Stele of Narâm-Sîn, king of Akkad, c. 2250 BC. Wikimedia The Federal Reserve continues to keep its benchmark interest rate target pegged to a range of 0% to 0.25%, which is where it has been since December 2008.

That's low.

Interestingly, rates aren't just low within the context of American history.

They also happen to be at the lowest levels in the 5,000 years of civilization.

Citing a speech by Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane, Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Michael Hartnett and his team in a recent note to clients shared the following chart, which shows just how low today's rates are relative to other times in history:

Haldane's list of sources for this is pretty staggering (you can look through them all here).

So to make things a bit clearer, we put together an annotated list of key historical episodes and the corresponding interest rate of the time, using the data from "The Trader and his Shadow."

Check them out below: