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Logarithmic timeline
A logarithmic timeline, based on logarithmic scale, was developed by Heinz von Foerster, the philosopher and physicist. He was attempting to create a table of historical data, and realised that the closer to the present he got the more events he could put in the table. He therefore developed the logarithmic timeline in order to shrink the information in such a way that the same density of information was preserved, whilst at the same time allowing him to accurately show the whole span of history. An example of a table based on these principles is shown below. Von Foerster later used the table as one of the starting points of his argument that memory also declines in an exponential manner.
Example of a logarithmic timeline
In this table each row is defined in years ago, that is, years before the present date, with the most recent at the top of the chart. Each event is an occurrence of an observed or inferred process.
| Years Ago
| Period
| Event
|
1–
10 | 1995–present: 1990s, 2000s | WWW, Biotechnology, Nanotechnology, Global warming, more..
|
10–
100 | 1900–1995: 20th century | Car to spacecraft, Nuclear power, Antibiotics, Electronics, Totalitarianism, World wars, Nuclear war, more...
|
100–
1k | 1000–1900, Middle Ages | Renaissance, Printing press, Industrial Revolution, Firearms, more...
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1k–
10k
| Start of Holocene, 8000 BC–AD 1000, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age | Ice age ends, Cities, Writing, Wheel, Civilization, Religions, Philosophy, more..
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10k–
100k
| Pleistocene ends, Paleolithic ends, Mesolithic, beginning of Neolithic
| Agriculture, Cave paintings, Art, Dance, Tally stick, Ice age, Neandertal extinction
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100k–
1M
| Pleistocene, Paleolithic
| 150K Human, Fire, Language?, Ice age, Spirituality
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1M–
10M
| Pliocene, Paleolithic begins, Lower Paleolithic
| ~2M Evolution of Homo sapiens, Hunting - Gathering, Tools
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10M–
100M | ~Tertiary
| Grasses, Mammals, Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event
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100M–
1B | Paleozoic, Mesozoic
| Cambrian explosion of life, Animals, Flowering plants, Permian-Triassic extinction event
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1B–
14B
| Precambrian, Cosmology
| Big Bang, Stars and galaxies, Life, Earth
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See also
External links
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