H032

Did Cleopatra live closer in time to the pyramids or to the Moon landing?

We file the Great Pyramid and Cleopatra together under "ancient Egypt," and T. rex and Stegosaurus together under "dinosaurs." The gaps inside those labels are bigger than the gaps between them and us.

Pyramid to Cleopatra
≈2,500 years
Great Pyramid finished about 2560 BC; Cleopatra born 69 BC
Cleopatra to Moon landing
≈2,000 years
Cleopatra born 69 BC; Apollo 11 landed in 1969
T. rex to Stegosaurus
77+ million yrs
T. rex is closer to us: about 66 million years

Human history

The Great Pyramid, Cleopatra, and the Moon landing on one timeline

2500 BC 2000 BC 1500 BC 1000 BC 500 BC AD 1 500 1000 1500 2000 Great Pyramid about 2560 BC Cleopatra 69–30 BC Moon landing 1969 ≈2,500 years ≈2,000 years

Deep time

Stegosaurus, T. rex, and today, in millions of years ago

150M 125M 100M 75M 50M 25M Today Stegosaurus 155–145 million years ago T. rex 68–66 million years ago You today at least 77 million years 66 million years

"Ancient" and "prehistoric" pack very different spans of time into one word. When Cleopatra ruled, the Great Pyramid was already about 2,500 years old, a longer gap than the roughly 2,000 years between her and Apollo 11. Stegosaurus had been extinct for at least 77 million years before the first T. rex appeared, more than the 66 million years since T. rex.

Labels like "the ancient world" or "the age of dinosaurs" feel like single moments because we learn them as single chapters. Before comparing two things filed under the same label, put them on the same timeline.

Try it somewhere else

Woolly mammoths and the Great Pyramid both feel like they belong to the distant past.

Were woolly mammoths still alive when the pyramid was built?

More time that hides inside one word

Yes: a small population of woolly mammoths survived on Wrangel Island, off Siberia, until about 4,000 years ago, several centuries after the Great Pyramid was finished. Oxford University was already teaching students in 1096, more than two centuries before the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325. And the Roman Empire lasted longer in the east, through Constantinople until 1453, than the United States has existed.

Related exhibits

Sources: Great Pyramid dating and Cleopatra (69–30 BC): Encyclopaedia Britannica. Apollo 11: NASA. Stegosaurus (about 155–145 million years ago) and T. rex (about 68–66 million years ago): Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Wrangel Island mammoths: Vartanyan et al., Nature, 1993. Oxford and Tenochtitlan: Encyclopaedia Britannica.