The scroll traces the course of human history from 4004 BC to 1883 using time lines, flow charts, and family trees that encompass settlements, countries, empires and civilizations around the world, from Babylon, Sparta, and China to Italy, Russia, and Wales.

The text is accompanied by pictures of landmark events and personalities, including architectural monuments like the pyramids, history-changing tools and weapons, inventions, and portraits of famous rulers, adventurers, scientists, cultural figures.. and maps drawn by John Alsop Paine *National Museum of American History[2] Published in 1871[1] by writer, educator, and Presbyterian minister Sebastian C. Adams, the chart integrates genealogies of the King James Bible with numerous historical references and compendiums (listed in the Sources, below)* merging secular history with a chronological account beginning with Adam and Eve in 4004 B.C.

Suzi Feay of The Independent describes the chart's design for representing a large scope of human history as something that "resembles an unusually complicated digestive system, with its lines, loops, bulges and branches".

According to the book Cartographies of Time: History of the Timeline, the Synchronological Chart "was ninetheenth-century America's surpassing achievement in complexity and synthetic power.

"[9] The Oregon Encyclopedia notes that it is now prized by museums and library collections as an early representative of commercial illustration that made history lessons 'colourful and dramatic'.

Above the image of Adam and Eve are the words, "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" (Genesis 1:1) — beside which the author acknowledges that — "Moses assigns no date to this Creation.

Numerous insets remark the discovery of significant inventions such as Galileo Galilei with the pendulum and the telescope, Johannes Gutenberg with the printing press, James Watt with his improved steam engine, and William Shakespeare reading his plays to Queen Elizabeth I.