A brief history of pretty much everything, animated via flipbook

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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Anonymous

Wow that’s so cool!
EMJ

No women, all human history violent. Says something, doesn’t it?
Anonymous

I saw a lot of Monty Python influence in it… At first I thought it was going one way with the three wise men, but then it turns to the absurd. Gotta love that!
JoshP

pimping the old(non-relatively) Gibson short story “Red Star, Winter Orbit.” Cuz, tech will cheapen, tech will improve, science will happen, things will evolve, eventually masses that did not have expensive complicated items will have them. This is almost a historical truism. In 1200 no one would have given two figs if you thought that the English would eventually land a colony on a rumored, perhaps mythic, perhaps theologically impossible continent west of Europe. Guess what… it happened.
Sadly, it probably won’t happen in my lifetime. Eh. But it will happen, given no zombie apocalypse.
Anonymous

Holy crap this is absolutely awesome!!!
Anonymous

Fantastic………
Anonymous

Thanks! You just wrote my social studies curriculum for the year! Woo hoo!
Hue
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

Here is animation on a similar theme by Bruno Bozetto…

Bolero Part One
Bolero Part Two
- Felton
  
  Oh, yes! From Allegro non Troppo, right?
wafna

Also reminiscent of Saul Bass’s “Why Man Creates”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nHOWkfGFsk
evancairo

this makes it seem like the entirety of the history of the universe contains nothing but the domination and subjugation of one group by another and that the only advancements life has made were to level up their tools of destruction and domination. seems kind of ironic that this historical journey of death and domination was made using

ART and MUSIC!!!

so yeah, the hopey changey thing is doing just fine for me right now….
hungryghost

Perfect example of silence being used so effectively at the end of the dinosaur age, in addition to just about everything else in that animation.
GreenStockings

Uh… so “everything” is just Western Europe, right?

Seriously BoingBoing, the animation is cool, but a little bit of critical thought would be nice, too.
arkizzle / Moderator

I LOLed a few times :)
Sug4rFree

Wondering if someone will realize the sound effects were taken from TF2 and if youtube will cut the sound for copyright.
Felton

So, if you count Fantasia, we have three soundtracks for the history of life on Earth, the Rite of Spring, the Bolero, and the Can-Can. Somehow the Can-Can works best for my twisted worldview. :-)
scifijazznik

magnifique!
Talia

Pity the “humankind reaching out to the stars” part of it seems to be going the way of the Dodo.

*sigh*
erzatsen

Cupid’s Foot at the end is a nice touch.
Anonymous

Bravo!!!!!!!!!
Itsumishi

If you pause at about the 2.38 mark you can see one very phallic looking mushroom cloud.
Anonymous

Apparently, no sex or women involved in the history of everything…a fine exercise in symbolic annihilation
- Felton
  
  Anon@12: History is written by the wieners.
gman

Well played, stegosaurus…
dwgs

Damn, some of you people are cranky for a Friday. I’ll be showing my kids after school, they’ll love it, thanks.
As for all you cranky old farts, since the weekend is upon us that should give you time to get started on your own version.
Gloria

Well, I’m not really feeling cranky, looking as it’s a long weekend coming up, but I think technically Caesar’s assassination comes *before* the Three Wise Men …

(That was my shrill pedant moment of the day; I still have my cranky old fart card to play!)
- benher
  
  At least he was correct in that both events are predated by the Spartan kicking of the Great Pyramid at Giza is accurate.
kmoser

This is brilliant. I can’t imagine how much time it took to draw each of those frames. Sure, some are quite simple, but at, say, 18fps, that 3 minute film took about 3,000 individual drawings.

Some of the war fighting reminds me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSBP8IqG8DM
Grey Devil

Haha, i immediately recognized the TF2 sounds :B *nerd*
Li5y

Awesome stuff! I counted 3 vocals from the Team Fortress 2 Heavy. Haha which only made it better