Below is a timeline compiled and published as part of the Alt.Horror.Cthulhu FAQ. I am posting it here as a resource for the readers of this blog. This is by no means an exhaustive timeline of the massive number of events that have taken place in pastiche stories written by other writers who have added to the Mythos created by Lovecraft. A more exhaustive timeline can be found here.
From the Alt.Horror.Cthulhu FAQ:
Please note that this timeline has been modified extensively from the original FAQ timeline. Events that are not mentioned specifically in Lovecraft’s works or that are the subject of scientific debate have been removed.
- 2 billion BC: Elder Things arrive (crinoid Old Ones from AtMoM) (“At the Mountains of Madness”)Possibly the Antarctic was already inhabited by something nasty (?) at the time, but the record is unclear. (“At the Mountains of Madness”)Editor’s note: This ‘something nasty’ smacks of Urm-At-Tawil (sp?). Anyone who has more information on this shall be blessed ‘pi’ times by Nyarlathotep.
- ?: The people of K’n-yan, who reputedly brought “Tulu” who migrated to the surface when the land was fit to live on. (“The Mound,” by Lovecraft and Bishop)
- 600 million BC: Flying Polyps arrive, and build basalt cities with windowless towers (in Australia) (“The Shadow Out of Time”)Archaean slate preserves striated triangular footprints of Elder Things (“At the Mountains of Madness”)
- 200 million BC: Pangea broke up (real)R’lyeh is built (“At the Mountains of Madness”)Spawn of Cthulhu arrive, and war with the Elder Things and drive them into the sea (“At the Mountains of Madness”)
- 150 million BC: Permian age (real)Marine Elder Things re-subjugate Shoggoths (“At the Mountains of Madness”)Elder Things war with Great Race (“At the Mountains of Madness”)
- ?: Great Race of Yith (minds only) came forward and inhabited the bodies of the indiginous Australian conical entities. (“The Shadow Out of Time”)
- ?: Jurassic (real)Mi-go arrive from Yuggoth (Pluto) and drive Elder Things from Northern Hemisphere (“At the Mountains of Madness”)
- 100 million BC: Rifts seperate Africa from Europe/Valusia and Asia (No Ref)
- 50 million BC: City founded in Mts of Madness to replace older city on site of first arrival, by Elder Things (“At the Mountains of Madness”)
- 30-25 million BC: Development of CircumAntarctic current, essentially isolating Antarctica from the rest of the continents, and beginning the establishment of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (Real)Pliocene map (Real)No sea cities of Elder Things north of 50deg S; no land cities outside of Antarctica and tip of South America (“At the Mountains of Madness”)
- 50,000 BC: Civilization of great-headed brown people of South Africa (No Ref)
- 24,000 BC: Hairy cannibal Gnophkehs overcame many-templed Olathoe and slay all the heros of the land of Lomar (inside 80 deg N). (“Polaris,” by Lovecraft)Pnakotic Manuscripts taken to Ulthar in the Dreamlands (No Ref)Hyperborean copy of PM preserved by same cult which wrote the Book of Eibon (Letter #826 of “Selected Letters”)
- 30 BC: Ubar/Irem “a many-columned city...whose like has never been built in the whole land” [Koran] vanishes in sandstorm. [1984 Challenger mission spots buried roadway stretching for 60 miles in desert north of Oman’s Dhofar province] [Mankato Free Press, 7/16/1990] [Hitti, HIST.ARABS: “A recently discovered Nabataean site, ’RM, 25 miles east of al-Aqabah, is Kornaic Iram (sur. 89:6)”][2/5/92 NYT “Archeologists and explorers in Oman have uncovered the ruins of eight towers and adjoining walls and deposits of pottery dating to Roman times and as far back as 2,000 BC. The explorers are virtually sure it is UBAR, the fabled entrepot of the rich frankincense trade thousands of years ago.”]
- c. 730: Al Azif written at Damascus by Abdul Alhazred, who claimed to have visited Irem and an even older city; worshipped Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.
- 738: Alhazred dies or disappears under terrible circumstances. Said by Ebn Khiallikan to have been seized in broad daylight and devoured by an invisible monster before a horrified crowd.
- 950: Al Azif translated into Greek as Necronomicon by Theodorus Philetas
- 1050: Greek text of Necronomicon burnt by Michael, Patriarch of Constantinople (Arabic text lost at this point)
- 1228: Olaus translates Necronomicon into Latin.
- 1232: Pope Gregory IX places Necronomicon on Index Expurgatorius
- 15th century: Black letter edition of Latin Necronomicon printed in Germany. Copy rumored to exist in the British Museum.
- 1500 - 1550: Greek text of Necronomicon printed in Italy. Last known copy vanished in burning of a certain Salem man’s library in 1692. Copy kept by Pickman family of Salem? If so, vanished with R. U. Pickman in 1926.
- 17th cent: Spanish printing (in Latin?) of Necronomicon (copies at Bibliotheque National in Paris, Widener Library at Harvard, Miskatonic U. library at Arkham, library of Buenos Aires).
- 1760’s AD: The four Brown brothers, Reverend Manning and the Governor of Rhode Island (Lippincott?) go on a witchhunt for Joseph Curwen (“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” Lovecraft)
- 1839: Unaussprechlichen Kulten published in Dusseldorf. Written by Friedrich von Junzt (1795-1840) [read Necronomicon in Greek translation]. Von Junzt dies six months after returning from trip to Mongolia while working on second book. Less than a dozen copies exist of this edition. [“Von Junzt relates many stories of the survivals of cults worshipping pre-human entities or prehistoric gods, such as Ghatanothoa, Bran, and others. The principle obscurity of the book is in Von Junzt’s use of the term ‘keys’ – phrase used many times by him, in various relations, such as descriptions of the infamous Black Stone in Hungary and the legendary Temple of the Toad in Honduras.”]
- 1845: Bridewell, London publisher, does a pirated translation of Unauss. Kulten. “...full of grotesque woodcuts, and riddled with misspellings, faulty translations, and the usual errors of a cheap and unscholarly printing....”
- 1865: E. A. Hitchcock, Remarks on Alchemy “...the now unattainable secrets of the Aklo tablets.”
- 1882, June: meteorite lands west of Arkham “The Colour Out of Space”
- 1892: Body exhumed, heart burned in Exeter, RI (mentioned “The Shunned House”)
- 1901, February 22: Climax of “Beyond the Wall of Sleep”
- 1907, November 1: raid near New Orleans captures Cthulhu cultists
- 1908 - 1913: Wingate Peaslee’s amnesia
- 1909: Golden Goblin Press, New York. Expurgated edition of Unauss. Kulten (fully one quarter of work cut), handsomely bound, illustrated by Diego Vasquez. Approx. 30 known to still exist.
- 1910, January: Houdini is “Imprisioned With the Pharaohs”
- 1913, August 3: Box delivered to A. Jermyn
- 1917, August 20: “The Temple” 20 N, 35 W
- 1919, August 25: exploration of the Shunned House
- 1921, August: Reporter encounters “The Lurking Fear”
- 1922, January: “The Attic Window” published in Whispers (see “The Unnameable”)
- 1923, July 16: Delapore moves into Exham Priory
- 1923: Lovecraft writes “The Festival” (“...they included old Morryster’s wild Marvells of Science, the terrible Saducismus Triumphatus of Joseph Glanvil, published in 1681, the shocking Daemonolatreia of Remigius, printed in 1595 at Lyons, and worst of all, the unmentionable Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, in Olaus Wormius’ forbidden Latin translation...” [“The Nameless City” written 1921; “The Hound” 1922]
- 1925, March 23 to April 2: R’lyeh emerges from ocean
- 1925, October 9: Letter 197, vol 2, Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith: “I bedeck my tale [Horror at Red Hook] with incantations copied from the ‘Magic’ article in the 9th edition of the Britannica, but I’d like to draw on less obvious sources if I knew of the right reservoirs to tap.” Recommends Witchcraft in Western Europe to CAS.
- 1926: R. U. Pickman disappears.
- 1927, Good Friday: Chas. Dexter Ward revives Joseph Curwen
- 1927, July 6: “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”
- 1928, February: Raid on Innsmouth
- 1928, August: The Dunwich Horror
- 1928, October 7: Randolph Carter goes through the Gate of the Silver Key [Aug 30, 1932 letter “Dear Abdul...And for each plane of cutting, we get a different 3 dimensional solid. Thus from an original, unchangeable 4th dimensional SOMETHING, we get a (sic) infinity of seemingly different 3 dimensional forms; as by varying the angle at which a plane cuts a cone... All of which is the thesis accounting for Carter’s scrambled affairs.”]
- 1931, January 22: Plane spots the Mountains of Madness 76ø 15' S, 113ø 10' E.
- 1931, March: Gale wrecks roof of the Witch House
- 1935, June 3: First blocks found by Peaslee’s Australian expedition
- 1935, Night of July 17-18: Peaslee explores ruins
