18 September 2026

Where does it belong?

Antonín Dvořák Czech composer

2000 BC1000 BC01000

Stretched by how much of it anyone can name

Antonín DvořákYour guess250 BC

the Punic Warsran 264 BC to 146 BC

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Punic Wars series of three wars fought between Rome and Carthage

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How much time separated the Punic Wars from Dvořák?

The Punic Wars occupy the ancient end of this interval. Nearly two thousand years then pass before Dvořák’s lifetime. The timeline shows distance, not a causal relationship.

264 BC to 1904: 2,167 years. This is the span the dated records below cover.

This expands the highlighted stretch of the timeline above. Each event sits at its date: a dot is a known date, a diamond an approximate one, and a bar a range of possible years.

Years before AD 1 are marked BC. There was no year zero: 1 BC was followed by AD 1, and every span on this site is counted that way.

146 BC The Punic Wars end
Rome destroys Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War.
Source: Getty Research Institute, UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Penn Museum
1841 Dvořák is born
Antonín Dvořák is born in 1841.
Source: National Museum, Prague
1893 The New World Symphony reaches its first audience
The New York Philharmonic introduces Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall, first at a public rehearsal and then in concert.
Source: Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Hall

Endpoint sources: Getty Research Institute; National Museum, Prague

What these are

Punic Wars

series of three wars fought between Rome and Carthage from 264 BC to 146 BC, at the time probably the largest wars that had ever taken place

The Punic Wars were a series of wars that lasted from 264 BC to 146 BC, a span of 118 years.

Antonín Dvořák

Czech composer (1841–1904)

Antonín Dvořák was a classical composer, an organist and a professor who lived from 1841 to 1904, a span of 63 years. Recorded as a citizen of Kingdom of Bohemia and Cisleithania. Holder of the position of Member of the House of Lords (Austria). The fields of work on record are performing arts, music education and music composing. Known for Symphony No. 9, Stabat Mater and Saint Ludmila, Op. 71, B. 144.

Picture: Unknown photographer, 1882. Gallica / Bibliothèque nationale de France, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. Image source and rights

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How to read this

Two dates are already on the line. A third is on the tag. Drag it to where you think it goes, then drop it.

The true date appears where it belongs, and a band opens between the two: its width is how far out you were. Every mark says what its date measures, because they are not all alike: a person is a lifespan, a mission is a launch, a town is when it was settled.

Once enough people have played, the crowd’s marker joins them, showing where most people put it. Those are people who chose to play a game about time, so read it as what history enthusiasts think rather than as what everyone thinks.

Most people place things too recently. The further back something is, the more it collapses toward everything else back there. It is called the telescoping effect, and it is what this is about.