What Is Adams' Map of History?
The popular name of Sebastian C. Adams' Synchronological Chart of Universal History: who made it, what it shows, how to read it, and how to explore the whole chart free online.
In short: Adams' Map of History is a single illustrated timeline of world and biblical history, more than 20 feet long, first registered by Sebastian C. Adams in 1871. Its original title was the Synchronological Chart of Universal History. It was later published in many editions under different titles, among them Adams' Synchronological Chart or Map of History, and today it is also called the Adams Time Chart.
All of history on one sheet
The word synchronological describes the chart's purpose: to show what happened at the same time in different parts of the world. Adams placed sacred and secular history on a single timeline, beginning with the Creation, which he dated to 4004 BC following the chronology of Archbishop James Ussher, and running to his own day. The Key to the chart explains that its century pillars mark off fifty-nine centuries, from 4004 BC to AD 1900.
In Cartographies of Time, the historians Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton call it “nineteenth-century America's surpassing achievement in complexity and synthetic power.”
Who made it
Sebastian C. Adams (1825–1898) was born in Ohio. He became a teacher, surveyor and preacher in Oregon, served as a state senator, and settled in Salem, where he conceived the chart. It was printed by the Strobridge Lithographing Company of Cincinnati and published by Colby & Co. of New York.
How to read it
The Key to the chart, published by John E. Colby, sums up how to read it in six points:
- Dates are found along the “Stream of Time.”
- Nations are represented by broad horizontal lines.
- A change of rulers is shown by a change of color in a national line.
- A revolt is shown by lines dividing toward the right.
- A conquest is shown by lines running together toward the right.
- Contemporaneous events are found by crossing the chart on a decade or century column.
The ten panels
On this site the chart is shown as one continuous image, divided into ten panels. Each panel has its own page:
- Panel 1: The Creation and the First Patriarchs (c. 4004–3500 BC)
- Panel 2: The Patriarchs Before the Flood (c. 3500–2900 BC)
- Panel 3: Noah and the Deluge (c. 2900–2300 BC)
- Panel 4: Abraham and the Early Empires (c. 2300–1700 BC)
- Panel 5: The Exodus and the Age of the Judges (c. 1700–1100 BC)
- Panel 6: From Saul to Cyrus: Kings, Prophets and Empires (c. 1100–500 BC)
- Panel 7: Greece, Rome and the Beginning of the Christian Era (c. 500 BC–AD 100)
- Panel 8: The Fall of Rome and the Hegira (c. AD 100–700)
- Panel 9: Charlemagne, the Crusades and the Medieval Kingdoms (c. AD 700–1300)
- Panel 10: Discovery, Revolution and the United States (c. AD 1300–1878)
Editions and size
Adams registered the chart in 1871. The edition shown on this site describes itself as the “Third Edition and Twelfth Thousand, carefully and critically revised and brought down to 1878,” and it includes additions from as late as 1881, such as a portrait of President James A. Garfield. Sources give different lengths for different editions; the edition shown here is a single continuous chart more than 20 feet long.
See Adams' Map of History for yourself.
Zoom into every panel and search more than 13,000 entries by name, date, nation or event. It's free, with nothing to download.
Text by Heritage Chronology Press. Chart by Sebastian C. Adams, 1881 edition (public domain). Spotted an error? Tell us at [email protected]. This project is free and ad-free, thanks to people like you: support the project.