Five thousand years of human history, drawn to a logarithmic clock.
The last few decades get crushed to a sliver at the right edge — which is exactly the point.
A linear timeline would spend 99% of its width on the last century. Here, each
factor-of-ten in time gets the same space, so the Bronze Age and last Tuesday get to share the page.
Press play, or drag the playhead, and watch how fast “recent” actually is. Flip to hybrid to
decompress the last few decades, or to linear to feel how tiny “now” really is.
3000 BCE—
speed
Why the last century is a hairline
On a linear scale, 5,000 years would make the last 100 years occupy 2% of the width —
a strip thinner than your fingertip. A logarithmic scale compresses the deep past so the whole
sweep fits, but it still leaves the last few decades cramped. The hybrid scale is the fix:
logarithmic everywhere, then linear for the last 30 years — which is why “now” suddenly has room to
breathe. The playhead moves at a constant rate per second of your clock, so it crawls through
the ancient world and rockets across the modern one. Flip between the three to feel the difference.