Monday, July 30, 2012

The History of the World - Part One


MapTime is a visualisation tool for deep time. 'Deep time' represents events that occured perhaps millions / billions of years ago. MapTime includes a mapped visualisation of deep time using the Google Maps API.

A good example of a deep time visualisation is the Organic Evolution Timeline which represents the evolution on life on earth from the beginning of single celled life until the present day as a journey on Google Maps. For example if you imagine the time-line as a journey from Washington to San Francisco with Washington representing the formation of the Earth, then the emergence of the human race occurs nearly at the end of your journey in the middle of San Francisco.

One of the beauties of MapTime is that you can set your own starting point and destination for your visualisation. This allows you to create a time-line that is familiar to your target audience.

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