Walkthrough of how to work with historical events

Q & A
#1

I work with historical material, tracking the development of specific laws within the educational area. My collection includes about 100 laws, amendments, preparatory work, and subsequent interpretations.

There’s a lot of weaving in and out of the timeline and its different elements, and I would love to hear how others manage this using Aeon Timeline.

What I would particularly like to map out are the following cases:

Case 1:
Law A is followed by Law B.

Case 2:
Law A is followed by both Law B and Law C, but Law B and Law C are not connected.

Case 3:
Law A and Law B (initially not connected) merge into Law C, with Law C being the most recent.

So far, I have used grouping, but it only seems to work for Case 1. From what I understand, I should be using relationships. However, I’m a bit puzzled, as I can see all my laws in the first column, but not all of them appear as possible relationships in the subsequent columns. Is this because the relationship window only displays a few relationships, and connections between two items (in this case, laws) should be made elsewhere?

Any other advice will be greatly appreciated!

#2

I can’t quite imagine how you have set up your model so far. Grouping doesn’t seem to me to be the right thing for your purpose.

Here is some food for thought:

  • you could first define a “ Law” item.
  • Then you could introduce a “Law” relationship and a “Predecessor” relationship.
  • Then you could place events in the timeline that mark the related law’s lifecycle.

Case 1

Event: “Introduction of B” (“B” start event; could also be “A” end event)
Relationship “Law” = “B”
Relationship “Predecessor” = “A”

Case 2

Event: “Introduction of B” (“B” start event; could also be “A” end event)
Relationship “Law” = “B”
Relationship “Predecessor” = “A”

Event: “Introduction of C” (“C” start event; could also be “A” end event)
Relationship “Law” = “C”
Relationship “Predecessor” = “A”

Case 3

Event: “A and B merge into C” or “Introduction of C” (“C” start event; could also be “A” and “B” end event)
Relationship “Law” = “C”
Relationship “Predecessor” = “A”
Relationship “Predecessor” = “B”

Instead of the “Predecessor” relationship, you could as well use the “Law” relationship, if it is the “end” date.

Good luck,
Peter

#3

Hi Peter

Thank you very much for your reply. I haven’t really set up any model yet. I just imported a bunch of rows from an Excel file, and I am continuing to set up a model from here. But you are right: groups do not work well in all cases.

I understand the idea of dependencies when an event follows a previous event. But when an event (in this case, a law) alters - but not cancel - the original, I am not sure how dependencies work: both laws are still active. I see that I can alter dates in the constraints, and I should probably look into how to use this.

Thanks for wishing me luck - I feel I need this :slight_smile:

#4

Hi Marianne,

I am an engineer, and for me Aeon is a modeling tool. I think it’s important to understand that the model here is essentially built up from events with a time reference. The user-definable items, such as people, places (and also laws) are given their place in the model through their relationship to the events. Relationships between items, on the other hand, can only be modeled to a limited extent. This can be seen very clearly in the demands for family trees that are repeatedly made here, although this does not really fit into the basic concept of Aeon.

This is where the modeler’s creativity is required. I would first assign a start and an end event to the law items, as you can see from the example of characters with their lifespan “events”. When a new law is “born” that has “parents”, these parents are involved in the “birth event”, but this does not have to be the “death event” of the parents at the same time.

If you model it this way, you can group the events in the timeline view according to “participants” and see the laws with their origins in a row.

Then you can also assign people, legislative bodies and topics to the events in order to create suitable views by filtering and grouping. Once you have become familiar with the principle of modeling, Aeon offers you a lot of possibilities.

Cheers,
Peter

#5

Brilliant! I see your point now. I also see that working from a start date 75 years ago and step by step up til today means that I cannot determine the ‘death’ of a law before it has happened - by introducing a new law. Therefore, I have to go forth and back, possibly a number of times.

Thanks for lending me your modeler’s creativity :slight_smile: :grin:

Bw, Marianne