Original Orientation

Graphic Orientation

The Online History Graphic Chronologies reference subjects in tables. They are similar to a common calendar. Most yearly calendars are tables having seven columns for each day of the week and are separated into 12 monthly grids, each having five rows.

The Graphic Chronologies are calendars of years. Each is a table comprised of two columns and five rows. The flow of time from cell to cell is the same as a common calendar, but there are two patterns types for numbering the cells. Type 1 is for historical periods in which the number of the year decreases as you move forward in time. This includes historical periods Before Christ, BC, or Before the Common Era, BCE., and all Natural History and Prehisory chronologies. Type two is used for all historical periods of the Common Era, which began with the year 1 AD.

	Each of the Graphic Chronologies reperesents time periods of either 1, 10, 100, 1,000, or 10,000 years. Note the year 0 in the bottom right and top left cells of the graphic decades. There was no year 0, but in the folowing decades this cell is used for the years 10, 20 30,100, etc. Every year in any cell always begins with the same number. The shading between chronologies indicates that chronolgies can be included as cells in chronologies that are ten times longer, and that each cell within a chronology can be subdivided into its own ten cell table. The one exception are cells within Graphic Decades, which are each subdivided into standard 12 cell monthly calendars. The reason that the cells are not numbered one thru ten is that both ten and one begin with the numeral 1. The ten numbers that begin with one, the teens, are all in one cell, as are the twenties and the following decades of each century. The zero decades are called the ohs, as in nineteen oh one occuring in the nineteen ohs, rather than in the nineteen zeros..
As the last chronology on the right indicates, only two of the 1,000 year long cells in the 10,000 year Common Era Chronology have occurred. The third 1,000 year cell will begin in the year 2,000.