Origin of the Universe.
Origin of our galaxy and solar system...

Timeline 1 - 16 billion years ago to present

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History, properly speaking, begins with the origin of the Universe.  Some facts, or presumed facts, about these origins, are spread out along the falling axis of my timeline.  Note first, the relatively large amount of time that the history of our solar system takes up in the age of the universe.  The solar system is Old, according to any scale of measurement.  The Earth itself is Old.  Life is Old on Earth (but Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a very Recent form of Life).  This is a simple example of what may be learned by following this timeline.

Secondly, note that the data here assembled, admittedly somewhat at random, pertain quite clearly to either the onset of the life of the Universe or to its later stages.  This clustering mirrors the fact that the two sets of data derive from different scientific traditions.  The late data are inferred from the material imprints they have made in rocks and ice, continents, oceans and mountain-chains on Earth.  They seem fairly secure and concrete.  The early data, on the other hand, derive from the far more esoteric arts of relativistic and quantum physics, they rely on archane interpretations of exotic astronomical radiations that our most sophisticated instruments can barely make out through the background static.  It is undoubtedly a major achievement of modern science to be able to peer into this most distant origin of all History, to the point when Time itself, we are told, originated - whatever that means.  Nevertheless, the fact of the Big Bang is to a far greater extent a presumed fact, than for example the formation of the Earth’s crust (even though our knowledge of the latter event is undoubtedly also theory dependent, in the sense that it presupposes e.g. acceptance of Continental Drift theory).

The purpose of this timeline is to stimulate conclusions of the above kind.  Above all, it is to stimulate us to see ourselves in perspective, to see what we are part of, rather than only our own part.

The timeline is simply, though somewhat inconsistently organized: It runs downward from your screen’s top left corner to its bottom right corner for a certain number of years -- in this case 16 billion years.  At the bottom right corner is the Present, though the "Present", meaning for example only the last two thousand years, would not be visible on this graph even as a single pixel.

The timeline is color-coded, and this is where some of the obscurity of its symbolism comes through.  Due to the very primitive paint program in which these graphs were created, the number of clearly differentiable colors at my disposal has been limited.  I have color-coded two parts of the timeline separately: First the "stem", the line itself, has been widened, and colored differently for different epochs.  Secondly, major events have been plotted onto the line, sometimes themselves forming event-lines within the timeline (the origin of our solar system, of the Earth, and of life on Earth are three event-lines on the present graph.  Life is here as elsewhere, depicted in green.  Later on, other shades of green will be used to mark the evolution of the human species, and the origin of agriculture.  Likewise, blue is used to refer to climate changes, particularly to glaciations.  Mass extinctions and wars are (perhaps predictably) marked in black.  But since the epochs marked along the "stem" of the timeline are also color-coded with the same limited palette, the green of life is also the green of the Palaeozoic, the earliest era of the Phanerozoic on Earth. But keeping this in mind, the following should be more or less intelligible.

Finally, the timeline has its simple controls: Click on the yellow field to the right, and that portion of the timeline will be enlarged to the size of the present timeline - you see a shorter time span, closer to our time, in greater detail. Continuing in this way, you will continue to shorten the time span viewed. But always, down in the right-hand corner, you will continue to find "the present". If you don't want to click on the yellow field, you can use the control panel at top right, which allows you too go to the next and the previous timeline, as well as "home" to the table of contents, or to the text page that is appended to each graphical image.

Sources:

Origin of Universe: http://www.sprl.umich.edu/GCL/globalchange1/fall2000/lectures/universe/universe.html 
Formation of elements, matter: http://www.kheper.auz.com/cosmos/universe/universe.htm 
Formation of Milky Way: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~ryden/ast162_6/notes26.html 
Origin of Solar System and Earth: http://jacinto.ucsd.edu/es10/lectures/lecture03/lecture03.html