The ChronoZoom Time Atlas of Earth History and Big History
By the ChronoZoom Team
"Big History" is the currently active effort to bring together in a unified way all of the information about the past, both humanistic and scientific. It is now taught at a number of high schools, colleges and universities. However, one of the problems for anyone teaching Earth history or Big History is how to help students – or anyone – to comprehend the time scales. The panels below help address this challenge by presenting Big History in a sequence of time scales. The panels cover intervals of time that differ by about a factor of ten, but rather than rigid, order-of-magnitude separations, each panel begins at a significant date in history. Each panel is accompanied by a page of text, discussing the historical features shown in the panel.
Users may view the panels and text side by side on a computer monitor to facilitate zooming in on the graphic panel, or may opt to print the entire document in book form or select individual time periods: (For the best user experience, we recommend downloading the documents and viewing directly in Adobe Reader.)
|
Chart |
Text |
Introduction |
Panel 0 |
Chart |
Text |
Big Bang and Cosmos |
Panel 1 |
Chart |
Text |
Cosmos (13.8 Ga to now) |
Panel 2 |
Chart |
Text |
Earth and Life (4.567 Ga to now) |
Panel 3 |
Chart |
Text |
Phanerozoic (541 Ma to now) |
Panel 4 |
Chart |
Text |
Cenozoic (66 Ma to now) |
Panel 5 |
Chart |
Text |
Pliocene-Pleistocene (5.33 Ma to now) |
Panel 6 |
Chart |
Text |
Bruhnes Normal and Ice Age (780 ka to now) |
Panel 7 |
Chart |
Text |
Out of Africa (60 ka to now) |
Panel 8 |
Chart |
Text |
Civilization and Writing (3,500 B.C. to now) |
Panel 9 |
Chart |
Text |
Global Reconnection (1400 A.D. to now) |
Panel 10 |
Chart |
Text |
Cold War / Long Peace (1945 to now) |
Panel 11 |
Chart |
Text |
Dating and Periodizing History (Last 5 years) |
Panel 12 |
Chart |
Text |
The Character of History (Last 6 months) |
"now" = 2000 A.D. B.C. = B.C.E. A.D. = C.E.
Ga = billion years ago Ma = million years ago ka = thousand years ago |