We didn’t have any single, straight lines; in true history, they don’t exist!

One of my high school teachers, Dr. Leon Meade introduced us to a game that I still play:

Whenever I go shopping or dining, I look at the receipt/check and translate the sums to a year (BCE and CE) and I try to relate that year to an event or era in each continent. (This would include tax and tip!)

Dr. Meade felt that we should be aware of what was happening in the entire world at any given moment. Separate events were never separate in his book; they always had an influence on the future, both locally and afar. He had us save the sales receipts, list the years and events, then give an overview or some relationship amongst them. This was a monthly homework assignment. And it was a lot of fun! There were ‘brownie points’ if we were extremely perceptive and could think beyond the box!

He taught us that one employs timelines for perspective and dimension.

This exercise still sends me to my timelines of history book/pull-out chart (which I received as a Christmas gift forty years ago!), almanac, or computer! (I am currently looking at my Marshall’s receipt and note that my change amounts to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum.)

During the course of my tours, I strive to convey the importance of timelines to my seventh and eighth graders because history is not static.

Even a simple question like, “What other important battle (seige) ended the same week as Gettysburg?” demands a knowlege of timelines during the War Between the States. It is through this question that they realize one of the reasons why General Grant was not at Gettysburg and there were other significant battles going on. Add in, “What was happening in California, New York, Canada, Great Britain, Japan, Africa, and Australia at the same time?”, gives a broader view of the age, and perhaps the effects of the American Civil War abroad. He liked the term, ‘Zeitgeist’.

I also like to introduce them to archeology, which is a visible and tangible timeline. They have marvelous archeological programs in Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown, VA. (Yorktown’s archeological exhibit is about the sunken fleet in the York River!)

By the way, two television series that were excellent in bringing home the use of timelines were the recent, ‘E=mc2′, and James Burke’s, ‘Connections’. They intertwined biography, history, the arts, and science.

Hmmm. My personal timeline tells me it is way past my bedtime!

Most timelines don’t seem to consider that they could or do have a narrative of their own, apart from a larger contextual narrative.

Exactly. This is why I ask my students to critically evaluate the content presented in a timeline, to question what, if any, narrative exists in the timeline, and think about ways of enhancing their knowledge beyond the timeline.

The concurrent timelines idea and the “multi-thread” timelines are interesting, and I’ll definitely take into consideration as I write my news few posts in this series. Timelines are an interesting puzzle to solve, from a user interface perspective.

Most timelines don’t seem to consider that they could or do have a narrative of their own, apart from a larger contextual narrative. And perhaps context could be provided by showing concurrent timelines next to each other.

For example, the Abraham Lincoln narrative could be made into several concurrent running tracks, and displayed graphically (an actual line, with pictures) instead of as a list. You could have one timeline be “Abraham Lincoln’s Family 1637-1865″. Below that could be “Important Historical Events, Local 1637-1865″, listing events that are relevant to that personal history (for example, what events, if any, may have led to Samuel moving to Massachusetts, Thomas being killed by Indians or what were the key events of the Black Hawk War?). A third timeline could be “Important Historical Events, National”, another could be “Important Legal Events” that had bearing or precedent in Lincoln’s legal career, another could be “Important Events Governing the Relationship of North and South”, and so on. By graphically displaying them in line next to each other, and perhaps having dotted lines connecting related events between timelines, you could “multi-thread” different narratives.

You could even have one timeline display a historical narrative from a Northern perspective, and another from a Southern perspective, showing the differences of opinion on what constitutes important historical events for the two sides of the Civil War.

Another interesting tool, or one like it, would be Timemap and other historical atlas software.

http://www.timemap.net/