1. A computer-implemented method, comprising: creating an activation list that contains tuples that have been activated in a temporal table within a temporal database, wherein the temporal table stores multiple versions of data contained within a tuple, and wherein each tuple in the temporal table uniquely identifies data contained within the tuple at a given point in time; creating an invalidation list that contains tuples that have been invalidated in the temporal table; combining the activation list and the invalidation list into an events list that includes the activated tuples and the invalidated tuples, wherein the events list includes unique row identifiers of each of the activated tuples and the invalidated tuples; sorting the events list; creating a version map that maps a version of the temporal table, represented by a version identifier, to a position of a tuple in the events list, wherein each temporal table version signifies a particular time interval; and creating an array of accumulated positions that represent positions in the events list corresponding to, for each temporal table version, an end position of an interval of activated and invalidated tuples for the version, wherein the position mapped to each version identifier in the version map is an accumulated position from the array of accumulated positions, wherein the events list, the version map, and the array of accumulated positions are part of a timeline index for the temporal table.