parent's house after they died, and it was disappointing. But I guess you have to remember the child's view. Or the students' view.
posted by mumimor at 8:52 AM on January 22, 2016
posted by mumimor at 8:52 AM on January 22, 2016
I enjoyed seeing this, and have gone looking for similar things several times.
I'm perfectly willing to believe that this is how History is taught and studied at an advanced level -- I'd always assumed that you'd need an understanding like this to be any good at it, anyway -- but my high school history lessons just looked at discrete events and regions in isolation. I'd never got any sense of how the various things we were studying slotted together, and always felt it was missing.
I do still, though, also think it quite interesting that Anne Frank was six months younger than Dr. King.
Out of curiosity, which one would you have guessed was older? This is one that I've seen quite a lot, and find it surprising that so many people find it surprising. Don't get me wrong, I'm terrible at history (not much education, and just don't seem to have the knack for retention/integration) and have had more than my fair share of realisations like that. And, for many of them, more than once. (Most recently, being reminded how late the Ottoman Empire was still a going concern). I'm just surprised that that specific one seems so common, as it's one of the few that just intuitively sounds right to me.
Along these lines, Timelines and its variants are a surprisingly fun game of putting inventions/events into the right chronological order. Very, very simple, and has resulted in some great pub arguments.
posted by metaBugs at 8:53 AM on January 22, 2016
I'm perfectly willing to believe that this is how History is taught and studied at an advanced level -- I'd always assumed that you'd need an understanding like this to be any good at it, anyway -- but my high school history lessons just looked at discrete events and regions in isolation. I'd never got any sense of how the various things we were studying slotted together, and always felt it was missing.
I do still, though, also think it quite interesting that Anne Frank was six months younger than Dr. King.
Out of curiosity, which one would you have guessed was older? This is one that I've seen quite a lot, and find it surprising that so many people find it surprising. Don't get me wrong, I'm terrible at history (not much education, and just don't seem to have the knack for retention/integration) and have had more than my fair share of realisations like that. And, for many of them, more than once. (Most recently, being reminded how late the Ottoman Empire was still a going concern). I'm just surprised that that specific one seems so common, as it's one of the few that just intuitively sounds right to me.
Along these lines, Timelines and its variants are a surprisingly fun game of putting inventions/events into the right chronological order. Very, very simple, and has resulted in some great pub arguments.
posted by metaBugs at 8:53 AM on January 22, 2016
Out of curiosity, which one would you have guessed was older?
I mean, like you said, I was never taught to think of the two in the same context. It never occurred to me that they shared the same timeline.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:58 AM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
I mean, like you said, I was never taught to think of the two in the same context. It never occurred to me that they shared the same timeline.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:58 AM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
I want to print this out and put it on my wall. Or, like, turn it into a quilt or something.
posted by slipthought at 9:07 AM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by slipthought at 9:07 AM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
In the study of history, teaching students this kind of thing is often called teaching them chronology. People in this thread are right that chronology is rarely taught at the secondary level, these days, because teaching chronology is hard. It's only interesting if you already know the stories of the personalities and events involved, or else who cares if Blahdiblah and Bibbedyboop were contemporaries?
For this reason, teaching chronology was widely hated by students, back when it was generally covered at the primary and secondary level. This is exactly what people are complaining about when they say that history class is a litany of "names and dates". What are names and dates? Chronology.
Now, by the time you get to the tertiary level, you generally know a bit of history, and chronology becomes really interesting again. There are all sorts of classic stories that history lecturers use to blow the minds of their first year undergrads. My favourate is the one about Cleopatra and the pyramids. (and not just because her name kind of sounds like bad Latin for "progenitor of history") The pyramids were as old to Cleopatra as Cleopatra is to us. Neat, huh? It gives you an instant picture of the depth of history, which is very salutary for people approaching the study of chronology for the first time.
History instructors have long debates about how much emphasis should be placed on chronology, vs how much on the more in-depth study of historical episodes. At the moment, the emphasis is very much away from chronology because, I think, we generally find that students just pick up chronological understanding on their own pretty well. Certainly when I was an undergrad we had a standard running joke about how you might write a multiple choice test in history:
"The relationship between the Papacy and state power in early modern Germany was a)...., b)...."
The point of the joke was that this would clearly be a ridiculous way to teach history. But as I became more widely read in history education, I gradually learned that this was exactly how history is/was taught in other times and places. For example, some curricula want you to memorize the 'orthodox' stories, as promulgated by the Party. In the past, history was often taught in this way, because the focus was on the teaching of chronology, which can be separated into a series of discrete facts: "the Battle of Hastings was in a) 1098, b) 1066, c)..."
Finally, all of us should take note that history teaching in general is wildly different between places and levels, because there are several different reasons why curriculum designers think history should be taught. If you think the purpose of teaching history is one thing, your curriculum is going to look very different than if you're trying to teach something else. As a very reductive generalization, the teaching of history in American high schools is usually very different from that in the rest of the English speaking world or in Europe. This means that conversations about history education between Americans and, say, Brits, often collapse into mutual incomprehension, as neither side realises that the other side got something almost unrecognisably different.
posted by Dreadnought at 9:23 AM on January 22, 2016 [16 favorites]
For this reason, teaching chronology was widely hated by students, back when it was generally covered at the primary and secondary level. This is exactly what people are complaining about when they say that history class is a litany of "names and dates". What are names and dates? Chronology.
Now, by the time you get to the tertiary level, you generally know a bit of history, and chronology becomes really interesting again. There are all sorts of classic stories that history lecturers use to blow the minds of their first year undergrads. My favourate is the one about Cleopatra and the pyramids. (and not just because her name kind of sounds like bad Latin for "progenitor of history") The pyramids were as old to Cleopatra as Cleopatra is to us. Neat, huh? It gives you an instant picture of the depth of history, which is very salutary for people approaching the study of chronology for the first time.
History instructors have long debates about how much emphasis should be placed on chronology, vs how much on the more in-depth study of historical episodes. At the moment, the emphasis is very much away from chronology because, I think, we generally find that students just pick up chronological understanding on their own pretty well. Certainly when I was an undergrad we had a standard running joke about how you might write a multiple choice test in history:
"The relationship between the Papacy and state power in early modern Germany was a)...., b)...."
The point of the joke was that this would clearly be a ridiculous way to teach history. But as I became more widely read in history education, I gradually learned that this was exactly how history is/was taught in other times and places. For example, some curricula want you to memorize the 'orthodox' stories, as promulgated by the Party. In the past, history was often taught in this way, because the focus was on the teaching of chronology, which can be separated into a series of discrete facts: "the Battle of Hastings was in a) 1098, b) 1066, c)..."
Finally, all of us should take note that history teaching in general is wildly different between places and levels, because there are several different reasons why curriculum designers think history should be taught. If you think the purpose of teaching history is one thing, your curriculum is going to look very different than if you're trying to teach something else. As a very reductive generalization, the teaching of history in American high schools is usually very different from that in the rest of the English speaking world or in Europe. This means that conversations about history education between Americans and, say, Brits, often collapse into mutual incomprehension, as neither side realises that the other side got something almost unrecognisably different.
posted by Dreadnought at 9:23 AM on January 22, 2016 [16 favorites]
I was never taught to think of the two in the same context. It never occurred to me that they shared the same timeline.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:58 AM
I took a bunch of history of science and technology courses back in the day, and from that I got a whole lot of knowledge as to the relationship of scientists (especially anybody from a royal academy) with each other . Combining that with pre-existing knowledge of history from high school and damn - you get a whole new appreciation for how technology and science advanced political boundaries and won/lost wars. Then when you see how all the devices are all connected, you understand how normal it really was to turn a WWI tank into a crop harvester postwar.
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:29 AM on January 22, 2016
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:58 AM
I took a bunch of history of science and technology courses back in the day, and from that I got a whole lot of knowledge as to the relationship of scientists (especially anybody from a royal academy) with each other . Combining that with pre-existing knowledge of history from high school and damn - you get a whole new appreciation for how technology and science advanced political boundaries and won/lost wars. Then when you see how all the devices are all connected, you understand how normal it really was to turn a WWI tank into a crop harvester postwar.
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:29 AM on January 22, 2016
"Sorry, I just feel like it's just trying to reinvent the wheel instead of paying attention to what is actually done in the study of history."
I've found that's sorta Wait But Why's shtick.
posted by Carillon at 9:35 AM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
I've found that's sorta Wait But Why's shtick.
posted by Carillon at 9:35 AM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
Connections(1978), hosted by James Burke
posted by lazycomputerkids at 9:35 AM on January 22, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by lazycomputerkids at 9:35 AM on January 22, 2016 [10 favorites]
It never occurred to me that they shared the same timeline.
Yeah, history is weird like that sometimes. Take a guy like Henry Adams:
Yeah, history is weird like that sometimes. Take a guy like Henry Adams:
- As a child, he sat at the feet of his grandfather, 6th US president John Quincy Adams, who would tell him stories from personal memory about Washington, Jefferson, and the Revolutionary War.
- As a young man, he served as private secretary to Lincoln's US Ambassador to the UK (who happened to be his father, Charles Francis Adams) during the Civil War.
- And in his later years, he would often dine with President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House.
- (He also narrowly missed out on being a passenger on the Titanic, as his ticket was only for the return leg of the trip, which of course never happened.)
Along these lines, Timelines and its variants are a surprisingly fun game of putting inventions/events into the right chronological order. Very, very simple, and has resulted in some great pub arguments.
Indeed. One of the rules in the game is that if two events happened the same year, they can be placed in either order. This is useful to keep in mind, as the Music & Cinema edition contains The Thing and Blade Runner, both of which were released the same day.
And some of the pub arguments stem from their definitions being a bit suspect. One of the cards asks about the invention of the helicopter. This came up when I was playing a game with the late Lemurrhea, and we both reckoned it had to be either when Leonardo sketched on out circa 1500, or around WWII, when the first functional ones were built. Instead they peg it to a 19th century date, when a steam-powered unmanned model managed to hover for 12 seconds or something. Sure.
It never occurred to me that they shared the same timeline.
I have always been fascinated by the horizontal view of history, and very few of my history teachers in school seemed to have any knowledge of or interest in what might be going on offstage, so to speak, when whatever we were studying was going on. I find to striking that in the course of twelve months in 1451-1452, Christopher Columbus, Leonardo da Vinci and Richard III all came into the world. These guys all grew up in the same world, but they are rarely mentioned together.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:53 AM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
Indeed. One of the rules in the game is that if two events happened the same year, they can be placed in either order. This is useful to keep in mind, as the Music & Cinema edition contains The Thing and Blade Runner, both of which were released the same day.
And some of the pub arguments stem from their definitions being a bit suspect. One of the cards asks about the invention of the helicopter. This came up when I was playing a game with the late Lemurrhea, and we both reckoned it had to be either when Leonardo sketched on out circa 1500, or around WWII, when the first functional ones were built. Instead they peg it to a 19th century date, when a steam-powered unmanned model managed to hover for 12 seconds or something. Sure.
It never occurred to me that they shared the same timeline.
I have always been fascinated by the horizontal view of history, and very few of my history teachers in school seemed to have any knowledge of or interest in what might be going on offstage, so to speak, when whatever we were studying was going on. I find to striking that in the course of twelve months in 1451-1452, Christopher Columbus, Leonardo da Vinci and Richard III all came into the world. These guys all grew up in the same world, but they are rarely mentioned together.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:53 AM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
"I recall a good long while ago finding out that there's a very good chance that Socrates and Buddha were contemporaries, and that if Socrates and Buddha weren't contemporaries (Buddha's dates are unclear), Buddha was at least contemporary with Pythagoras."
Welcome to the Axial Age, many people would like you to read their books about it.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:03 AM on January 22, 2016 [6 favorites]
Welcome to the Axial Age, many people would like you to read their books about it.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:03 AM on January 22, 2016 [6 favorites]
Out of curiosity, which one would you have guessed was older?
Personally, I'd have guessed that Anne Frank was significantly older than MLK, because in my conception of history one of these falls in to "pre/during WWII" and the other falls in to "post WWII". But of course, that's not how time works.
posted by Itaxpica at 10:04 AM on January 22, 2016 [5 favorites]
Personally, I'd have guessed that Anne Frank was significantly older than MLK, because in my conception of history one of these falls in to "pre/during WWII" and the other falls in to "post WWII". But of course, that's not how time works.
posted by Itaxpica at 10:04 AM on January 22, 2016 [5 favorites]
For this reason, teaching chronology was widely hated by students, back when it was generally covered at the primary and secondary level. This is exactly what people are complaining about when they say that history class is a litany of "names and dates". What are names and dates? Chronology.
Yeah, this was my thought when reading the comments here. Today, as an adult whose interest is in deepening my understanding of the world, this stuff is fascinating. But if you told me to memorize it and that it would be on the test later, I would loathe it and everyone who appears in it.
posted by bjrubble at 10:17 AM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
Yeah, this was my thought when reading the comments here. Today, as an adult whose interest is in deepening my understanding of the world, this stuff is fascinating. But if you told me to memorize it and that it would be on the test later, I would loathe it and everyone who appears in it.
posted by bjrubble at 10:17 AM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
Vistorica is a super-useful tool for laying out modern European history in this fashion. It stacks different sorts of timelines on top of each other, so you can see things like the lifespans of major European mathematicians between 1500 and 1750 relative to the political, scientific, and cultural events of that period. You can also can get more granular, and see, eg., just the lifespans for J.R.R. Tolkien and his contemporaries.
posted by Iridic at 10:20 AM on January 22, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by Iridic at 10:20 AM on January 22, 2016 [6 favorites]
As someone with no training in history except a few random college classes, I found this really interesting. (Though the particular choice of figures is mighty limited, as has been pointed out.) I'd love to see much broader versions of the lifetime plot along with world events added. A wall-sized version would keep me occupied for a long time.
Unless you specialize in a related field, it's rare to encounter this sort of thing except by chance. It's especially rare to encounter it spanning hundreds of names in unrelated domains. If you'd asked me, I probably could have worked out that Sitting Bull, Lewis Carroll, and Lord Kelvin were contemporaries, but it certainly wasn't something I had ever considered. Much less Fibonacci and Ghengis Khan. I'm not sure if it's profound, but it's pretty neat!
But, to pick nits, in an essay about the short timescale of generational common knowledge, assuming that an audience will have any idea who Jafar is seems daft. Fortunately (or perhaps, unfortunately if you appreciate tight editing), ignoring those bits out entirely doesn't hurt the piece any.
posted by eotvos at 10:25 AM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
Unless you specialize in a related field, it's rare to encounter this sort of thing except by chance. It's especially rare to encounter it spanning hundreds of names in unrelated domains. If you'd asked me, I probably could have worked out that Sitting Bull, Lewis Carroll, and Lord Kelvin were contemporaries, but it certainly wasn't something I had ever considered. Much less Fibonacci and Ghengis Khan. I'm not sure if it's profound, but it's pretty neat!
But, to pick nits, in an essay about the short timescale of generational common knowledge, assuming that an audience will have any idea who Jafar is seems daft. Fortunately (or perhaps, unfortunately if you appreciate tight editing), ignoring those bits out entirely doesn't hurt the piece any.
posted by eotvos at 10:25 AM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
Connections(1978), hosted by James Burke
I have read one of Burke's Connections books and enjoyed it. I have never seen any of the show, but had a look at the linked Wikipedia page, which covers the show and has some episode summaries. I must say, stripped of the connective tissue where he relates and connects them they sound like pure unmedicated ramblings. S3E04:
I have read one of Burke's Connections books and enjoyed it. I have never seen any of the show, but had a look at the linked Wikipedia page, which covers the show and has some episode summaries. I must say, stripped of the connective tissue where he relates and connects them they sound like pure unmedicated ramblings. S3E04:
Black holes in space, seen by the Hubble Telescope, brought into space with hydrazine fuel, which was a byproduct of fungicides for French vines, fuelled by quarantine conventions and money orders, American Express and Buffalo Bill, Vaudeville and French battles, Joan of Arc and the Inquisition, Jews welcomed by Turks, who lost to Maltese knights with surgeons trained on pictures by Titian, in Augsburg, where goldsmiths made French money to pay for tobacco. That triggered logarithms and slide rules made by clock makers, who also made pressure cookers that sterilised French beer kept cool by refrigerators that were also used to freeze meat and chill down paraffin wax for making objects invisible.posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:35 AM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]
Black holes in space, seen by the Hubble Telescope, brought into space with hydrazine fuel, which was a byproduct of fungicides for French vines, fuelled by quarantine conventions and money orders, American Express and Buffalo Bill, Vaudeville and French battles, Joan of Arc and the Inquisition, Jews welcomed by Turks, who lost to Maltese knights with surgeons trained on pictures by Titian, in Augsburg, where goldsmiths made French money to pay for tobacco. That triggered logarithms and slide rules made by clock makers, who also made pressure cookers that sterilised French beer kept cool by refrigerators that were also used to freeze meat and chill down paraffin wax for making objects invisible.
I presume this is a lost verse of We Didn't Start the Fire.
posted by Octaviuz at 11:01 AM on January 22, 2016 [8 favorites]
I presume this is a lost verse of We Didn't Start the Fire.
posted by Octaviuz at 11:01 AM on January 22, 2016 [8 favorites]
As a very reductive generalization, the teaching of history in American high schools is usually very different from that in the rest of the English speaking world or in Europe. This means that conversations about history education between Americans and, say, Brits, often collapse into mutual incomprehension, as neither side realises that the other side got something almost unrecognisably different.
I would be interested in learning more about this, if you wouldn't mind expounding further or pointing towards some sources.
posted by Hypatia at 11:39 AM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]
I would be interested in learning more about this, if you wouldn't mind expounding further or pointing towards some sources.
posted by Hypatia at 11:39 AM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]
I recall a good long while ago finding out that there's a very good chance that Socrates and Buddha were contemporaries, and that if Socrates and Buddha weren't contemporaries (Buddha's dates are unclear), Buddha was at least contemporary with Pythagoras.
Gore Vidal plays around with this idea in his historical epic Creation. It's one of my favourite books. Highly recommended.
posted by ovvl at 12:00 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
Gore Vidal plays around with this idea in his historical epic Creation. It's one of my favourite books. Highly recommended.
posted by ovvl at 12:00 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
Just quickly as anecdata, I'm a British person with eyes wide at this thread. I can't imagine not having the overview view of any history. Timelines (the type of diagram, not the game) are an absolutely standard history teaching tool here at every single level.
posted by lokta at 12:11 PM on January 22, 2016
posted by lokta at 12:11 PM on January 22, 2016
I wish this idea/information would fall into the hands of someone who is a better writer and much better at information display, because this could be amazing. A handy website that let you scan and compare across timelines would be really incredible, and useful.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 7:04 PM on January 22, 2016
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 7:04 PM on January 22, 2016
19th century Synchronological Chart or Map of World History may be of interest here. Of course it assumes history started with Biblical Genesys.
posted by canoehead at 7:19 PM on January 22, 2016
posted by canoehead at 7:19 PM on January 22, 2016
Just skimming I saw glaring errors in his charts and hit the back button. Not worth my time to look at shoddy data unless i’m getting paid for fact checking and corrections.
posted by D.C. at 10:10 PM on January 22, 2016
posted by D.C. at 10:10 PM on January 22, 2016
> Yeah, history is weird like that sometimes. Take a guy like Henry Adams
The older I get, the more I think about this kind of thing. My grandfather was born in 1878; his father was born in 1842 and fought in the Civil War, which of course he heard lots of stories about. I listened to his stories of riding through Indian Territory (which later became Oklahoma) on his way to Texas. My dad was in WWII, and I was a CO during Vietnam. To my grandsons, both born in this century, Vietnam will be ancient history when they learn about it. Time's a funny thing.
posted by languagehat at 6:42 AM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
The older I get, the more I think about this kind of thing. My grandfather was born in 1878; his father was born in 1842 and fought in the Civil War, which of course he heard lots of stories about. I listened to his stories of riding through Indian Territory (which later became Oklahoma) on his way to Texas. My dad was in WWII, and I was a CO during Vietnam. To my grandsons, both born in this century, Vietnam will be ancient history when they learn about it. Time's a funny thing.
posted by languagehat at 6:42 AM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
There is an endlessly entertaining book called "The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events" that shows, year by year, what is happening in:
History and Politics
Literature and Theater
Religion, Philosophy and Learning
Visual Arts
Music
Science and Technology
Daily Life
I challenge anyone to stop looking at after one page.
posted by Bee'sWing at 9:58 AM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
History and Politics
Literature and Theater
Religion, Philosophy and Learning
Visual Arts
Music
Science and Technology
Daily Life
I challenge anyone to stop looking at after one page.
posted by Bee'sWing at 9:58 AM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
I perfer "The Peoples Chronology" though it's sourcing index is poor.
Chronology is everything.
I'm calling Ignotum per ignotius on this for its seems nothing more then great person theory mixed with standard vertical chronology with a dash of Periodization. The charts are only as useful as the information it contains as it relates to the individual, though the author does admit this and seems quite honest in his assertions.
For example, a vertical chronology say from 1945 to 1995 would take the shape of a massive bell or funnel; from 1995 to present, The collation of data has increased so much that a standard chronology looks like an inverted balloon with tentacles going everywhere. But between 1000B.C. To 1 A.D, not so much even with data added daily that updates the chronology
So looking at the meta data of history so to say, seems confusing viewed from a horizontal POV.
History is many things and Carr related "the old Stalybridge Wakes in 1850" to convey this and the need for ardent study and updating the chronology.
posted by clavdivs at 7:26 PM on January 25, 2016
Chronology is everything.
I'm calling Ignotum per ignotius on this for its seems nothing more then great person theory mixed with standard vertical chronology with a dash of Periodization. The charts are only as useful as the information it contains as it relates to the individual, though the author does admit this and seems quite honest in his assertions.
For example, a vertical chronology say from 1945 to 1995 would take the shape of a massive bell or funnel; from 1995 to present, The collation of data has increased so much that a standard chronology looks like an inverted balloon with tentacles going everywhere. But between 1000B.C. To 1 A.D, not so much even with data added daily that updates the chronology
So looking at the meta data of history so to say, seems confusing viewed from a horizontal POV.
History is many things and Carr related "the old Stalybridge Wakes in 1850" to convey this and the need for ardent study and updating the chronology.
posted by clavdivs at 7:26 PM on January 25, 2016
|===========|
|--------------------/
time and space are relative to a normative definition when viewing data for a historiographical model.
These crude lines above represent a vertical timeline.
The top line is "natural history" or the best that science can provide as to dating. For example, carbon-14 tested bone. Or a dated letter from J. Doe to G. Doe.
( I once found a letter addressed to a "Mr. W. H. Lohman" , a bible salesman, from his supplier...yes, he was riding the dude to canvass harder)
The second line is recorded data or a general historical timeline written by (but not inclusively about) humans.
Line three is us or you or anyone
Time can diverge fairly well when viewed this way, in order, for a reason.
Each second today has unknown connections that may seem as myriad as the pasts missing toothed grin, but new technology is recording, storing and researching Data at a greater rate then ever. (Is that inevitable?)
The futures past will not seem as complex or perhaps even as relevant.
Supposition can be instantaneously be verified and then recorded for the big future wire spool of history.
posted by clavdivs at 10:03 PM on January 25, 2016
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time and space are relative to a normative definition when viewing data for a historiographical model.
These crude lines above represent a vertical timeline.
The top line is "natural history" or the best that science can provide as to dating. For example, carbon-14 tested bone. Or a dated letter from J. Doe to G. Doe.
( I once found a letter addressed to a "Mr. W. H. Lohman" , a bible salesman, from his supplier...yes, he was riding the dude to canvass harder)
The second line is recorded data or a general historical timeline written by (but not inclusively about) humans.
Line three is us or you or anyone
Time can diverge fairly well when viewed this way, in order, for a reason.
Each second today has unknown connections that may seem as myriad as the pasts missing toothed grin, but new technology is recording, storing and researching Data at a greater rate then ever. (Is that inevitable?)
The futures past will not seem as complex or perhaps even as relevant.
Supposition can be instantaneously be verified and then recorded for the big future wire spool of history.
posted by clavdivs at 10:03 PM on January 25, 2016
Ok, so no one caught that. The article does not present a horizontal chronology but a vertical one.
Where the author derives this is compelling.
posted by clavdivs at 7:28 PM on February 8, 2016
Where the author derives this is compelling.
posted by clavdivs at 7:28 PM on February 8, 2016
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(I remember getting slightly freaked out learning Rubens met Michelangelo and was a student of Brugel...and had some native American motifs in his early work cause OH YEAH THAT'S WHAT 1500 MEANS)
posted by The Whelk at 8:10 AM on January 22, 2016 [7 favorites]