Decades

Each bead in this violet string represents ten years, from 1000 CE to the present. Descriptions are taken from the short version of the Great Story Timeline. Note that some of the beads are identical to those on the earlier strings that represent similar events.

crescent moon and star 900-1250 - ISLAMIC SCIENCE.
AIDS ribbon 1347-1620 - the BLACK DEATH ravages China, Africa, and Europe, bringing about major social, political, and religious reforms Ñ including the SPLIT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION in western consciousness: religion focusing largely on redemption out of this world, science attempting to understand and improve conditions for the humans in this world.
the letter T, with serifs 1450 - Gutenberg invents a PRINTING PRESS of movable type.
white Kokopelli figure 1500 - Europeans bring diseases to the Americas that DECIMATE AMERICAN INDIANS, even before genocidal colonial and U.S. practices.
sparkly yellow ball 1543 - The COPERNICAN REVOLUTION and the beginning of the mechanistic paradigm - that is, using human-made machines (clocks) as a primary metaphor for understanding the nature of Reality. Earth is no longer at the center of the Universe in western consciousness.
pockmarked ball 1609 - GALILEO gazes at the moon through a telescope and observes imperfections there too: mountains on the moon. The telescope also allows Galileo to determine that Jupiter has moons revolving around it, too. (This bead is pockmarked, like a golf ball)
sparkly black triangle 1637 - Rene DESCARTES furthers the segregation of science and religion by declaring matter as distinct from mind. He also invents analytical geometry, once again demonstrating the usefulness of mathematics for scientific inquiry. (This black triangle has white sparkles, like stars in the void.)
an apple 1687 - Isaac NEWTON firmly establishes the modern, MECHANISTIC view of the Universe. From this perspective, creativity resides outside the universe, in a God who is removed from his creation. The stage is set for deism (in which God creates a clockwork Universe and then lets it run by itself) and atheism (in which a Supreme Being external to the universe is denied). (This silver charm is an apple.)
nut from a bolt 1720-1750 - VOLTAIRE writes a new way of viewing history (a new story based on the mechanistic model of the universe) that discredits the older, mythic worldview, by placing the achievements of Copernicus and Newton as the foundation. (This is a small hex-nut.)
branching pattern 1750-1762 - LINNAEUS invents the modern system of taxonomic classification of life, concluding that some species of plants came into existence after others (i.e., not at the beginning of time). (The design on this bead makes me think of a family tree.)
green and brown stone 1795 - James HUTTON offers a developmental thesis for landforms, thus giving birth to the science of geology.
eye 1815 - Percy Bysshe SHELLEY writes in his poem, "Hymn to Apollo," "I am the eye with which the Universe beholds itself and knows itself divine."
three monkeys 1858 - Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both independently propose EVOLUTION BY NATURAL SELECTION. The following year, Darwin publishes his On The Origin of Species, providing convincing evidence that evolution has, in fact, occurred. (This bead shows three monkeys covering eyes, ears, and mouth.)
glow-in-the-dark ball 1898 - Marie and Pierre Curie discover RADIUM, which leads to a new tool (measuring radioactive decay) for absolute dating of certain rocks. (This bead glows in the dark!)
the constant c 1905-1917 - Albert EINSTEIN profoundly alters our understanding of space, time, motion, matter, and energy.
translucent blue spiral 1929 - Edwin HUBBLE observes a "redshift" (shift toward the red lightwaves) in the spectral features of light coming from distant galaxies, thus concluding that the UNIVERSE IS EXPANDING. Humanity now realizes that the Milky Way Galaxy is not the entire universe.
yellow and orange spiky rubber ball 1948 - George GAMOW gives a mathematical description of the beginning of the Universe, which would come to be known as the Big Bang.
black stone with silver sparkles 1957 - STELLAR NUCLEOSYNTHESIS is proposed as the way that the chemical elements in the Periodic Table of Elements are sequentially created in the fiery depths of massive stars. Earth learns that it and all its creatures are made of stardust!
silver ball, fourfold Celtic knot, computer 1969 - Apollo astronauts land on the moon. EARTH SEES ITSELF WHOLE.
1979, James LOVELOCK proposes that Earth, "Gaia," is a self-organizing system - far more like a living organism than like a machine or a rock with life on it.
1992 - The WORLD WIDE WEB is created.
peace symbol The future - The ECOZOIC ERA emerges!

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