Graphic Orientation

Graphic History uses image mnemonics to make chrnonological information easier to remember, The numbers in dates are arbitrary, but awareness of the sequence and context of events is necessary for understanding them. Links to articles and videos enable students explore topics which interest them.

The Graphic History Mnemonic Chronologies reference information in tables. They are similar to a common calendar. Most yearly calendars are tables having seven columns for each day of the week and are separated into 12 monthly grids.

The Graphic Chronologies are calendars of years. Each is a table comprised of two columns and five rows. The flow of time from cell to cell is the same as a common calendar, but there are two patterns types for numbering the cells. Type 1 is for historical periods in which the number of the year decreases as you move forward in time. This includes historical periods Before Christ, B.C., or Before the Common Era, B.C.E., and all Natural History chronologies Before the Present, B.P.. Type two is used for all historical periods of the Common Era, which began with the year 1 A.D.


	Each of the human history chronologies reperesents time periods of either 10, 100, 1,000, or 10,000 years. Natural history chronologies are exponential, 10⁵ to 10⁹ years. Note the year 0 in the bottom right and top left cells of the graphic decades. There was no year 0, but in the folowing decades this cell is used for the years 10, 20, 30, 100, etc. The shading between chronologies indicates that chronolgies can be included as cells in chronologies that are ten times longer, and that each cell within a chronology can be subdivided into its own ten cell table. Clicking on the grid above each chronology will display the chronology that contains it and is ten times longer. The reason that the cells are not numbered one thru ten is that both ten and one begin with the numeral 1. The ten numbers that begin with one, the teens, are all in one cell, as are the twenties and the following decades of each century. The zero decades are called the ohs, as in nineteen oh one 1901, which we say occurs in the nineteen ohs, rather than in the nineteen zeros. As the last chronology on the right indicates, only two of the 1,000 year long cells in the 10,000 year Common Era Chronology have occurred. The third 1,000 year cell began in the year 2,000 and we are currently in the 3rd decade of its 1st century.

	You can memorize these chronologies using Image Mnemonics. Associate years, decades, centuries and milleniums with the segments of your fingers. Use your left hand for Type 1 chronologies and your right for Type 2

	GRAPHIC HISTORY
Mnemonic Chronologies