I first heard about the concept of a blank world history timeline in the book More Charlotte Mason Education. If one follows those guidelines, each child has their own “Book of Centuries” that they keep throughout their whole education (starting maybe around 4th grade). Each century of human history is weighted equally with one page for writing and one page for pictures. Since there is such little space and this book needs to last about a decade, the child has to be very discriminating about what they actually put in their book.
Since learning about the Charlotte Mason book of centuries, I’ve seen blank timelines sold or as part of homeschooling programs. They seem like such a great idea. However, I had small issues with everything I found available. For example, in the Book of Centuries, the pages are vertical and frequently the books are bound (like a composition book where each line represents a 5 year period). I didn’t like this for 2 reasons. First, I didn’t want there to be lined divisions, because so many of the dates in ancient history are approximate. I didn’t like the idea of putting the information on an arbitrary line when the event might only be known within 100 years or so. Second, the problem with using a bound book (which was also an issue in other online world history timelines I found) is that there is no way to lay it all out and look at it at once. The sheets being vertical also is a problem if you wanted the sheets to make one large, consecutive line on the wall.
I liked the idea of having a timeline that could be viewed all at once. Granted, this free printable would be over 30 yards if you were to lay it out and no one I know has that much space available, but by using loose-leaf paper, we can hang up sections at a time as we’re learning about them.
Another feature which I thought might be useful is to divide up the timeline by continent. How often do we learn about something and have no idea what’s happening on the other side of the planet at the same time? Was the peak of the ancient Mayan civilization before or after the construction of the Great Wall of China? I honestly don’t know, but using this timeline with little world maps denoting a section for each continent, it will be easy to go back and find out.
Now, here’s my confession. I hated history growing up. I hated all the dates and names and events we needed to memorize. I hated my textbooks and pop quizzes and exams. I hated having to take notes for so long that my hand would cramp (and I actually like taking notes). I was a good student, but of all my subjects, history was always my least favorite. As a result, I remember effectively none of the years and years of history I’ve studied, which is just embarrassing.
However, now that I’m a grown-up and no one is testing me or making me take notes, I’m finally learning to enjoy history. If I could go back and do it all over again, this blank timeline is the sort of tool I would want to put it all into context and make connections that would allow the knowledge to last in my consciousness, rather than evaporate away into nothingness as soon as humanly possible.
My kids are still too young to actually make use of this free printable timeline. Rather, this timeline is for me. I have a few years before I’ll give my oldest son his own copy to fill out over the course of his childhood. In the meantime, I’m planning to catch up. As I read to them, I’ll learn for me. If all goes according to plan, I’ll use this timeline over the next several years, retain the key points I want to remember, and my kids will never know what an idiot I currently am when it comes to world history.
If you would like your own copy, I’m including two links below. This 121 page file is large, so I recommend right-clicking and selecting “save target as” (or whatever the appropriate counterpart is on a Mac) so that you can see the download progress. The first link is a more manageable, compressed 3 MB file. However, the quality is a bit low and that would bug me. Therefore, I’m also including the full 12 MB high resolution file. Take your pick.
Blank World History Timeline – lower resolution/smaller file
Blank World History Timeline – higher resolution/larger file
The above files above have very small margins. It works well on my printer, but one reader had trouble with text getting cut off. Just in case, here is a version with smaller margins.
I’m also planning to make printable supplements to go along with this timeline. For example, if you’re studying ancient Egypt, you’ll be able to print out a sheet of small images that could be cut and glued to the timeline for events or figures like the Pyramid of Giza or King Tut along with instructions specifying where I would place them on the timeline. This is a work in progress, but so far, these posts include some such timeline printables:
- 20 Historical Figures Worth Knowing
- Ancient Mesopotamian Historical Figure Cards
- Ancient Egyptian Historical Figure Cards
- Ancient Egyptian Monument Cards
- Ancient Greece Historical Figure Cards
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Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: ~15 minutes (plus an extra 45 minutes if you decide to put each sheet in a page protector as I did)
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable, less than $5 in used supplies (the cost of a binder plus paper/ink for 121 pages. I also decided to put each sheet in it’s own page protector which cost about $10 extra, but isn’t necessary by any means.)
Materials:
- Printed blank world history timeline (See link above. Make sure to right-click/save-as if you want to save it to your computer. If you just open it to print it, be patient as it may take a minute or two to load completely.)
- 3 Ring Binder (At least a 2″ binder if you use sheet protectors. 1″ is big enough if not.)
- Sheet protectors (optional, but helpful if you think you’ll ever want to hang parts of it on the wall.)
Supplies & Tools:
- 3 hole punch (optional, not needed if you use sheet protectors)
Instructions:
The quickest and easiest thing to do would be to print, hole punch, and stick the sheets in a binder. However, there are several other options. If you don’t plan to ever hang it on the wall or lay the sheets out flat in a long, continuous timeline, you could take the pages to an office supply store and have it bound. In either of these cases, I highly recommend printing it double-sided so that you will be able to look at an entire century all at once (each century is split onto 2 pages with Asia, Africa, and Europe on one sheet and North America, South America, Australia, and Antarctica on the other).
After much deliberation, I decided to print this document single sided, because I do think there will come a time when I’ll want to look at large sections of it at once. Rather than hole punch each sheet, which was my original plan, I decided to put them each in their own page protector. This will make it easier to hang on the wall, but given that I probably will never look at the entire timeline at once, it would also make sense to not put EVERY sheet in page protectors and instead just use page protectors for the necessary sheets when the time comes to hang them up.
My husband also had a non-intuitive, though great suggestion, which was to reverse every other page so that you could see a whole century with all 7 continents at one time as shown (similar to if it were printed double-sided, but actually printed single-sided with blank sheets between the sheets facing each other).
Whatever you decide, I hope this free blank world history timeline is helpful to you!
Click here for more History activities for kids.
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Michelle has a PhD in Engineering from Stanford University and a Bachelor's Degree from the California Institute of Technology. 
Great printable! I am also finally learning to enjoy history.
It’s so much more fun now that there’s no pressure to know every last detail!
Awesome! We love to timeline different activities but have never tried doing a huge one like this! My daughter loves history — this would be a great project to do over a series of months as she explores different time periods.
Thank you! And I know…it’s definitely an ambitious undertaking, but I think it has the potential to be an amazing reference if someone were to use it over a long period of time. I hope your daughter likes it. :)
Great Printable.. I myself really didn’t like history so I’m hoping my son takes after his dad. Thanks for linking up with #LFEO.
Thank you for sharing this. I love that it is open and I can make this work with my preschoolers and my middler school and high school kids. I am looking forward to working with this timeline.
Thank you, Natasha. I’m so glad you can use it!
What a great idea! Thanks for sharing on the Thoughtful Spot Blog Hop!
Thank you, Alison!
Very cool resource. Thank you. One idea that I had as I was reading your post is to print on slightly heavier stock and have them spiral bound in a horizontal layout so that you can see two pages at a time. I like spiral bound because it is flexible and easy to write in and of course I know I won’t ever hang it up. My local Fed Ex/Kinkos will do this for around five dollars. I think I will start this with my highschooler this year and world history. I may also go through and make stickers of important events from his book so that he can keep it neat and readable. Or maybe I will make HIM type up the items and print on sticker paper. I like it! :D
That’s a great idea. So far we haven’t hung any sections up either, since we’re studying ancient history and that would take up a LOT of wall space. The only potential issue is that I don’t know how thick the whole book would be if it were printed on heavier stock. I actually have my own binding machine (affiliate link), which I love, but I’ve never bound more than 100-ish pages at a time of regular thickness paper. Also, we think alike…I’ve also started working on “stickers” to put in our book. Unfortunately, I don’t have them catalogued very well…I just mention them and link to them in individual posts…but here’s what I have so far:
https://researchparent.com/wp-content/uploads/20_Historical_Figures_for_History_Timeline.pdf
https://researchparent.com/wp-content/uploads/Ancient_Egyptians_for_History_Timeline.pdf
https://researchparent.com/wp-content/uploads/Ancient_Egyptian_Monuments_for_History_Timeline.pdf
https://researchparent.com/wp-content/uploads/Ancient_Mesopotamians_for_History_Timeline.pdf
I’m hoping that as I continue to homeschool my kids, eventually we’ll be able to fill up the whole timeline with our homemade labels.
This is amazing! I’m a grandma to 5 little ones, 2 being homeschooled and 2 preschoolers. My daughter just finished up ancient Egypt and will start soon Mesopotamia and all it’s sub-cultures and regions. I do all the printing and idea gathering for her so her lessons are ready to go! She will love the timeline and the little “stickers”!
I’m so glad you like it! I hope it is helpful to your granddaughter. :)
Hi !
Thank you so much. It’s the best Mason’s timeline I’ve ever seen. I search for a long time. Now, I found.
Sylvie
>not fluent in english^<
Thank you, Sylvie! I’m so glad you like it. :)
This is such a nice timeline. My daughter just informed me that she gets confused about what is going on where at any given time. I love the idea of the continents. Do you mind sharing where you came up with the continent graphic?
Thanks so much for your hard work!
Colleen
Thank you. :) I got the continent graphics from Wikipedia.
Sorry, I was wrong. Wikipedia has great images, but the ones I used are public domain from Wikimedia Commons. Here is the location of the Asia file for example: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LocationAsia.svg
You are SOOOOOOO awesome! I have been looking for this very thing. Thanks a lot!
Awww, thanks! I’m glad you can use it. :)
Wow this is great! We will start AmblesideOnline Year 1 in the fall, and I’ve been thinking about how we will do ‘timeline’. Might get this bound such that we can fill it in over many years. Thank you for this work and sharing it. BTW, I got here via pintrest.
Awesome! I’m really curious about Ambleside as well. I keep meaning to look into it more. I love many of Charlotte Mason’s ideas and try to incorporate them into our homeschool (copywork, narration, nature studies…) Good luck on your homeschool journey! I think it’s a lot of fun. Also, I’m currently working on a post on Ancient Romans and I made little timeline pictures for them as well. Be sure to check back in the next couple days! :)
This is such a great resource, thank you for sharing it! I have a question, when I try to print mine, the document goes outside the margin boundaries. I don’t know how to fix this when it’s a pdf. Can you help me understand how to fix this? I’m excited to use this however, I don’t want to print out the whole thing and manually fix all the numbers and half missing letters. Thank you!
Hi Sara! I made a new version where I increased the margin size from 1/4″ to 1/2″ (which is still pretty small). If this doesn’t work, I’ll increase the margins even more. Thankfully, changing the margin size is quick, so I’m sure we can figure this out. Try right clicking and saving this: https://researchparent.com/wp-content/uploads/World_History_Timeline_by_Region_bigger_margins.pdf Give it a shot and let me know if it still doesn’t work!
This is fabulous! I am throwing out my half-baked plan for timeline notebooks and combining yours with another one for the current and last centuries that will show just one decade per page, so we can squeeze in all the stuff. Thank you so much!
I’m glad it’s helpful!
Thank you so much for sharing the printable timeline with the continents included! This is so handy – and I love that we can show what’s happening in different parts of the world at the same time.
Thank you!
I am so glad you like it! I hope my timeline works well for your family!
This is absolutely amazing, and exactly what I was looking for! Thank you so much for posting this for us.
I’m so glad you like it! I hope you find it useful. :)
Thank you so much for your history timeline and materials. It’s so helpful to me. you are blessed to me even in year 2020, your work is fruitful and blessing to homeschool mom who also difficult to cope with history in my high school
I’m so glad you are able to use my resources, June! You are very welcome.
This timeline is exactly what I’ve been looking for! I just started homeschooling my 6th and 9th graders this month. I love that we can easily add events/people from around the world.
Thank you SOOO much!
I’m so glad it is helpful to you, Melanie! Good luck with your homeschool year!