''Adams Synchronological Chart or Map of History'', originally published as ''Chronological Chart of Ancient, Modern and Biblical History'' is a wallchart which graphically depicts a Biblical genealogy alongside a timeline composed of historic sources from the history of humanity from 4004 BC to modern times. Published in 1871 by writer, educator, and Presbyterian minister Sebastian C. Adams, the chart integrates genealogies of the King James

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

with numerous historical references and compendiums (listed in the

Sources Source may refer to: Research * Historical document * Historical source * Source (intelligence) or sub source, typically a confidential provider of non open-source intelligence * Source (journalism), a person, publication, publishing institute ...

, below)* merging

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin , or or ), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. The origins of secularity can be traced to the Bible itself. The concept was fleshed out through Christian hi ...

history with a chronological account beginning with

Adam and Eve Adam and Eve, according to the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, were the first man and woman. They are central to the belief that humanity is in essence a single family, with everyone descended from a single pair of original ancestors. ...

in 4004 B.C. The chart was popular enough to be reprinted through several editions, and has been updated to continue into the 21st century. Knock off copies were produced in America and England. One such copy was published by Irish geologist Edward Hull in 1890, which gave an incorrect attribution to him after he added a geologic strata to the chart. Although new versions remain in print over a hundred years after its first publication, and these newer versions sometimes contain slight amendments to take the years since 1871 into account — they still represent a knowledge of

world history Human history or world history is the record of humankind from prehistory to the present. Early modern human, Modern humans evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers. They Early expansions of hominin ...

, which although considered comprehensive in 1871 — would have to be considerably augmented to represent a more contemporary knowledge. More contemporary histories of the world now exist, such as
What On Earth Wallbook of Big History
, which continues the overall chronological format of Adam's chart, but replaces Adam and Eve with the

Big Bang The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models based on the Big Bang concept explain a broad range of phenomena, including th ...

, and the biblical genealogy with a

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical dat ...

diagram of evolutionary descent.

Format

The chart maintains a Victorian design, and compresses 6,000 years of history into a 23-foot wallchart. It is thoroughly illustrated with tables, and references. On the overall format of the chronology, the author remarks:

Design

In the chart, the stream of time is represented by a long black flowing line, where every hundred years are marked by upright black pillars, while red lines mark the decades. Nations and kingdoms are represented by parallel streams each brought into the same divisions of time. When conquered or absorbed into another government, its stream terminates. These nation streams are segmented into different colours, indicating the reign of a particular ruler or government, and growing wider or thinner in accordance to historical context. Some divide to indicate a split in the nation and indicate the independence of a state, or flow into others to illustrate its conquest, invasion, or acquisition by another nation. In the case of uncertainty or dispute between historical sources —

question mark The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation, punctuation mark that indicates a question or interrogative clause or phrase in many languages. History The history of the question mark is ...

s are used. Numerous tables and references document significant figures shown on the nation streams, such as significant poets, historians, and literary works, which are noted in coloured scrolls near the top of the chart. For example, entries for

Joan of Arc Joan of Arc ( ; ; – 30 May 1431) is a patron saint of France, honored as a defender of the French nation for her role in the siege of Orléans and her insistence on the Coronation of the French monarch, coronation of Charles VII o ...

, the invention of

gunpowder Gunpowder, also commonly known as black powder to distinguish it from modern smokeless powder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur, charcoal (which is mostly carbon), and potassium nitrate, potassium ni ...

, and the change in navigation with the invention of the

compass A compass is a device that shows the cardinal directions used for navigation and geographic orientation. It commonly consists of a magnetized needle or other element, such as a compass card or compass rose, which can pivot to align itself with No ...

. During the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

, red crosses indicate

persecution of Christians The persecution of Christians can be historically traced from the first century of the Christian era to the present day. Christian missionaries and converts to Christianity have both been targeted for persecution, sometimes to the point ...

, while smaller red crosses stand for the

Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and at times directed by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The most prominent of these were the campaigns to the Holy Land aimed at reclaiming Jerusalem and its surrounding t ...

. Red circles denote

ecumenical council An ecumenical council, also called general council, is a meeting of bishops and other church authorities to consider and rule on questions of Christian doctrine, administration, discipline, and other matters in which those entitled to vote are ...

s. Suzi Feay of ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'' describes the chart's design for representing a large scope of human history as something that "resembles an unusually complicated digestive system, with its lines, loops, bulges and branches".

Influences

The design may have inspired later 'Maps of World History' such as the HistoMap by John B. Sparks, which chronicles four thousand years of world history in a graphic way similar to the enlarging and contracting nation streams presented on Adam's chart. Sparks added the innovation of using a

logarithmic scale A logarithmic scale (or log scale) is a method used to display numerical data that spans a broad range of values, especially when there are significant differences among the magnitudes of the numbers involved. Unlike a linear Scale (measurement) ...

for the presentation of history.

Impact

According to the book Cartographies of Time: History of the Timeline, the Synchronological Chart "was ninetheenth-century America's surpassing achievement in complexity and synthetic power." The Oregon Encyclopedia notes that it is now prized by museums and library collections as an early representative of commercial illustration that made history lessons 'colourful and dramatic'.

Content

Since the chart combines secular history with biblical genealogy, it worked back from the time of Christ to peg their start at 4,004 B.C. Above the image of Adam and Eve are the words, "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" (Genesis 1:1) — beside which the author acknowledges that — "Moses assigns no date to this Creation. Where it begins is unknown". The genealogies continue until the Deluge and Tower of Babel in 2,348 B.C., and after depicting Noah's flood as described in Genesis (indicated by a black line), the chart splits into two, with the upper portion continuing the biblical

genealogy Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...

and the lower showing the division into nations supposedly after the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. The nation streams are interspersed with numerous tables containing, for example: A

list of Assyrian kings The king of Assyria (Akkadian language, Akkadian: , later ) was the ruler of the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria, which was founded in the late 21st century BC and fell in the late 7th century BC. For much of its early history, Assyria was ...

, a

list of kings of Babylon The king of Babylon (Akkadian language, Akkadian: , later also ) was the ruler of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon and its kingdom, Babylonia, which existed as an independent realm from the 19th century BC to its fall in the 6th century BC. ...

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

inscriptions, tables comparing the development of the

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

from Hebrew, Phoenician, Persian, and Greek, and a list of the

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, also known as the Seven Wonders of the World or simply the Seven Wonders, is a list of seven notable structures present during classical antiquity, first established in the 1572 publication '' Octo Mundi M ...

. At certain points of the chart, large parts are occupied by big empires such as the

Babylonia Babylonia (; , ) was an Ancient history, ancient Akkadian language, Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Kuwait, Syria and Iran). It emerged as a ...

n Empire (under the reign of

Nebuchadnezzar II Nebuchadnezzar II, also Nebuchadrezzar II, meaning "Nabu, watch over my heir", was the second king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruling from the death of his father Nabopolassar in 605 BC to his own death in 562 BC. Often titled Nebuchadnezzar ...

), the

Persian Empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire (; , , ), was an Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, it was the larg ...

, the

Macedonian Empire Macedonia ( ; , ), also called Macedon ( ), was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, which later became the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. The kingdom was founded and initially ruled by the royal ...

, and the

, which, at one point, occupies almost the entire part of the chart used for nation streams. After the

fall of Rome The fall of the Western Roman Empire, also called the fall of the Roman Empire or the fall of Rome, was the loss of central political control in the Western Roman Empire, a process in which the Empire failed to enforce its rule, and its vast ...

, the empire's colossal nation stream is divided into many smaller streams of

barbarian kingdoms The barbarian kingdoms were states founded by various non-Roman, primarily Germanic, peoples in Western Europe and North Africa following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE. The barbarian kingdoms were the princip ...

. The independence of many colonies is clearly shown as big nation streams standing for

colonial empire A colonial empire is a sovereign state, state engaging in colonization, possibly establishing or maintaining colony, colonies, infused with some form of coloniality and colonialism. Such states can expand contiguous as well as Territory#Overseas ...

s split into several smaller streams. Numerous insets remark the discovery of significant inventions such as

Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei ( , , ) or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a poly ...

with the

pendulum A pendulum is a device made of a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced sideways from its resting, equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate i ...

and the

telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, Absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption, or Reflection (physics), reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally, it was an optical instrument using len ...

Johannes Gutenberg Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg ( – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and Artisan, craftsman who invented the movable type, movable-type printing press. Though movable type was already in use in East Asia, Gutenberg's inven ...

with the

printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in whi ...

James Watt James Watt (; 30 January 1736 (19 January 1736 OS) – 25 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1776, which was f ...

with his improved

steam engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs Work (physics), mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a Cylinder (locomotive), cyl ...

, and

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

reading his plays to Queen

Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was List of English monarchs, Queen of England and List of Irish monarchs, Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. She was the last and longest reigning monarch of the House of Tudo ...

Sources

Sources are listed within the chart itself, right beside the Colby & Co Publishers: * English Historian:

Edward Gibbon Edward Gibbon (; 8 May 173716 January 1794) was an English essayist, historian, and politician. His most important work, ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, is known for ...

* Greek Historians: i)

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

, ii)

Thucydides Thucydides ( ; ; BC) was an Classical Athens, Athenian historian and general. His ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts Peloponnesian War, the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been d ...

, iii)

Livy Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding i ...

, iv)

Sallust Gaius Sallustius Crispus, usually anglicised as Sallust (, ; –35 BC), was a historian and politician of the Roman Republic from a plebeian family. Probably born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines, Sallust became a partisan of Julius ...

, v)

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...

, and vi)

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. Tacitus’ two major historical works, ''Annals'' ( ...

. * George Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies * John Gardner Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians * Austen Henry Layard's Nineveh and Babylon *

Xenophon Xenophon of Athens (; ; 355/354 BC) was a Greek military leader, philosopher, and historian. At the age of 30, he was elected as one of the leaders of the retreating Ancient Greek mercenaries, Greek mercenaries, the Ten Thousand, who had been ...

's Works * Charles Rollin's Ancient History * History of the World by Samuel Maunder * Universal History of the World by Johannes von Müller * Cyclopædia of Biography * Compendium of History by Kerney * Worcester's History * Goodrich's Universal History * Hawes' Synchronology *

Haydn Franz Joseph Haydn ( ; ; 31 March 173231 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions ...

's Dictionary of Dates * Archbishop James Ussher's Annals of the Old and New Testaments * Antoine Augustin Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible * Humphrey Prideaux’s Connexions * George Grote's History of Greece * Goodrich’s History of Greece * The Arundelian Marbles or Parian Chronicle (37 statues, 128 busts, and 250 inscriptions containing the history of Greece from 1582 to 355 BC located in Oxford) * The Bible (

King James Version The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English Bible translations, Early Modern English translation of the Christianity, Christian Bible for the Church of England, wh ...

)

Endorsements

Notable

* "It is worth a library of books on the subject of history" (G. McCloskie, L.L.D. Professor of Natural History at Princeton College) * "Indicates at a glance the date, progress, and synchronism of historical events, as clearly as could be learned in days and weeks in ordinary historical works" (A.D. Hager, Secretary, Chicago Historical Society) * "The plan adopted is a very ingenious one is such that the student sees at a glance exactly the condition of the world at any given date" (Scientific American) (Source:)

Image of 1881 edition

References

Notes

Citations

External links

Sebastian C. Adams (artist)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Adams Synchronological Chart or Map of History 1890 works 19th-century prints