Below is a collection of educational websites that offer interactive history timelines spanning world history from the early stages of the emergence of human life to the modern period. Whether you are a teacher, student, or a history aficionado, these interactive history timelines will help you explore and learn about key historical events that shaped human history throughout the ages.
Interactive history timelines arrange world history into chronological order starting with the most ancient all the way to the current period. Click on any period to learn more about the events that marked it. Depending on the source you are using, some of these interactive history timelines offer historical data based on Wikipedia entries. I invite you to check them out and share with us your feedback.
1. Histography
Histography is an interactive timeline of world history stretching back from the Big Bang to 2015. Every dot on the timeline stands for a historical event from Wikipedia. ‘The viewer can choose to watch a variety of events which have happened in a particular period or to target a specific event in time. For example you can look at the past century within the categories of war and inventions.’
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Historical events in Historgraphy are arranged into various categories including: Literature, music, wars, politics, construction, inventions, riots, women rights, disasters, art, nationality, discoveries, empires, assassinations, and religion. Histography is a project guided by Ronel Mor and created in Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.
2. Timemaps
The Timemap of World History is both an atlas and encyclopedia that covers the world’s history. While the Atlas provides you with a bird’s overview of the ‘grand sweep of history’. the Encyclopedia offers a treasure trove of historical resources and materials to help you explore ancient civilizations, understand major historical events, and learn about the different empires that ruled the world since its early beginnings.
The Atlas consists of over 900 maps covering every period of world history and spanning various geographical areas. Maps are arranged into three major geographical categories: world, big region (e.g., Europe, Africa, Middle East, North America, etc), and country. “All the maps fit within a single sequence of dates. Taken together, therefore, the maps form twenty “snapshots” of world history, from 3500 BCE to 2005 CE.
This makes it easy to see when and where different civilizations, empires and societies flourished, and to trace themes across regions and through time. The maps are accompanied by brief descriptions, which are backed up by the articles in the Encyclopedia.”
TimeMaps also offers an Education section that contains a wide variety of free teaching materials to use in class to help students learn about world history. There are resources for middle school teachers, resources for high school teachers, and there is also a premium teacher membership which offers exclusive premium curricular resources including classroom presentations, comprehensive teaching notes, tools for historical analysis, resources for students, lesson ideas, teacher support, and many more.
3. Geocron
Geacron provides a rich database of geo-temporal information covering world’s history. More specifically, GeaCron offers geo-temporal timelines and maps in the form of an interactive historical world atlas since 3000 BC. Geacron makes use of a unique system that ‘represents the historical events and the geopolitical maps of any region in the world, for any given historical time period.’
GeaCron also offers a premium Education plan with exclusive features including: an annual historical atlas, clickable labels, 3D Earth that enables users to watch history on globe, timelines that help with the study of comparative history, encyclopedia articles by place and time, contextual historical data (e.g., art, literature, philosophy, science, and religion), primary sources, and more.
4. Museum of The World
Museum of the World is an interactive timeline that takes you in a deep journey into history allowing you to uncover and explore amazing events in human history from different continents and cultures.”This project is a partnership between the British museum and Google Cultural Institute.
For the first time ever, discover objects from the British Museum’s collection from prehistory to the present using the most advanced web graphics library technology available. Jump back in time to explore objects from acrid diverse cultures and listen to British Museum curators share their insights. Click to connect objects across time and space, and discover hidden links between then and now. Take a look around, explore and learn something new”.
