An article in the online Las Vegas newspaper The Guardian features a new video clip that attempts to show the spread of human culture over the past 2,500 years. Maximilian Schich, an art historian at the University of Texas, crafted a visually mesmerizing five and a half minute sequence of births and deaths of some 150,000 famous people over two millennia. The video, entitled “Charting Culture,” is purported to represent the spread of all of human culture.

But the video is problematic along two fronts. (more…)