100 Faces that Represent the History of Humanity
Criteria for Choosing the Faces That We Feature
When people are asked to consider who of the millions of known individuals who have lived across human history might represent the human condition they tend to think in terms of importance and power. There are lots of lists of the most important people in human history or the most famous people in relation to this or that question. In setting up the current project we decided to use this popular impulse as a way of approaching the question, while countering its superficiality by setting out to giving depth to what it means to talk about the faces of human history. We shifted the terms of the selection from the usual ‘who is the most important’ or ‘who has had the most impact’ to a set of general and overlapping concerns: namely whether or not the chosen persons were consequential, representative, emblematic, impactful, influential, iconic and inspirational. The name of the list, ‘Faces of History’, separates itself from all those claims about the ‘hundred most important persons in history’ ranked from one to 100 — as if such rankings are meaningful anyway. Neither is the list a compendium of general categories: peasant, singer, worker, refugee, warrior, and capitalist. Each of the persons was chosen as an individual-in-social-context. Beyond this list being a line-up of global figures selected according to some basic criteria, we make no claims about its definitive status.
In this collection, we present images of 100 faces from across human history. These are the faces of persons who have made a significant difference to the human condition, for good or ill. Here we are also concerned with the emotional life of these representative faces, including what emotions we have about them. While it is not always possible to find public images of globally significant figures that are symptomatic of the range of human emotions we have endeavoured to find expressive images.
It is controversial choosing 100 faces to represent human history. This was done careful according the following criteria:
- Consequential
Persons whose lives have had significance consequence for the lives of others, positive or negative. For example, Adolf Hitler was seminal in World War II to the lives of a global generation. His life and practice then changed the way in which we thought of genocide, war, and political power.
- Representative
Persons who represent an important aspect of human activity, in their time and for ours. For example, Einstein’s work in physics contributed to changing the paradigm of modern science.
- Emblematic
Persons who stand in for an aspect of the human condition, without necessarily being individually famous in the popular culture sense of the word. For example, even though she is not well known, Marina Abramovic’s embodied performance art represents the intensifying pressure on the integrity of the human body in the twentieth century and after.
- Impactful
Persons who have had a significant impact in and beyond their immediate field of activity. For example, Plato’s philosophical discourses still influence contemporary fields of ethics and political science, as well as basic arguments about knowledge and meaning.
- Influential
Persons who, without being necessarily individually famous, have had a significant influence upon the human condition based on a process, technique or technology that they developed. For example, Tim Berners-Lee had an incredible influence through being a key developer of the World Wide Web.
- Iconic
Persons whose faces are iconically famous, even if they personally are almost unknown. For example, Lisa del Giocondo or the ‘Mona Lisa’ painted by Leonardo is widely recognized.
- Inspirational
Persons who are famous because they represent some aspect of the human condition that captured people’s imagination. For example, Che Guevara’s face became an inspirational symbol of revolutionary liberation and transnational solidarity, or (to reverse that attribution) Joan of Arc, whose face is relatively unknown, came to be a symbol of revolutionary religious zeal with various faces.
Temporal Spread
One of the considerations for our choice of figures is having a spread of figures across human history. We first began by specifying ten persons maximum for any century, but the differences of impact across the centuries alerted us to a second issue: namely that the world’s population exploded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and that therefore there should be a weighting of choice towards the present. Table 2 below represents that weighting. We did not always meet though guidelines precisely—for example, 31 names were chosen for the twentieth century rather than 30—but for the most part the guidelines held.
Table 1. Temporal Guidelines for Choosing Faces
|
Maximum number |
Period |
World population numbers |
|
2 figures per century |
before 1,000 CE |
0 CE = 200 million or .2 billion people / 1,000 CE = .275 billion people |
|
5 figures per century |
1000–1500 |
1500 = .45 billion people |
|
10 figures per century |
1500–1800 |
1800 = 1 billion people |
|
20 figures per century |
1800–1900 |
1900 = 1.6 billion people |
|
30 figures per century |
1900–present |
1930 = 2 billion / 1959=3 billion 1974=4 billion / 1987=5 billion |
Spatial Spread
Another consideration was the spread of figures across global space. We began by specifying that there should no more than ten persons per country, with the meaning of ‘country’ based on modern nation-state equivalence. However, this too was quickly qualified, firstly by population. China, India and the United States are the three most populous countries in the world. For example, it makes sense that given their world-historical population difference there is a capacity to allow more representative from China than Cambodia, and the United States rather than Haiti. Related important considerations included maintaining diversity across places, qualifying the nation-state bias of contemporary identity formation, and recognizing that some places by virtue of their global engagement—going back centuries in some cases such as the United Kingdom and Italy—would have a larger representation than less engaged places. Thus qualified consideration was thus given to the global impact of different countries through such processes as emigration, exploration, and imperial expansion.
In the final choice of the 100 faces, the figures by country are as follows: Afghanistan (1), Algeria (1), Argentina (1), Australia (2), Austria (2), Belgium (1), Brazil (1), Burma (1), Czech Republic (1), China (6), Egypt (2), France (6), Germany (6), Greece (3), Haiti (1), India (2), Israel/Palestine (2), Italy (9), Japan (2), Martinique (1), Mexico (1), Mongolia (1), Nepal (1), Netherlands (2), Peru (1), Poland (4), Russia (3), Saudi Arabia (2), Serbia (1), South Africa (2), South Korea (1), Spain (3), Switzerland (1), Turkey (2), United Kingdom (11) United States (10), Venezuela (1), and Vietnam (1).
Performative Spread
Consideration was given to maintaining a spread of figures across different fields of activity, with no more than ten figures per field of activity. This is complicated. Given the influence of science, technology and economics in the present it might have been assumed that more scientists, inventors, technologists, merchants, and industrialists would have been chosen. However, we chose to orient our selection otherwise. This was based firstly on the argument that while economic practitioners—merchants and industrialist, for example—have contributed massively in contributing to the material wealth of humanity the social range of that contribution to the human condition is narrow. Secondly, the domain of economics includes more than producers of economic wealth such as Henry Ford and John Paul Getty, or economic philosophers such as Adam Smith and Karl Marx (all included in the list of 100). It also includes those who are wealthy and poor, employed and formally unemployed.
Gender In-balance
Working towards relative gender equity in the figures chosen was also a major consideration, but again issues of impact qualified this criterion. In this case our choice involved recognition of the dominance of men in written history and the public sphere prior to 1960. The starkness of this inequity is shocking. It is an incredible pattern of structural discrimination towards men. However, we felt that covering it up by choosing more women, despite the level of their standing as consequential, representative, emblematic, impactful, influential, iconic and inspirational, would not solve the problem — rather it would compound it. We settled on a 20 per cent minimum number across the whole of history, with an increasing orientation to choosing women from the end of the nineteenth century onwards. This lack of balance is not the case when it comes to choosing our other lists, including ‘Faces of Emotion’.
Summary of Social Criteria for Choosing Faces
- A relative global spatial spread across people born in different places;
- A relative temporal spread across human history;
- A relative performative spread across different fields of human activity, though with an emphasis on the cultural and political domains rather than economic domain;
- An orientation to gender balance from the end of the nineteenth century onwards;
- An iconic or identifiable representation of a named person;
- An expressive image that shows some sort of emotion.
Table 2. One-Hundred Figures that Made Human History
NB. 'Country of birth' uses modern nation-state equivalence.
|
Period |
Person |
Dates |
Field of activity |
Country of birth |
City of birth |
|
Pre-0s |
1. Nefertiti (f-1) |
c.1370–c.1330 |
Regal politics (1) |
Egypt (1) |
unknown |
|
|
2. Buddha |
c.563–483 |
Religion (1) |
Nepal (1) |
Lumbin? |
|
|
3. Confucius |
c.551–c.479 |
Philosophy (1) |
China (1) |
Qufu |
|
|
4. Plato |
c.424–c.348 |
Philosophy (2) |
Greece (1) |
Athens |
|
|
5. Aristotle |
384–322 |
Philosophy (3) |
Greece (2) |
Chalcidice |
|
|
6. Hypatia |
c.350–c.415 |
Philosophy (4) |
Egypt (2) |
Alexandria |
|
|
7. Ashoka Maurya |
c.304–232 |
Military (1) |
India (1) |
Patna |
|
|
8. Julius Caesar |
c.100–44 |
Military (2) |
Italy (1) |
Rome |
|
|
9. Cleopatra VII Philopator (f2) |
69–30 |
Regal politics (2) |
Egypt (2) |
Alexandria |
|
|
10. Mary, Mother of Jesus (f3) |
c.15BC–48CE |
Religion (2) |
Israel/Palestine (1) |
Nazareth |
|
00s |
11. Jesus of Nazareth |
c.0–c.32 |
Religion (3) |
Israel/Palestine (2) |
Nazareth |
|
|
12. Cai Lun |
c.50–121 |
Technology (1) |
China (2) |
Leiyang |
|
100s |
13. Claudius Galen |
c.130–c.210 |
Medicine (1) |
Turkey (1) |
Pergamum |
|
200s |
14. Plotinus |
c. 204–270 |
Theology (1) |
Greece (3) |
Lycopolis |
|
300s |
15. Constantinus Augustus |
272–337 |
Military (3) |
Turkey (2) |
Naissus |
|
400s |
16. Augustine of Hippo |
354–430 |
Theology (2) |
Algeria (1) |
Thagaste |
|
500s |
17. Emperor Wen of Sui |
541–604 |
Regal politics (3) |
China (3) |
Chang'an |
|
600s |
18. Muhammad |
c.570–c.632 |
Religion (5) |
Saudi Arabia (1) |
Mecca |
|
700s |
19. Charlemagne |
c.742–c.814 |
Military (3) |
France (1) |
Herstal |
|
800s |
20. Han Yu |
c.768–824 |
Poetry (1) |
China (4) |
Nanyang |
|
900s |
21. Abd-ar-Rahman III |
c.889–961 |
Regal politics (4) |
Spain (1) |
Cordoba |
|
1000s |
22. William of Normandy |
c.1028–c1087 |
Military (4) |
France (2) |
Normandy |
|
1100s |
23. Eleanor of Aquitaine (f4) |
c.1122–1204 |
Regal politics (5) |
France (3) |
c.Poitiers |
|
|
24. Averroes (Ibn Rushd) |
1126–1198 |
Philosophy (5) |
Spain (2) |
Cordoba |
|
1200s |
25. Genghis Khan |
c.1162–1227 |
Military (5) |
Mongolia (1) |
Temujin |
|
|
26. Rumi |
c.1207–c.1273 |
Poetry (2) |
Afghanistan (1) |
Balkh |
|
|
27. Thomas Aquinas |
c.1225–1274 |
Theology (3) |
Italy (2) |
Roccasecca |
|
28. Marco Polo |
1254–1324 |
Economics (1) |
Italy (3) |
Venice |
|
|
1300s |
29. Petrarch |
1304–1374 |
Poetry (3) |
Italy (4) |
Arezzo |
|
30. Geoffrey Chaucer |
c.1343–1400 |
Poetry (4) |
United Kingdom (1) |
London |
|
|
|
31. Christine de Pizan (f5) |
c.1364–1430 |
Poetry (5) |
Italy (5) |
Venice |
|
1400s |
32 Johannes Gutenberg |
c.1398–1468 |
Technology (2) |
Germany (1) |
Mainz |
|
|
33. Saint Joan of Arc (f6) |
c.1412–1431 |
Cultural icon (1) |
France (4) |
Domremy |
|
1500 |
34. Leonardo da Vinci |
1452–1519 |
Technology (3) |
Italy (6) |
Vinci |
|
|
35. Erasmus |
1467–1536 |
Theology (4) |
Netherlands (1) |
Rotterdam |
|
|
36. Niccolò Machiavelli |
1469–1527 |
Philosophy (6) |
Italy (7) |
Florence |
|
|
37. Nicolaus Copernicus |
1473–1543 |
Astronomy (1) |
Poland (1) |
Toru |
|
38. Michelangelo |
1475–1564 |
Sculpture (1) |
Italy (8) |
Caprese |
|
|
|
39. Lisa Gherardini Mona Lisa (f7) |
1479–1542 |
Cultural icon (1) |
Italy (9) |
Florence (2) |
|
|
40. Martin Luther |
1483–1546 |
Religion (6) |
Germany (2) |
Eisleben |
|
41. Gerardus Mercator |
1512–1594 |
Cartography (1) |
Belgium (1) |
Rupelmonde |
|
|
42. Elizabeth I (f8) |
1533–1603 |
Regal politics (6) |
United Kingdom (2) |
Greenwich |
|
|
1600s |
43. Tokugawa Ieyasu |
1542–1616 |
Military (6) |
Japan (1) |
Matsudaira |
|
|
44. Tupac Amaru |
1545–1572 |
Regal politics (7) |
Peru (1) |
Vilcabamba |
|
|
45. William Shakespeare |
1564–1616 |
Drama (1) |
United Kingdom (3) |
Stratford |
|
|
46. William Harvey |
1578–1657 |
Medicine (2) |
United Kingdom (4) |
Folkstone |
|
|
47. Pocahontas |
c.1595–1617 |
Cultural icon (2) |
United States (1) |
Werowocomoco |
|
|
48. Rene Descartes |
1596–1650 |
Philosophy (7) |
France (5) |
Le Haye |
|
|
49. Rembrandt van Rijn |
1606–1669 |
Painting (1) |
Netherlands (2) |
Leiden |
|
1700s |
50. Johann Sebastian Bach |
1685–1750 |
Music (1) |
Germany (3) |
Eisenach |
|
51. Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
1712–1778 |
Philosophy (8) |
Switzerland (1) |
Geneva |
|
|
|
52. Adam Smith |
1723–1790 |
Economics (2) |
United Kingdom (5) |
Kirkaldy |
|
|
53. Catherine the Great (f8) |
1729–1796 |
Regal politics: regal (7) |
Poland (2) |
Szczecin |
|
|
54. George Washington |
1732–1799 |
National politics (1) |
United States (2) |
Colonial Beach |
|
1800s |
55. Toussaint Louverture |
1743–1803 |
National politics (2) |
Haiti (1) |
Haut de Cap |
|
|
56. Napoleon Bonaparte |
1769–1821 |
Military (7) |
France (6) |
Ajaccio |
|
|
57. Ludwig van Beethoven |
1770–1827 |
Music (2) |
Germany (4) |
Bonn |
|
|
58. Simon Bolivar |
1783–1830 |
National politics (3) |
Venezuela |
Caracas |
|
|
59. Charles Darwin |
1809–1882 |
Science: naturalist (1) |
United Kingdom (6) |
Shrewsbury |
|
|
60. Karl Marx |
1818–1883 |
Social theory (1) |
Germany (5) |
Trier |
|
|
61. George Eliot (f9) |
1819–1880 |
Literature (1) |
United Kingdom (7) |
Nuneaton |
|
|
62. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky |
1821–1881 |
Literature (2) |
Russia (1) |
Moscow |
|
|
63. Cetshwayo kaMpande |
c1826–1884 |
Military (8) |
South Africa (1) |
Eshowe |
|
|
64. Sigmund Freud |
1856–1939 |
Social theory (2) |
Czech Republic (1) |
P?íbor |
|
1900s |
65. Emmeline Pankhurst (f10) |
1858–1928 |
Activism (1) |
United Kingdom (8) |
Manchester |
|
|
66. Henry Ford |
1863–1947 |
Economics (3) |
United States (3) |
Greenfield |
|
|
67. Marie Curie (f11) |
1867–1934 |
Physics (2) |
Poland (3) |
Warsaw |
|
|
68. Emma Goldman (f12) |
1869–1940 |
Political activism (2) |
Russia (2) |
Kovno |
|
|
69. Mohandas Gandhi |
1869–1948 |
Political activism (3) |
India (2) |
Portanbar |
|
70. Vladimir Lenin |
1870–1924 |
Politics: national (4) |
Russia (3) |
Ulyanovsk |
|
|
|
71. Rosa Luxemburg (f13) |
1871–1919 |
Philosophy: general |
Poland (4) |
Zamo |
|
|
72. Albert Einstein |
1879–1955 |
Physics (1) |
Germany (6) |
Ulm |
|
|
73. Pablo Picasso |
1881–1973 |
Painting (2) |
Spain (3) |
Malaga |
|
74. Virginia Woolf (f14) |
1882–1941 |
Literature (3) |
United Kingdom (9) |
Kensington |
|
|
|
75. Adolf Hitler |
1889–1945 |
National politics (5) |
Austria (1) |
Ranshofen |
|
|
76. Charlie Chaplin |
1889–1977 |
Film (1) |
United Kingdom (10) |
London (3) |
|
|
77. Ho Chi Minh |
1890–1969 |
National politics (6) |
Vietnam (1) |
Hoàng Trù |
|
|
78. Jean Paul Getty |
1892–1976 |
Economics (2) |
United States (4) |
Minneapolis |
|
|
79. Mao Zedong |
1893–1976 |
National politics (7) |
China (5) |
Shaoshanchong |
|
|
80. Friedrich Hayek |
1899–1992 |
Economics (4) |
Austria (2) |
Vienna |
|
|
81. Frida Kahlo (f15) |
1907–1954 |
Painting (3) |
Mexico (1) |
Mexico City |
|
|
82. Rosa Parks (f16) |
1913–2005 |
Political activism (4) |
United States (5) |
Tuskegee |
|
|
83. Billie Holiday (f17) |
1915–1959 |
Music (2) |
United States (6) |
Philadelphia |
|
|
84. Nelson Mandela |
1918–2014 |
Political activism (5) |
South Africa (2) |
Mvezo |
|
|
85. Frantz Fanon |
1925–1961 |
Political activism (6) |
Martinique (1) |
Fort-de-France |
|
|
86. Marilyn Monroe (f18) |
1926–1962 |
Film (2) |
United States (7) |
Los Angeles |
|
|
87. Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara |
1928–1967 |
Political icon (1) |
Argentina (1) |
Rosario |
|
|
88. Toni Morrison (f19) |
1931– |
Literature (4) |
United States (8) |
Lorain |
|
|
89. Rupert Murdoch |
1931– |
Communications media (1) |
Australia (1) |
Melbourne |
|
|
90. Tenzin Gyatso 14th Dalai Lama |
1935– |
Religion (7) |
China (6) |
Taktser |
|
|
91. Pelé (Edson Arantes do Nascimento) |
1940– |
Sports (1) |
Brazil (1) |
Tres Corcacoes |
|
|
92. Hayao Miyazaki |
1941– |
Film (3) |
Japan (2) |
Tokyo |
|
|
93. Bob Dylan |
1941– |
Music (3) |
United States (9) |
Duluth |
|
94. Marina Abramovic (f20) |
1946– |
Performance (1) |
Serbia (1) |
Belgrade |
|
|
|
95. Tim Berners-Lee |
1955– |
Technology (4) |
United Kingdom (11) |
London (4) |
|
2000s |
96. Aung San Suu Kyi (f21) |
1945– |
Political activism (7) |
Burma (1) |
Rangoon |
|
|
97. Osama bin Laden |
1957–2011 |
Military (9) |
Saudi Arabia (2) |
Riyadh |
|
98. Cathy Freeman (f22) |
1973– |
Sports (2) |
Australia (1) |
Slade Point |
|
|
|
99. 'Psy' Park Jae-sang |
1977– |
Music (4) |
South Korea (1) |
Seoul |
|
|
100. Serena Williams (f23) |
1981– |
Sports (3) |
United States (10) |
Saginaw |
