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Before the axis

Deep time

The canvas starts at 9000 BCE. These ten places are older — much older — and drawing them to the same scale would squeeze every empire, war and landmark on the timeline into the last pixel of the rule. So they get a shelf, and the shelf is logarithmic: each step to the left is a multiplication, not an addition.

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Years ago, on a logarithmic scale: each gridline is roughly three times further back than the one to its right.

  1. Landmark · Africa

    Laetoli

    3.7 million years ago

    Tanzanian site preserving 3.7-million-year-old hominid footprints in volcanic ash, the oldest evidence of upright bipedal walking

  2. Landmark · Africa

    Olduvai Gorge

    1.8 million years ago

    Paleoanthropological site in Tanzania's Great Rift Valley where some of the earliest evidence of human ancestors was found

  3. Landmark · Oceania

    Murujuga Petroglyphs

    50,000 years ago

    Burrup Peninsula rock-art complex in Western Australia holding over a million Aboriginal petroglyphs, the largest collection of rock engravings on Earth.

  4. Landmark · Oceania

    Lake Mungo

    44,000 years ago

    Dry lake bed in New South Wales containing Australia's oldest human remains, including the 42,000-year-old Mungo Man and Mungo Lady

  5. Landmark · Europe

    Cave of Altamira

    38,000 years ago

    Paleolithic cave in northern Spain with polychrome bison paintings, called the 'Sistine Chapel of Prehistory'

  6. Landmark · Europe

    Chauvet Cave

    38,000 years ago

    Contains the oldest known cave paintings in the world, with masterful depictions of lions, rhinos, and mammoths from 36,000 years ago

  7. Landmark · Oceania

    Koonalda Cave

    24,000 years ago

    Deep Nullarbor limestone cave in South Australia preserving Pleistocene finger-flutings and flint mining by Ice Age Aboriginal peoples.

  8. Landmark · Oceania

    Kakadu Rock Art Sites

    22,000 years ago

    Aboriginal rock art galleries in Australia's Northern Territory with paintings spanning 20,000 years of continuous cultural tradition

  9. Landmark · Oceania

    Ubirr Rock Art

    22,000 years ago

    Aboriginal rock-art galleries on sandstone outliers in Kakadu, Australia, depicting extinct megafauna, X-ray-style fish, and early contact with outsiders.

  10. Landmark · Europe

    Lascaux Cave

    19,000 years ago

    Paleolithic cave in southern France containing some of the most famous prehistoric paintings of animals and symbols

These dates are archaeological estimates, not years in a record. Laetoli is dated by the ash the footprints were pressed into; the painted caves by radiocarbon on the pigment and the floor. They are given here to the precision the excavation reports use and no further.

Image credits 6 pictures from Wikimedia Commons