Human Journey by ZingLab

If the live connection fails

Download the CSV from PBDB with the button above, then load it here. Any CSV works if it has latitude and longitude columns plus either PBDB's max_ma and min_ma, or an age column in years. Optional columns: name, site, country, type, age_min, age_max.

Human Journey plays back the physical record of our genus, oldest first. Each flare is a data point: a fossil, burial, tool, footprint or artwork, placed where it was found and timed to when it was buried, not when it was dug up.

How the ages work

Ages are best estimates. Radiocarbon stops working around 50,000 years ago, so most of these sites are dated with uranium-series, luminescence, argon-argon and other methods, often with wide error ranges. Each entry lists its range, and its flare appears at the midpoint.

Even pacing gives every data point the same beat. True scale moves through time at a constant rate, so quiet stretches stay quiet and recent millennia arrive in a rush.

Sources

Colors run from red for the oldest data point up the spectrum to blue for the most recent. Every site leaves a faint 2,000 km glow, so regions with many finds build up into hotspots.

Live records come from the Paleobiology Database, shared under CC BY 4.0. If the live connection fails, a saved PBDB snapshot is used. The curated landmarks were compiled by ZingLab from published literature; their ages and coordinates are rounded. Coastlines from Natural Earth.

The map shows today's coastlines. For most of this period sea levels were far lower and ice sheets covered much of the north.