Raw Count Story (Blue):

Suggests intellectual progress accelerates over time
Modern era appears to be the golden age of human achievement
20th century peaks with 69 authorities
Ancient world seems intellectually sparse

Per Capita Story (Purple):

Reveals the ancient world's extraordinary intellectual concentration
3rd century BC peaks at 100 authorities per million people
Modern era shows dramatic decline in per-capita intellectual prominence
Only the 17th century Scientific Revolution approaches ancient levels

The Paradox:
The same data tells opposite stories depending on the lens. This highlights fundamental questions about how we measure intellectual achievement:

Is absolute contribution what matters, or relative density?
Does population growth dilute individual historical significance?
Are we comparing across different scales of human organization?
Does historical filtering favor ancient figures whose work survived millennia?

The visualization demonstrates how normalization can completely reverse our interpretation of historical patterns, revealing that the "explosion" of modern knowledge may actually represent a dilution of individual intellectual prominence in an increasingly populous world.