About
Reads like a book or hangs on a wall!
13.7 billion years of history on a unique 2.3 metre-long timeline
The What on Earth? Wallbook features more than 1,000 pictures and captions that tell the story of the planet, life and people from the beginning of time to the present day.
Twelve streams of colour provide the backdrops along a timeline on which all the major events of natural and human history unfold. Space, Earth, Sky, Sea, Land and Humanity account for the story of evolution while Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, Africa and Australasia convey the rise and fall of human civilisations.
- The ultimate timeline
At the top of the timeline is a series of globes. To begin with they track the movement of the world’s continental plates which collide into a single supercontinent, and then prise apart again, a geological cycle that repeats over millions of years.
Later on, these globes reflect a similar rhythm with the rise and fall of human civilisations. Empires, like the Earth’s crust, erupt, collide and crumple, but their converging and splitting happens on a far tighter scale where centimetres measure centuries not millions of years…
On the back is a 7,000 narrative guide that tells the story in words, cross referring the most seismic moments in global history with the timeline overleaf….
“A truly epic undertaking, in terms of layout, typography, design and sheer scale of ambition”
Christopher Middleton, The Daily Telegraph