The Huge Map of Who Lived When Reveals Which Cultural Figures Walked the Earth on the Similar Time: From 1200 to Current

We might name the time by which we dwell the “Infor­ma­tion Age.” Or we might describe it extra vivid­ly because the period of Invoice Gates and Jeff Bezos, Mar­tin Scors­ese and Steven Spiel­berg, Oprah Win­frey and Martha Stew­artwork, Bey­on­cé and Bob Dylan. What­ev­er you consider the work of any of those fig­ures in par­tic­u­lar, you’ll be able to onerous­ly deny the influence they’ve had on our cul­ture. Had been we liv­ing a cen­tu­ry in the past, we’d have stated the identical of Hen­ry Ford and John D. Rock­e­feller, James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzger­ald (although he had­n’t fairly pub­lished The Nice Gats­by but), Pablo Picas­so and Char­lie Chap­lin, Marie Curie and Sig­mund Freud.

Had been we liv­ing within the 12 months 1225, our lives would’ve over­lapped with these of Leonar­do Fibonac­ci, Fran­cis of Assisi, Rumi, and Thomas Aquinas, in addition to each Genghis Khan and his grand­son Kublai Khan.

All that is laid out visu­al­ly in The Huge Map of Who Lived When, cre­at­ed ear­li­er this 12 months by a Pink­dit consumer referred to as Profound_Whatever. As Huge Suppose’s Frank Jacobs writes, the map reveals sur­pris­ing cases of con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous­ness, similar to that cur­hire U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden “for a couple of 12 months was alive similtaneously Niko­la Tes­la (1854–1943), the Ser­bian-Amer­i­can inven­tor who devel­oped the alter­nat­ing cur­hire (AC) sys­tem that’s used for dis­trib­ut­ing elec­tric­i­ty.”

For “anoth­er, newer (and extra baf­fling) over­lap: The lifetime of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973), who wrote The Lord of the Rings, coin­cid­ed ever so slight­ly with that of Eminem.” Going far­ther into the previous, how many people have been ful­ly conscious that “Christo­pher Colum­bus (1451–1506), Leonar­do da Vin­ci (1452–1519), and Mar­tin Luther (1483–1546) have been con­tem­po­raries of every oth­er”? Or that “the lives of Oliv­er Cromwell (1599–1658) and René Descartes (1596–1650) synced virtually per­fect­ly with every oth­er, regardless of the one being the canine­mat­i­cal­ly Puri­tan fig­ure­head of the Eng­lish Civ­il Struggle, and the oth­er the daddy of mod­ern, ratio­nal­ist phi­los­o­phy by giv­ing doubt to a cen­tral position within the pur­swimsuit of fact”?

The Huge Map of Who Lived When makes use of a col­or-cod­ing sys­tem to divide the fig­ures whose lifes­pans it charts into eight cat­e­gories, includ­ing artists (Leonar­do da Vin­ci, Rube Gold­berg), thinkers (John Locke, Charles Dar­win), “busi­ness & indus­attempt” (includ­ing famed pirates from Hen­ry Mor­gan to Black­beard), and “lead­ers & dangerous­dies” (Napoleon, Adolf Hitler). All of it reminds us that we’d give any­factor for an opportunity to satisfy a few of them, or to remain out of the trail of oth­ers. In fact, the indi­vid­u­als we consider as hav­ing outlined a par­tic­u­lar his­tor­i­cal period weren’t at all times regard­ed that method by each­one else who lived on the identical time: some­factor it will­n’t harm to keep in mind when con­sid­er­ing our personal place in his­to­ry.

through Huge Suppose

Relat­ed con­tent:

Joseph Priest­ley Visu­al­izes His­to­ry & Nice His­tor­i­cal Fig­ures with Two of the Most Influ­en­tial Information­graph­ics Ever (1769)

5‑Minute Ani­ma­tion Maps 2,600 Years of West­ern Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

4000 Years of His­to­ry Dis­performed in a 5‑Foot-Lengthy “His­tom­ap” (Ear­ly Information­graph­ic) From 1931

180,000 Years of Reli­gion Chart­ed on a “His­tom­ap” in 1943

10 Mil­lion Years of Evo­lu­tion Visu­al­ized in an Ele­gant, 5‑Foot Lengthy Information­graph­ic from 1931

The His­to­ry of the World in One Video: Each Yr from 200,000 BCE to Right now

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­ebook.