Scroll left and right through a thousand years. Pick which parts of the world you want beside each other. Click any bar and the deeper layers grow in behind it.
THIN LAYER, FIVE ERAS OF FOURTEEN
CertaintyShow
SHOW
SCROLL TO GO DEEPER · LEFT AND RIGHT ALONG THE LANE · ESCAPE TO LET GO
How to read the ends of the bars. A squared end means the date is known to the year. A fading end means it is approximate, a range or a century. A long fade with a dotted tail means historians disagree, and the panel below says why. An arrow at the edge means the thing started before 1000 or carried on past 1450.
Move the cursor across the chart. A line follows it, showing the year you are over and how many of these things were alive in that year. It is the quickest way to see that the past was always crowded.
Two kinds of line, kept apart on purpose. A solid line means one thing actually became another. A dashed line means influence only, with no succession. Most entities have neither, because most things in history are not descended from anything. We only draw a line where there really is one.