A timeline of everything

Since the beginning of time.

Every human story starts in Africa. Travel from the birth of the Earth and the dinosaurs to the first people, the great empires, the fight for freedom, and today. Follow the haplogroup row to see how our ancestors’ DNA traveled the globe.

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  • Scroll on the dates bar to move through time
  • Tap any card to read its story
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About the dates: the earliest dates come from fossils, tools, and DNA, so they are estimates, and scientists update them as new discoveries are made. Each period uses its own scale so that 300,000 years and the last 100 years both fit on one line. About haplogroups: a haplogroup is a big family branch of DNA passed down from mother to child (mitochondrial DNA) or from father to son (Y-DNA). Following them shows how people moved across the world over thousands of years.