The flow of human history

I came across this timeline of sorts—“Histomap of Four Thousand Years of World History”—yesterday. It covers 2000 BCE to 1931. (Click here to go to a somewhat larger version at the Slate site.)

I’ll start out with a complaint—why couldn’t Slate have made it zoomable? At least zommable so that it doesn’t go into a blur?

But beyond that, this thing is fascinating.

For one thing, it’s beautiful to look at—the multicolored rivers of human groupings, flowing through history. They appear, they expand; they disappear…

If you view the whole thing as one long strip, it looks like something that came from one of those WPA murals that used to adorn all manner of public buildings. Which would put it in the right time-frame for something that ends history at 1931.

Look at where the US appears—that little blue rivulet way, way down towards the bottom at the left. Just a little blip in the course of human history. & Great Britain—it achieved its greatest point of expansion just as we broke away, presaging the collapse of empire.

China is the one constant in this whole thing—ain’t that a kick in the pants?

I really wish I could print this out on some gigantic printer, so it’s at a legible scale. Then I’d hang it on a tall wall next to a multi-floor staircase so people could walk up and down to follow the streams of history.

Second complaint—why couldn’t Slate have commissioned a graphic artist and historian(s) to pick up at 1931 and take it through to at least 2010? This just cries out to be updated.