This signposts document consists of two separate but closely related works: the timeline and perspectives.

The timeline is restricted to a 'hard science'-based general outline of our possible future history, while Perspectives has more free rein to examine more speculative elements of both our past and future.

This page lists Perspectives delving into mankind's past.

2001 AD-2002 AD: In the aftermath of a stunning terrorist attack, a wide variety of opportunists exploit a panicked America

1990 AD-2000 AD: Humanity reaches six billion in number, even as a comet strike on Jupiter emphasizes our vulnerability to extinction. Also, open source is looking increasingly important to humanity's future (if various business/political interests don't succeed in killing it)

The status quo among people living in the developed nations, circa 2000
The status quo of the world, circa 2000

1,951 AD-1,990s AD: Decades of war; advances in personal computers; debut of email and the world wide web; repeatedly frustrated efforts to probe Mars

1,901 AD-1,950 AD: Certain mythical animals are proving to be real; women get voting rights; Tunguska; Machu Picchu; radio, vacuum tubes, airplanes, transistors are invented; Einstein; biochemical weapons; Great Depression; World Wars I and II; Social Security; George Orwell writes Nineteen Eighty-Four; McCarthyism

1,801 AD-1,900 AD: World population numbers one billion; oil, the telegraph, telephone, refrigeration, light bulbs, and AC electricity all begin impacting the world; organized labor begins improving the human condition

2,000 BC-1,800 AD: Unstable sea levels; North African plains become the Sahara desert; mammoth extinction; iron, aluminum, porcelain, steel, gunpowder made; soap, concrete, mechanical computers, electrical batteries, steam engines, magnifiers, firearms, printing press, submarines, slide rules invented; wheel commonplace; the rise and fall of ancient Greece; Plato; Library of Alexandria; King Arthur; plague; Columbus; Leonardo da Vinci; Copernicus, Galileo, Issac Newton; Industrial Age; American Revolution; the first corporations are born

Mayan X: Approximately 780 AD - 900 AD: An unusual member of the Mayan elite helps lead his nation into ruin to serve his own ends

The peopling of the Americas (8,000 BC- 1,600s AD): People from all over the world trickle into the Americas over millennia, crossing both seas and arctic wastes; rising sea levels, massive earthquakes, and flooding from glacial melt demolish many sites of native American civilization, while climate change, war, and disease adversely affect many others

10,000 BC-1,990s AD: Bigfoot: Do enormous prehistoric ape-men share the Earth with humanity today? Legends and myths from the ancient past of a rare and mysterious humanoid race sharing Earth with humanity continue to endure-- with the help of periodic reports of sightings and bits of intriguing (but inconclusive) evidence for the matter

10,000 BC-2,001 BC: All human settlements possess dogs; the secrets of fire-starting become widely known; farm animals are domesticated; market economies stir; sun dials, beer, the wheel and plow all appear

25,125 BC- 13,875 BC: Could an advanced civilization have emerged on the lowlands of the greater southeast asian peninsula, rapidly developed technologies rivaling that of the 21st century, then destroyed itself in civil war? So that over 14,000 years later there will remain negligible evidence that the civilization ever existed at all?

The Atlantis that could have been: A lost civilization on the southeast asian peninsula, circa 25,125 BC- 13,875 BC?

Approximately 37,000 BC - 35,000 BC: Childhood ends for one Australian

50,999 BC-10,001 BC: Textiles are a booming industry; many prehistoric civilizations possibly develop over millennia on dry lands which afterwards are drowned or washed away by rising sea levels and glacial flooding; growing populations and scarcer food force agriculture and fixed settlements onto people who were previously nomads; geography heavily shapes the development of human civilization

Humanity's divergence into left and right handedness (Approximately 200,000 BC- 50,000 BC)

The peopling of the prehistoric Americas and the extinctions of the American megafauna (1,000,000 BC- 8,001 BC): People from all over the world trickle into the Americas over many millennia, crossing both seas and arctic wastes; the earliest Americans struggle against freakishly large and terrifying monster animals, possibly helping drive these megafauna into extinction so that later generations never see them

Our aquatic stage? Approximately 5,000,000 BC

59,999,999 BC- 51,000 BC: Large land and aquatic mammals appear; many kinds of primates appear (almost as many go extinct); an island continent finally disappears for good; the Mediterranean valley turns into the Mediterranean Sea; human beings emerge, develop housing, clothes, lamps, and drugs, breed dogs, use horses; Mars dies (or goes dormant)

A lost civilization on the Kerguelen continent, circa 21 million BC?

Dinosaurs, dragons, Loch Ness, and reptile people; Where does fact end and fiction begin? 295 million BC through the present

A possible history of the mysterious frozen Antarctic and sunken Kerguelen continents 544 million BC through today Earth's tilt straightens; plants, then animals, invade dry land; repeated mass extinctions; giant insects; Kerguelen and Antarctica appear; Kerguelen sinks; Ice Age

Earth's first lost civilization? 600 to 500 million BC

3,000,000,000 BC- 60,000,000 BC: Many entire galaxies (including our own) could have been fully colonized twice by the end of this period; Earth may be repeatedly frozen; sea levels are possibly 2000 feet higher than they will be in 2000 AD; global catastrophe on Venus; Earth life explodes in diversity; northern Mars calamity; our galaxy mixing with others; many mass extinction events

100 trillion trillion BC- 3,000,000,001 BC: Our Universe is born; our solar system (and Earth One) forms; Earth is destroyed and replaced with Earth Two (the Moon also appears); Earth Two battered by asteroids, comets, and biblical scale tidal waves; Mars may harbor life; the first intelligent species in the Universe and our galaxy may arise now