“Another reason for the gap in our historical and theoretical understanding of timelines is the relatively low status that we generally grant to chronology as a kind of study. Though we use chronologies all the time, and could not do without them, we typically see them as only distillations of complex historical narratives and ideas.”

I thought that was a great way to introduce the importance of the history of timelines. This is because often times, timelines are looked at as subsidary material to enhance the (seemingly more important) narrative of history. Reading this chapter helped me to alter my opinion on timelines significance and ability to standalone when narrating history. The chapter notated that historians around the world had differing views on timelines. What stood out to me was that Western historians tended to view timelines as a moderate priority and “rudimentary form of historiography.” While Europeans from the medieval era revered the chronological discipline. An Indian historian also took chronology a step further by viewing the discipline as a powerful, graphically dense way of describing and interpreting the past. Furthermore, Westerners were known to view chronologies as “mere sequences” in history that did not possess an order of meaning. The Westerner viewpoint of timelines for me is one that makes sense. I say this because even when you think about the narrative of Westerner culture, much of the history is overlooked based on apparent significance. Westerners have a tendency to place priorities on different parts of history and no two events are considered as “equal”. Having to view things such as Annals–which make no distinction between natural occurrences and human acts, gives no indication of cause and effect, and where no entry is given more priority than another–would prove to be a difficult feat in my eyes.