time line questions

I'm kind of confused about something,I know that "headmasters" take place pretty much within 5 years after "return of optimus prime" but what years do "masterforce" and "victory" and "zone" take place it almost seems that they are quit a bit later in thw future,the main thing that confuses me is the whole thing about how transformers have been here on earth in "human" form for thousands of years as stated in "masterforce" does that mean that "masterforce" takes place thousands of years after gen1 or does that mean that they were there before the transformers crashed on earth in 1984 ?how many years later did bw/bm take place as well...thanks

BW took place before G1. They were in the ark when all the G1's were powered down.

the rest i'm not to sure about.

BM follows BW but it could be after G1 stuff.

To answer the last part of your question, I think it was Hawk who said when they first came to Earth people were still living in caves and very primitive. and Beast Wars took place 300 yrs after the end of the Great War according to Black Arachnia. I would say that the Great War was G1

Beast Wars involves time travel, so gets people very, VERY confused. Beast Wars started three hundred years after the end of the Great War, what we know as G1. However, because of their travel through time, it also took place between the crash of the Ark, and the great awakening that kicked off the G1 Transformers stay on Earth.

Beast Machines happened in the Beast Wars "present." That is, sometime three hundred plus years after the Great War. At the end of Beast Wars, the Beast Warriors travelled back to their present, however, Megatron managed to make his way back well before them by dropping off into a wormhole of somekind, or so the theory goes, and so took over Cybertron before the Maximals managed to make it back. Thus the confusing beginning to Beast machines.

I can't answer the Japanese continuity questions, but wanted to throw that out about the Beast Wars continuity.

wow ,nobody seems to have the answers for the jap timeline questions I had?

The japanese series take place in a different continuity that BW/BM. Both markets had G1 through season 3. The US continues with Rebirth (season 4), then BW, then BM. Japan went straight into HM, MF, V, and Zone.

I don't know how much elasped time there's supposed to be between the japanese series (though HM should be within days of TROOP since they're recharging the matrix) but I took Hook's statement of thousands of years to mean since the dawn of human civilization or so. They pretty much took a nap during G1.

I follow my own continuity for all of TFs. I place G1 first, then the Unicron Trilogy(Armada, Energon, and Cybertron) which IMO ends the Great War. Then 300+ years later, BW/BM happens, then RiD. That's my take on the cartoon continuity. The comics I let be seperate entities but influential to what happens in the toons. For example, Simon Furman used Unicron because of the cartoon movie, and then added Primus which was then used in every TF series afterwards. I'm still working out my fanfic that links the G1 toon to the beginning of Armada. It includes the TFs learning of Primus and why the Quints took over.