Simple but frustrating problem with chart

I am almost embarrassed about asking this question because i am sure the answer is so simple. I have fixed the problem before, but I want to make a very simple time graph with years only as an x axis and temperature as a y axis. The first column I have is years stretching back to the 1850s, the second column is temperature. When I use the chart wizard to make the graph I get a silly graph. If I do the same graph but change the years to 1am, 2am etc, it builds the right kind of graph, but when I use the years, it doesn't work.

Can someone help me out please.

Thanks, Andrew

I am using MS Excel for Mac 2004 vs 11.3.5

Thanks for that. The funny thing is that I have actually solved the problem before without having to resort to strange date measures. I have the chart, but I have to replicate it and I can't. The years are contiguous, so can I format them not as years, but numbers and make a line graph with the x axis as numbers from 1859 to 2006, with the y axis as degrees celsius? Conceivably they could be seconds or some other measure other than dates, they just happen to be years. Would be grateful if you can help again, or anyone else. Thanks a lot. Andrew