In the image above, we see an impressive pre-internet macro-infraction called “Histomap”. Its creator John B. Sparks (which later created “Histomaps” of religion and evolution) published the graph in 1931 with Rand McNally. The graph of five feet long – portable covering 4,000 years of “world” history – is, in fact, an example of an early illustration trend called “outline”, of which of which Rebecca onion at Slate Written: “The great materials (the history of the world! All the schools of philosophy! All modern physical!) Were distilled in an understandable form for the most without instruction.” Here we have the full description of most of all political, graphics or animations graphics USA Today, most information sites on the internet and, of course, Onion.
The similarity here is not just a form. The “outline” worked in the same way as simplified animations – leading heavy and controversial theoretical freight trains and ideological baggage. Rebecca Onion describes the graph as an artifact of its time, presenting a version of prominent history in the United States between wars. The written onion:
The graph emphasizes domination, using color to show how the power of various “peoples” (an almost racial understanding of the nature of human groups, very popular at the time) has evolved through history.
The map of Sparks, however, remains an interesting document because of its disinterestedness. While the emphasis on racialism and the imperial conquest may seem to place sparks in the company with “scientific” populist racists of the time as Lothrop Stoddard (that Tom Buchanan quotes in Fitzgerald Gatsby), it would also seem that his conception has a lot in common with the first figures of illumination whose conception of time was not necessarily linear. According to classic models, thinkers like Thomas Hobbes had tended to divide the historical eras into rising and drooping actions of various groups of people, rather than the progressive ascent of a race on all the others towards an end of history. For example, the poet Abraham Cowley writes a “universal history” compressed in his poem of 1656 “To Mr. Hobs», Passage of Aristotle (the“ interi stagrite ”) about the poem Thomas Hobbes. The movement is progressive, but the historical representatives of each civilization receive an equal weight and a similar accent.
Has long been the powerful Stability retain
THE universal intellectual reign,,
Has seen its own short -term countries Leopard killed;
Strongest Roman eagle done outside,
Often renewed her AgeAnd I saw that Dying.
Mecha It may be, in the Sweight of Mahumet possession,
And chassed by a savage Flood of East,,
Her Monarchy New planted in the West.
But as in time each large imperial race
Degenerate and gives a new place:
The Cowley period recognized the theories of racial, cultural and natural supremacy, but such qualities, as in the map of Sparks, were the product of a long line of succession from empires and groups just as powerful and remarkable to others, and not a social evolution in which a higher breed was born. Rand McNally announced the graphic as presenting “the march of civilization, mud huts of the ancients through the monarchist glamor of the Middle Ages in the living panorama of life in current America.” While the presentation text is filled with pseudoscientific colonialist discussion points, the graphic itself has the dated, but surprisingly egalitarian arrangement, which – like a large part of the illustration in illustration National Geographic—Pets to accommodate the best consensus models of the time, displaying, but non -proselytist, its biases.
Note: a previous version of this article appeared on our site in 2013.
Related content:
180,000 years of religion drawn up on a “historic” in 1943
10 million years of evolution viewed in an elegant 5 -foot infographic from 1931
World history in a video: every year of 200,000 BCE today
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him to @jdmagness
At Learnopoly, Finn has championed a mission to deliver unbiased, in-depth reviews of online courses that empower learners to make well-informed decisions. With over a decade of experience in financial services, he has honed his expertise in strategic partnerships and business development, cultivating both a sharp analytical perspective and a collaborative spirit. A lifelong learner, Finn’s commitment to creating a trusted guide for online education was ignited by a frustrating encounter with biased course reviews.