Out of sorts

Logging the first production dates of the Oresteia and a couple of Aristophanes plays yesterday, the spreadsheet looked alarmingly out of order. George I was following on from Elizabeth II. Turns out it had been somehow reorganized in alphabetical order of English monarchs.

Now I would usually champion any historiographical model that gets us away from the "Whig view", the temptation to read history as a progressive narrative from the didn't-know-any-better past to the morally superior present, but that was a bit extreme for me.

Whig history: the highlights.

It wasn't easy to reorder, because Google Spreadsheet's reorder button isn't enough of a mind-reader to put BC dates in descending order at the top, then AD in ascending order underneath.

So I've replaced the BC years with -ve numbers. It looks a bit odd, but it does have the advantage of sidestepping the "AD/BC" v "CE/BCE" debate. (For the record, AD/BC is obviously preferable.)


History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet