While on vacation in Arizona I noticed a road sign for a "Humanity TimeLine Museum."  The idea for such a thing, even though I didn't know quite what it was, nevertheless seemed out of place for a region where only tourists travelled.  It was mid-day, and I had plenty of time before I had to be at my next reserved motel, so I took the advertized turn-off and began following signs to the mysterious museum.

It was not far to the museum, which turned out to be an old, unused football field.  A long set of tents provided cover for what seemed a long and narrow museum section that extended from one end of the field to the other.  Other parked cars indicated that it was open, as did lighted signs at each end.  One end was marked "Entrance," the other "Exit."

I walked to the entrance end, where signs explained what was in the museum.  An attendant greeted me, and offered to answer questions about the display.  She said there was a metal bar, 100 yards long, with a mark for "every human."  The phrase every human was emphasized, as if it had special meaning.

I read a sign, that stated "Professor Sneed left his inheritance to a Trust that would display and maintain his coveted, secret life's creation:  a 100-yard bronze rod, with microscopic inscriptions.  The inscriptions were created by a computer-driven tool, which translated a large historical database to a helical inscription path around round rods that were 3-feet long.  Each rod contained information about 1% of the human experience.  At that moment, I didn't bother to calculate how 1% represented 3 feet.  This would only be clear to me later.

I was curious, and paid the $5.00 entrance fee.  In return, the attendant handed me a microscope with a special fixture for attaching to the rods.  She explained how the rods were 2 inches in diameter, and they could be rotated about their axis while the microscope remained stationary.  To move from one rod to the next, the microscope would have to be detached, and re-attached.  While attached to a rod, it could be moved from one end to the other of the 3-foot sliding movement.  Thus, viewing a rod involved sliding the microscope to a location along the 3-foot length of the rod, then rotating the rod to view the sequence of inscriptions arranged along a spiralfrom one end to the other of the rod.

One more instruction:  we were issued souvenir white gloves, and told to wear them whenever touching the rods, as the oils on our skin might damage the microscopic inscriptions.  With my gloves on, and my microscope viewer under arm, I entered the viewing area.  The lighting was dim, but I could see that there were about 20 people inside.  Most of them seemd to be half way down the long corridor.  The rods were so well machined that it was difficult to see where they joined, at 3-foot intervals.

I approached the first rod, and attached my microscope.  When I pressed the "on" button, a bright light came on, which shined on the part of the rod being viewed.  I slid the microscope to the starting end, as a sign suggested, and peered into the microscope.  After a slight focus adjustment, I could see tiny arrows pointing to a region that gave instructions on how to do a self-guided tour.

"These instructions, at the beginning of each rod, should also be found on the wall facing you."  I looked up from the microscope, and sure enough, the instructions were posted on the wall.  I continued reading from the wall sign.  "Each life is represented by an inscribed rectangle, or box.  The width of all boxes are the same, 10 microns (or 25 thousandths of an inch).  The height of boxes vary from a few microns, for humans who died before reaching adulthood, to about 30 or so microns, for humans who lived to old age.  The top border of each box is the beginning border for the next-born human.  The left and right borders are tilted imperceptively clockwise, so that the boxes form a continuous spiral extending from the left end of the rod to the right end."

The instructions continued:  "Each rod represents 1.2 billion people.  Approximately 400 million of these correpond to living into adulthood.  Thus, there are typically two small boxes for every large one.  Neighboring boxes represent neighboring births.  They do not represent neighbors in any other sense.  Thus, one person may have been born in China, while the next could be born in Africa.  In each box is inscribed a birth date.  The first box is labelled ‘100,000 BC, Jan 1.'  Since only a tiny fraction of all births have been recorded, most of the boxes represent unknown people.  Real people are placed in boxes at the approximately appropriate location in the sequence.  It is arbitrary when Humans are considered to have begun to exist, but choices other than 100,000 BC would have negligible effect on the length of the rods (or size of the boxes)."

"Where names of people are known, they are inscribed in the box, above the birth date.  Their occupation, or "claim to fame," is also inscribed - when it is known.  You may search for famous people, or even yourself, if you were born in time to be included in the database used in creating these inscriptions.  Famous people, or anyone whose name appears in a database of encyclopaedias and history books, are highlighted by having their box colored yellow.  Rotation of the rod can be done manually, or with the hand-operated ‘Rotation Lever' underneath the rod.  Fine movements, such as moving between consequtive people, require use of the Rotation Lever.  Although it would be possible to view an entire rod by rotating it (since the microscope slides by an amount of 10 microns per rotation), this would be a slow process since it would require 92,000 rotations to view the entire rod.  Each rotation provides a view of approximately 13,000 people - 4300 of whom lived into adulthood.  Buttons on the microscope allow jumps from one spiral to the neighboring one.  Each jump corresponds to leapfrogging over 13,000 people. Additional information about these inscriptions will be found in front of other rods.  Enjoy your self-guided tour!"

"Whew!  What long instructions!  This had better be worthwhile!" I muttered to myself.

I returned to the microscope, and rotated the rod past these instructions, and found the first box representing the museum's first human.  Sure enough, in the lower-left corner was the date 100,000 BC Jan 1.  Above this date was the inscription "First Human."  Three smaller boxes above it denoted infants that did not survive to adulthood.  They shared the "100,000 BC Jan 1" inscription.  When I manually rotated the rod, the view went by so fast that I could see only a blur of passing boxes.  I used the Rotating Lever, and found that one setting moved one viewing area at a time, while another started a smooth scanning motion.  The rod could be rotated in either direction.  All the boxes that I saw during a Rotating Lever scanning motion displayed the same date, and of course none had names or other information.  After exploring this way, it got boring.

I noticed that the microscope had more than one setting.  I had been using a magnification that showed about 3 people at a time, vertically, as well as parts of the spirals belonging to times far before and far ahead of the middle spiral section running down the center of the viewing area.  The neighboring spirals, according to the information on the wall, correspond to a distance of 13,000 people.  I changed the magnification setting from "1" to "10" and this caused the display to show a view 10 times larger in each direction.  It was still possible to read the writing within the boxes, so this setting seemed better.  The birth dates changed by 1 year about every second spiral.  Reading horizontally, the years went "100,000 BC Jan 1" to "100,000 BC Nov 17" to "99,999 BC Jul 10" etc.  And there were about 3 short boxes for every large one.

I moved the microscope to the end of the first rod, and read the date "43,151 BC Apr 14."    This, according to the wall information, was the end of the 1st percentile of humans.  The total number of boxes on this rod was approximately 1.2 billion.  I wondered why so many people were studying the rods half way down, at what must have been the 50 yard line when football was played here.  I could skip the next 49 or so rods, and find out; but I wanted to see my favorite lost civilization, the Minoan.  I skipped just a couple rods, as a guess, and re-seated my microscope on what was labelled Rod #4, and read the date "17,490 BC, May 19."  I moved to the end of the rod, and read "10,609 BC, Dec 11."  The Minoans lived in the 17th Century BC, so I skipped a few more rods, to Rod #11, and read the date "1879 BC Feb 4."  I jumped a few spirals, and soon found what I wanted: boxes with dates "1628 BC Aug 11."  I noticed that locations were now entered in the boxes.  I quickly scanned, looking for either Thera or Santorini, two names for the island that exploded in the Fall of 1628 BC, destroying much of the Minoan civilization.  Here and there, Thera was noted as the birth place; but after Sep 9 there were no more Thera boxes.  The good professor had kept true to history, and recorded in his rods the demise of Thera.

What about the Roman Empire, and my favorite pilosopher, Lucretius?  I found my way to Rod #17, and a third of the way in I found one of the yellow boxes to be that of Lucretius, born "94 BC Nov 22" in Rome.  What a grand database the professor must have amassed to have included so much detail into his rod inscriptions!

I became curious about the fact that the Roman Empire was established in the 17th rod, so to speak; or 17% of the way from human beginnings to the present - according to the way of counting time by this museum.  What was so interesting at the 50th percentile of time, to account for the many people gathered there.  I decided to walk half way there, from where I was, and went to near the end of Rod #32.  My microscope showed a date of "1599 AD Jan 9."  So, a third of humans lived before this date.  William Shakespeare had began writing successful plays.  Just 400 years ago!  I wonder if I could find Shakespeare?  I browsed a little, but there were simply too many people, and no yellow highlighted boxes appeared.  Let's get closer to the other people.

I walked to as close as I could get to the crowd of a dozen people, and used the closest free rod, which was Rod #42.  To my surprise,  the microscope revealed the date "1903 AD Mar 15."  Could there be that many people born after 1903, for it to be at the mere 42nd percentile of the human sequence?  The end of the rod was at "1917 AD Jan 3."  Most of the birth places were in third world regions.  And the yellow highlighted boxes were seemingly non-existent.  Whereas the first rod extended from 100,000 BC to 43,000 BC, this 42nd rod covered the much shorter span of time of 14 years.  Hurry up, people; I want to see what you're looking at!

Just then someone exclaimed "Here I am!"  They read out loud "1949 AD May 31;USA/Illinois; newspaper reporter."  She stepped back, excitedly, and asked what must have been her husband to look at it, which he did.  Minutes later, apparently satisfied at finding themselves, some of that crowd moved on.  And the crowd moved over a few rods.  So I moved up.

Rod #44 was available.  Near the end of that rod I found 1939 dates, so I began to look for myself.  The rod spanned only 9 years, so each year took up the equivalent of 10,000 rotations (for 129 million births).  The best search strategy would be to jump to either side of the desired date, without rotating, and then estimate an interpolated jump location for the desired date.  Each year occupied 28 spirals, so it wasn't too diffiicult to find my birth date, 1939 May 22.  But then there were 350,000 people born on this date (who reached adulthood), so the search was really just beginning after finding the desired date.  I fixed in my mind the appearance of "Ann Arbor" and commenced to scan.  The scan rate was about 4 frames per second, which was just long enough to recognize a target word within a large box.  I calculated that at this rate it would take half a day to find myself, statistically, so I had little hope as I scanned.  After 5 or 10 minutes, I gave up.  There were just too many people born that day!  The people ahead of me were just lucky.  Besides, by this time there was a crowd behind me, and some people ahead of me had moved on.  So I moved up to rod #50.

Rod #50 started with the date 1985 and ended with 1993.  This was apparently the year the professor had died, leaving his project tantalizingly frozen - and perhaps never to be updated.  But why wasn't Rod #100 his last rod?  I checked the wall, and found that this question had been anticipated.  The sign read:

"Rod #50 is the last rod bearing known names.  No doubt, other people will be born afterward.  There's a place for these people.  Rods #51 through 100 are reserved for them.  But why only another 50 rods for the immensity of people who shall follow us?  Sampling theory justifies this choice!  Consider the following thought experiment.  At the end of humanity, and surely there is an end, we place everyone's name in a bottle, with their birth sequence number, and shake the bottle.  Next we randomly draw out from the bottle just one paper, which we shall identify as "ourself."  Now, ask yourself this simple question.  What are the odds that your sequence number is in the first half of the "entirety of humanity sequence"?  Answer?  50%.  The same odds predict that you're in the second half of this entire sequence.  What does this tell us?  It says that if the only information you have is your own sequence number, the best way to predict the length of the entire sequence is to double your sequence number.  Thus, since 60 billion humans have been born already, the most likely total number of humans that will ever be born is 120 billion.  More can be said, such as there's a 50% chance that your personal sequence number is between the 25th and 75th percentile of the entire sequence; from which it follows that there's a 50% chance that the entire sequence length will be between 1.33 and 3 times your sequence number.  Thus, the total number of humans fated to exist will number between 80 billion and 180 billion; and this answer has a 50% chance of being correct.  Since we cannot know more accurately than this, from sampling theory, what the total number of humans will be, for the purposes of designing this museum I have chosen the simplest statistic; namely, that we are now at the 50th percentile, and there will be a total of 120 billion people in the entire sequence.  Now, dear museum guest, would you like to know when the last human is likely to exist?  A projected global population curve was employed to derive the dates on the following rods.  There are 50 more rods, and the last one reveals the secret to one of Humankind's most persistent questions:  When will Humanity come to an end?"

As I peered toward the future end of the museum, I noticed a group of people at the very end.  Nobody seemed interested in the intervening 49 rods.  Nor was I.  So I walked briskly to where the other people were, who had fallen silent, just looking at each other.  "When is it?" I asked.  "2400 AD" one of them answered.  "Just 400 years from now!"

And we slowly walked out of the museum, that the good professor had built.  Changed, and with more perspective!
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This site opened:  October 30, 1998.   Last Update: October 30, 1998