Kerr - Timeline of World History

Timeline of World History attempts to chronicle all major events from the very beginning of the universe right up to the present day. This was an extremely ambitious undertaking, as everything that has ever happened can be seen as being important in some way. The universal law of cause and effect means that a lone butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can potentially cause a tornado in Texas. Nothing occurs in isolation, everything is a consequence of something else. In fact a universe in which events are allowed to happen in a vacuum is as inconceivable to the majority of people as the sound of one hand clapping.

Most peoples knowledge of the history of the world in which we live is pretty episodic. We piece together fragments learned in school with those we have read in newspapers, books or taken from the internet and television in order to form a jigsaw of the past. This jigsaw is almost completely personal to the individual, and inevitably inaccurate sometimes drastically so. Many very young children believe that their grandparents grew up in a world of black and white simply because they believe that TV represents the world exactly as it is. They are unable to allow for poetic licence, just as a lot of adults are unable to tolerate the notion that the 25 December was not assigned as Jesus birthday until 320 years after his birth. No matter what facts they are presented with to prove it.

If we were all born with an awareness of history, and therefore an innate sense of how small our own lives really are, humankind might not have prevailed as it has. Our relationships, jobs and the minutiae of ordinary life might suddenly seem superfluous, or simply not worth bothering about, and if that happened to the population en masse , it could spell disaster for our species.

When an unexpected world-altering event happens during our lifetime such as Chernobyl, the assassination of JFK, or the 9/11 bombings many of us experience a sudden sharpening of perspective. On the day that Islamic extremists hijacked and crashed two commercial passenger planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, many people, including those completely unaffected by the attacks themselves, were suddenly confronted by the reality of their mortality and felt instinctively driven to re-evaluate their lives. It is through major events like these that ordinary people are able to catch a glimpse of the bigger picture the thread that holds time together.

Timeline of World History attempts to chronologically document world events. Patterns inevitably evolve and develop over the centuries. One cannot help but notice the same rivalries, jealousies and brutal conflicts appearing again and again throughout the passage of time. The conflicts of Christian versus Muslim, white versus black, Protestant versus Catholic and slave versus oppressor recur with depressing frequency, but alongside the violence and bloodshed astonishing people also appear. What kind of man must Alexander the Great have been? Dead at 33, but emperor of much of the known world. Or Timur, also known as Tamberlane, the great 14th century Mongol warlord, a fascinating and contradictory figure. How much did events in his life coincide with those of other great leaders such as Ghengis Khan, Mahatma Gandhi or Malcolm X?

To know where one is, one must know where one has been. Timeline of World History will help readers to make a little more sense of the confusing world in which we live.