| Adams Synchronological Chart or Map of History | |
| Author: | Sebastian C. Adams[1] |
| Country: | England |
| Language: | English |
| Subject: | History |
| Publisher: | Strobridge & Company, Cincinnati, OH |
| Pub Date: | 1871 |
| Pages: | 15 (original version), +1/2 page in revised/updated version, totaling at 32 with extra material. |
| Oclc: | 18434872 |
Adams Synchronological Chart or Map of History, originally published as Chronological Chart of Ancient, Modern and Biblical History is a wallchart that graphically depicts a Biblical genealogy alongside a timeline composed of historic sources from the history of humanity from 4004 BC to modern times.
Published in 1871[1] by writer, educator, and Presbyterian minister Sebastian C. Adams, the chart integrates genealogies of the King James Bible with numerous historical references and compendiums (listed in the Sources, below)* merging secular history with a chronological account beginning with Adam and Eve in 4004 B.C. (date of the Biblical creation of the world proposed by James Ussher).[2] [3]
The chart was popular enough to be reprinted through several editions, and has been updated to continue into the 21st century.[4] [5] [6] Knock off copies were produced in America and England. One such copy was published by Irish geologist Edward Hull in 1890, which gave an incorrect attribution to him after he added a geologic strata to the chart. (Reference: National Museum of American History https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/nmah_1807960)
Although new versions remain in print over a hundred years after its first publication, and these newer versions sometimes contain slight amendments to take the years since 1871 into account — they still represent a knowledge of world history, which although considered comprehensive in 1871 — would have to be considerably augmented to represent a more contemporary knowledge.
The chart succeeds in synchronizing Ancient History, Modern History, and Biblical Genealogical timelines in one extensive chart — and in many ways, Adam's timeline is still the most beautiful and ambitious work of its kind — no other chart has come close to its comprehensive depth in a single massive illustration. Yet the scope of its knowledge is limited and needs to be supplemented if it is to meet contemporary demands for the teaching of history.
More contemporary histories of the world now exist, such as 'What On Earth Wallbook of Big History', which continues the overall chronological format of Adam's chart, but replaces Adam and Eve with the Big Bang, and the biblical genealogy with a phylogenetic diagram of evolutionary descent.
The chart maintains a Victorian design, and compresses 6,000 years of history into a 23-foot wallchart. It is thoroughly illustrated with tables, and references.
On the overall format of the chronology, the author remarks:
In the chart, the stream of Time is represented by a long black flowing line, where every hundred years is marked by an upright black pillar, while red lines mark the decades.[7]
Nations and Kingdoms are represented by parallel streams each brought into the same divisions of time. When conquered or absorbed into another government, its stream terminates.
These nation streams are segmented into different colours, indicating the reign of a particular ruler or government, and growing wider or thinner in accordance to historical context. Some divide to indicate a split in the nation and indicate the independence of a state, or flow into others to illustrate its conquest, invasion, or acquisition by another nation. In the case of uncertainty or dispute between historical sources — question marks are used.[7]
Numerous tables and references document significant figures shown on the nation streams, such as significant poets, historians, and literary works, which are noted in coloured scrolls near the top of the chart. For example, entries for Joan of Arc, the invention of Gunpowder, and the change in navigation with the invention of the Compass. During the Roman Empire, red crosses indicate persecution of Christians, while smaller red crosses stand for the crusades. Red circles denote ecumenical councils.
Suzi Feay of The Independent describes the chart's design for representing a large scope of human history as something that "resembles an unusually complicated digestive system, with its lines, loops, bulges and branches.[2]
The design may have inspired later 'Maps of World History' such as the HistoMap by John B. Sparks, which chronicles four thousand years of world history in a graphic way similar to the enlarging and contracting nation streams presented on Adam's chart. Sparks added the innovation of using a Logarithmic scale for the presentation of history.
According to the book Cartographies of Time: History of the Timeline, the Synchronological Chart "was ninetheenth-century America's surpassing achievement in complexity and synthetic power."[8]
The Oregon Encyclopedia notes that it is now prized by museums and library collections as an early representative of commercial illustration that made history lessons 'colourful and dramatic'.[9]
Since the chart combines secular history with biblical genealogy, it worked back from the time of Christ to peg their start at 4,004 B.C. Above the image of Adam and Eve are the words, "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" (Genesis 1:1) — beside which the author acknowledges that — "Moses assigns no date to this Creation. Where it begins is unknown".
The genealogies continue until the Deluge and Tower of Babel in 2,348 B.C., and after depicting Noah's flood as described in Genesis (indicated by a black line), the chart splits into two, with the upper portion continuing the biblical genealogy and the lower showing the division into nations supposedly after the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel.
The nation streams are interspersed with numerous tables containing, for example: A List of Assyrian kings, A List of kings of Babylon, Cuneiform Inscriptions, Tables comparing the development of the Alphabet from Hebrew, Phoenician, Persian, and Greek, and a list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
At certain points of the chart, large parts are occupied by big empires such as the Babylonian Empire (under the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II), the Persian Empire, the Macedonian Empire, and the Roman Empire, which, at one point, occupies almost the entire part of the chart used for nation streams. At the fall of Rome, the empire's colossal nation stream is divided into many smaller streams of barbarian kingdoms. The independence of many colonies is clearly shown as big nation streams standing for colonial empires split into several smaller streams. World War I and World War II are indicated by bold black lines behind the streams with a thickness determined by their duration.
Numerous insets remark the discovery of significant inventions such as Galileo Galilei with the Pendulum and the Telescope, Johannes Gutenberg with the Printing press, James Watt with his Steam engine, and William Shakespeare reading his plays to Queen Elizabeth I.
Sources Consulted are listed within the chart itself, right beside the Colby & Co Publishers colophon: