This timeline shows the whole history of the universe, the Earth, and mankind in one table. Each row is defined in years ago, that is, years before the present date, with the earliest times at the top of the chart. In each table cell on the right, references to events or notable people are given, more or less in chronological order within the cell.
Each row corresponds to a change in log (time before present) (that is, the logarithm of the time before the present) of about 0.1 (using base 10 logarithms). The dividing points are taken from the R′′20 Renard numbers. Thus each row represents about 21% of the time from its beginning until the present.
The table is divided into sections with subtitles. Each of these sections contains about 68% of all the time from the beginning of the section until now.