A message from the author and site manager

I am not an expert on civilizations. I am a scientist, to be precise, I am an oceanographer. (If you are interested in my oceanography, go to my oceanography page.)

Several years ago I studied the history of numbers, the basis of algebra. What I found was very interesting: The number system as we know it was independently developed in four civilizations, as far apart as Mesopotamia, South America, India and China.

At the same time I returned to one of my permanent interests, architecture, and read the World Atlas of Architecture. Again I noticed that the same problems - how to span large areas with cover, how to extend upward beyond one floor, how to bridge gateways etc. - were solved independently by many cultures.

It appeared to me that no matter where, when and how humanity progressed it would face the same problems, find variations of the same solutions, pass the same milestones. Wouldn't it be interesting to compare when and how different civilizations passed these milestones? In other words, go to a point in time - the 3rd century BC, the 8th century AD, or whatever stop along the road of millennia attracts your interest - and see which civilizations where around at the time and what kind of answers they had found to the universal questions.

It was then that I became acquainted with Arno Peter's Synchronoptischer Weltgeschichte (Syncronoptic world history). This massive work, which required five years of study and a team of compilators, shows all major events and personalities against a time line.

The Synchronoptische Weltgeschichte makes interesting reading. Take the example of 245 BC: In that year

• India went through a period of peace and espoused Buddhism,
• China went through its period of Warring States, but the pupils of Confucius developed a theory of organised society, and Shi Huang-ti, founder of the First Empire, was already born,
• in Greece Archimedes, Eratosthenes and others made great progress in science,
• Rome was at war with Carthage and busy constructing its first highway,
• The Chavin civilization of North America was engaged in trade from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains.

When we think of the beginning of the Chinese empire, do we instinctively place it next to Archimedes or the Via Appia in time? In an increasingly global world, shouldn't this synchronoptic view be used more often?

Impressive as this work is, the Synchronoptische Weltgeschichte has two shortcomings. Arno Peters arranges all entries in five groups regardless of civilizations:

• wars and revolutions
• politics and society
• personalities of world history
• the arts, literature, law, philosophy, religion, music, town planning
• commerce, technology, science, community life

This may be justifiable for a global world, but for the first few millennia it mixes what were actually independent or at least semi-autonomous developments and makes recovery of the development of individual civilizations cumbersome.

The second shortcoming is of a more technical nature and unavoidable if the time line is presented in book form: Every year is allocated only a few square centimeters of space, and this space is the same for every year from 3000 BC to the present.

It appeared to me that the medium of the computer can be useful to improve on Peters' idea. The amount of space dedicated to each year can vary without limit if the time line is displayed on a computer screen and is simply determined by the amount of available information.

In November 2001 I began designing a web site layout for time-line display of the history of humanity. I decided not to use Arno Peters' groupings but to mirror the development of human progress as it occurred through successive or parallel civilizations. The project grew into an undertaking that, if done well, would require massive research resources.

The emergence of the Wikipedia concept offered a solution. It allows the project to benefit from the research of others. In 2005 I embarked on a total redesign of the Time Atlas and enlisted the help of Nitin Goël, who developed much of the necessary code as part of his final year project at the Flinders University of South Australia during 2006.

Using Wikipedia information is not without problems. Wikipedia's "neutrality" standard is probably the only way to define an acceptable common denominator for a project that involves the global community; but its articles include assessments of events and personalities, and assessment is never neutral. In reality the neutrality of Wikipedia's English version reflects the point of view of those who control the media and institutions of the European/US-American society. Cilivizations of the World is therefore a project without personal standpoint of the author; it offers access to information but does not query its point of view. My other project Science, Civilization and Society is more complete in that regard; it offers my own analysis of the history of science and civilization. The two projects complement each other.

It is my hope that the result will contribute to a better appreciation of different cultures and their contributions to human progress, and through that experience raise the tolerance towards other societies of the world.

Matthias Tomczak, Adelaide, September 2007