Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This map will give you a whole new visual understanding of history that you won't forget. I purchased this for two simple reasons: (1) I'd been looking for a dual timeline of Biblical and Western Civilization on this scale, and (2) I liked the artwork shown in some of the photos. Once I received the chart, however, it started to change how I think. Let me give you a quick example: the Macedonian Empire under Alexander the Great. I knew he conquered a good chunk of the known Western world, but I wasn't entirely sure of when. That's about all I knew. I can look him up in the Encyclopedia Britannica (avoiding the temptation of Wikipedia) and read all I want about Alexander, but I'll forget most of it within a week. But when I saw Alexander on the chart I noticed a few things VISUALLY: (1) He was the first person to conquer the known world which had been moving along under Phonecia, Egypt, Babylonian (later Persian) and Greece for about 2,000 years; (2) Despite this incredible feat, it did not last long (I looked up the reasons why it didn't last and because I now have a visual representation in my mind, I won't forget why); (3) It was only a short stretch of time before the world was conquered again by Rome; (4) the goat wtih the big horn in the book of Daniel refers to Alexander; (5) Plato and Socrates were only just before this time (and Aristotle was Alexander's tutor); I won't forget this stuff. Why? Because I have a picture in my mind of the chart at this time. The chart shows the great hanging gardens of Babylon, it shows the goat of Daniel, it has a picture of Socrates and Plato, it shows a vertical high, but the horizontally narrow strip of Alexander's rule. I've spent hours just gazing at this map, getting confused about a picture here and there, and then looking up the answers to figure out what's going on. Honestly, I could write a 6,000-word review of this map telling the stories about how a visual clue spurred me into hours of additional research. If only this had hung on my walls since I was 10 or 12. Oh yeah, you won't really get the experience I'm talking about unless you hang it.