https://landnotes.org/?location=xnd284b0-6&date=1923&strictD...
https://github.com/Zulko/landnotes
My plan has been to overlay historical map borders on top of it, like the Geacron one from this post, but they all seem to be protected by copyright - and understandably so, given the amount of work involved.
https://zulko.github.io/composer-timelines/?selectedComposer...
There are many projects that could be done with with wikipedia and LLMs, for instance "equalizing" all languages by translating all pages into all other languages where they are missing. Or, more surgically, finding which facts are reported in some languages of a page but not others, and adding these facts to all languages.
For now, it seems that wikipedia doesn't want to use generative AI to produce wikipedia pages, and that's understandable, but there may be a point where model quality will be too good to ignore.
Also, back then, their map tiles loading had a very high failure rate when loading, so I wrote a custom caching proxy to make it tolerable (which had built-in retry and also cached any successful response for a very long time).
-2000000 Stone tools
-1000000 Using fire
-6000 Metal tools
-6000 Agriculture
-4000 Writing
1550 Printing
1888 Telephones
1888 Cars
1903 Planes
1941 Penicillin
1941 First computer
1982 Homecomputers
1983 Mobile phones
1990 The internet
2001 Wikipedia
2004 Facebook
2007 IPhone
2022 ChatGPT
They have big costs, but also big benefits.
They certainly have their proponents, and they certainly led to measurable effects on society, so I agree their inventions were important. But "progress"?
The revolutionary change that made Facebook uniquely successful wasn't being a social media platform, it was forcing its users (who were so far treating it as a way to keep in touch with acquaintances, old friends and distant family) to compete for each other's attention and offering corporations the opportunity to join that competition - all the while retaining the messaging that the platform is about "social" interactions between peers. And of course mining the everliving #### out of their users' data while non-consensually tracking them across the entire web without their knowledge.
But the "attention is the currency in the marketplace of ideas" concept they launched pretty much defined all "social media" companies from that point on, which is why we nowadays often forget the term used to be much more appropriate in the past (although often constrained to a crowd of very technical nerds).
Oh, and of course they very successfully killed much of the tradition of the Open Web by encouraging a walled garden approach even when it required them to actively defraud their advertisers by lying about the performance of video content. But I think the trophy for launching that extinction event belongs to Apple when they pivoted away from the original web-first concept for the iPhone to the proprietary App Store.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64
Nuance around this fact would be completely lost in 100 years, let alone 1000 from now.
In 1942 he did one for Evolution which is closer to your pitch (log scale Y axis, etc): https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~2...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1l_Riata
Edit: The "Scots" are supposed to have conquered the Picts in the mid 9th century leading to what would eventually become Scotland.
> You roleplay as the various Ancient Roman (Year 0) people I encounter as an accidental time traveler. Respond in a manner and in a language they would actually use to respond to me. Describe only what I can hear and see and sense in English, never translate or indicate what others are trying to say. I am suddenly and surprisingly teleported back in time and space, wearing normal clothes, jeans, socks and a t-shirt into the rural outskirts of Ancient Rome.
In think this is a fun way to learn languages too.
And if you don't mine it from somewhere, how do you know what to include? How many people will have heard enough about every part of the world to even be able to research ancient borders?
I would love to be able to slip through time with a slider. Especially if there was enough data on the movement and geographic span of early peoples to represent their story with moving, fading in/out diffusions of color.
And now I am curious! How clearly we have pinned down migration and geographic spans for the history of all human families?
NONE of this is an actual suggestion to do any more work.
It is great as it is!
0. https://historicalatlas.com/download/ 1. https://youtu.be/WFYKrNptzXw?t=64
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/OttomanE...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Republic_o...
This map should show the areas of actual rule and control (de facto) and don't accept any territory to belong to a state just because they claim sovereignty.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ROC_Administrative_a...
I'll add that most of the "Internet's supporters of Taiwan independence" not only do not live in Taiwan, they have never even visited there -- if they did, they would know that even most of Taiwan's population consider Taiwan and (mainland) China to be one entity. And mainland China mostly agrees with that -- where they disagree is what is the political entity that should govern this territory.
I very much doubt this is true — post a source, if you’ve got one
I can offer a link to ROC constitution (above):
> Because the ROC constitution is, at least nominally, the constitution of all China, the amendments avoided any specific reference to the Taiwan area ...
Or this passage:
> The position of the PRC and the KMT in Taiwan remains that there is only one sovereign entity of China, united and indivisible.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Chinas#Current_situation
Or this passage:
> Domestically, the major political contention is between the Pan-Blue Coalition, which favors eventual Chinese unification under the ROC and promoting a pan-Chinese identity, ...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
Or this passage:
> As of the 2008 election of President Ma Ying-jeou, the KMT agreed to the One China principle, but defined it as led by [ROC] rather than [PRC].
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_unification#Rise_of_th...
(KMT/Pan-Blue are the biggest party historically and currently, however Pan-Green were a majority recently.)
Or this poll result: (2024)
Independence as soon as possible 3.8%
Maintain status quo, move toward independence 22.4%
Maintain status quo, decide at a later date 27.3%
Maintain status quo indefinitely 33.6%
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_independence_movement#O...
And since you also know that the taiwanese want to "maintain status quo", it's probably clear to you that they want to keep their full control, and not be under the rule of the CCP.
Which makes it really interesting, why you keep argueing for "one china".
That is irrelevant. The map is not the territory. They are two countries in reality; that is, they operate as two separate sovereign countries in every practical way, regardless of what legal fictions are maintained for political reasons.
This atlas is presumably supposed to be about reality, not about legal fictions.
(BTW: North Korea and South Korea officially claimed to be one country until very recently, and South Korea still does. But every map in the outside world shows them as two. Why should China and Taiwan be treated differently?)
It only looks like this from the West, where the support for independent Taiwan is much higher than in Taiwan itself (not to speak of PRC where it's non-existent.) People in Taiwan don't perceive China as a different country (the way that French perceive Germany for example) but rather as a different (unfortunate) regime over the same nation.
> This atlas is presumably supposed to be about reality, not about legal fictions.
With the current reality in east Ukraine/Georgia/Northern Cyprus/Israel-Palestine/Kosovo/etc.etc.etc., I'm not sure if it's ever possible to get a map that will satisfy everybody, as what is "legal fiction" to you might be "internationally recognised borders" for someone else.
I think this misses the point. It doesn't matter if 0% or 50% or 100% of people in Taiwan or anywhere else believe that Taiwan is legitimately independent. That has no bearing on whether it actually is, in practice.
An "Atlas of World History" should strive to portray who actually controls territory in the real world, regardless of whether that control is "recognized" or "legitimate". Otherwise it is an "Atlas of Political Thought" or "Atlas of International Law" or something else.
> With the current reality in east Ukraine/Georgia/Northern Cyprus/Israel-Palestine/Kosovo/etc.etc.etc.,
Yes exactly. For the same reasons, Crimea and various parts of East Ukraine should be labeled as part of Russia, East Jerusalem and places like Ari'el should be labeled as part of Israel, etc. This has nothing to do with whether I think any of those borders would be "legitimate" or "legal" or what percentage of the people who live there accept them.
Four — someone claiming something doesn’t make it true.
I am a firm believer in that good visualization gives you better data. You can probably get a lot of detail mapping of data in wikidata if you make a map that queries "things happening in BBX during these years)
This hides thousands of years of independent development in those regions—empires, and creates the false impression that they had no real history before Europe showed up.
It repeats an old colonial story where Europe is the main character and everyone else is treated as secondary.
For example, I'm from Latin America, and the most important empires in South America (Incas for example) were using writing systems based on threads and knots (called Khipu). Sadly, these records didn't survive. While Mesopotamia and Northern Africa were already using glyphs carved in Stone (and bones, and wood, etc). These had a much better chance of surviving.
Then, what happened, is that modern "europeans" (starting in 200BC, roman times) invested a lot of time to research and learn about History. This is something MIND BLOWING. Most civilizations didn't even care about their predecessors (aside from deity or folk tales). And that's why what we know today about Parthia or Greece comes mostly from European sources. Don't get me wrong, multiple civilizations had the concept of "early historians", especially Chinese and arabs. But not everything always survives.
* The Kingdom of Kush maintained *3,000 years of king lists*. * Ethiopian monasteries preserved *written chronicles in Ge’ez* for over a millennium. * Mali’s griots memorized *centuries of dynasty records* with such precision that griots from distant regions told the same histories word-for-word when Europeans finally documented them.
Yet when do these count as "real" history? Only after Europeans wrote them down? Only when archaeology "confirms" what griots already knew?
The map shows detailed Rome but blank Africa, despite these complex states existing for millennia. it's about whose preservation methods and developmental paths count as "real" history worth mapping.
And yes, there are a lot of historical artifacts spread out in the world. But how much WRITTEN and RECORDED history can you find? You can find a totem buried somewhere in the south of Argentina, so you know you had an advanced culture there. But can you name them? Does it have the ruler's name?
Nobody is arguing that there were advanced civilizations ASIDE from Mesopotamia, China and North Africa. But we have very little written records to name them, classify them, etc.
And, what does sub-saharan even have to do with anything here? Seems like a weird thing to bring up. The people of the Sudan (where Kush and Meroe, etc were located) are one of the blackest people on the planet, nobody is going to mistake them for Mediterranean people, as has been argued with Egypt, itself an African civilization that had strong links to other parts of Africa.
It's kind of funny. Point out that there were advanced civilizations, writing systems, and historical record-keeping in various parts of Africa, and the response for some people is, "ah, but that's not sub-saharan Africa", or, "but, those were not real Africans", etc, etc.
So, the definition of "real" Africa becomes: whatever seems to confirm your biases about what Africa is supposed to be, quite a circular definition.
Also smaller "cultures" which do not constitute states/kingdoms are shown in the map, albeit without color or borders.
But yeah. Evil Eurocentrism am I right.
The Kingdom of Kush existed for 3,000 years. Aksum controlled Red Sea trade. Great Zimbabwe built massive stone cities. Yet the map leaves them blank because they don't fit the Mesopotamian-Roman model of what states should look like.
Furthermore, we would have had much more records from non-european sources if many European explorers and colonialists had not gone on a rampage destroying whatever indigenous documents and history they could lay their hands on.
As a Latin American I’m sure you know about how the conquistadors destroyed written records.
But what can the creator of this tool do? Call it "partial atlas of history based on what we have left after 5000 years of wars"?
It is what it is, whoever built this atlas included EVERYTHING[0] known or possibly known. The result might be Eurocentric based on all the reasons stated above, but I don't attribute it to malice from the creator of the tool
[0] It's clearly not everything. There's knowledge of the Tehuelche people in my region (Patagonia, Argentina) for example that doesn't show up here.
Equating history with writing is a very anachronistic definition that was popular among Renaissance and early modern historians as a way of legitimizing their preference for classical scholarship over the "dark" middle ages. It's not a good rule of thumb for what is or isn't historical.
What I'm saying is there are records that have either been ignored, neglected, or destroyed.
In Mali alone there are millions of historical documents [1] that have not been suitable explored. The Meroitic [2] script that contains historical records is still poorly understood
The African map is strange. I scrolled until 1722 and it shows some isolated countries and the rest is white. They could do better. (I'm european - pale face)
So yes, the map reflects available documentation. But the very framework - organizing all human history around BC/CE - already embeds a European perspective. The bias isn't what the mapmaker included; it's that European systems became the unmarked "standard" for measuring when history happens. That's structural Eurocentrism: not intentional, but built into the tools we inherit.
Yes, he is:
>>> Yet this "world" history uses Europe's reference point [of BC/CE] as universal.
It wouldn't make sense to use any other than the Gregorian calendar for this map, and it also wouldn't make sense to mix different calendar systems.
> He is pointing out that is just one calendar among many […]
But it's not. The Gregorian calendar is the calendar in world wide use today. Giving dates in BC/CE is not an expression of Eurocentrism, it simply reflects reality.
> Yet this "world" history uses Europe's reference point [of BC/CE] as universal.
What in this sentence indicates he think is it wrong to use that calendar? He is saying it is NOT universal. What about that is hard to understand?
> The Gregorian calendar is the calendar in world wide use today.
Again, you are arguing with a straw-man. Please read my comment carefully again. I am not arguing this your statement.
As an analogy, the WWW is the dominant (probably virtually only) form of the internet in use today, but it is only one architecture. There were/can be others, but they failed to gain or maintain traction. A summary from Google:
> Besides Gopher, other historical internet systems and protocols existed before the World Wide Web, including Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS) and the Archie search engine. While the World Wide Web eventually surpassed them all, these systems provided different ways of discovering and navigating information online in the early 1990s.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1l3xl8x/events_fro...
I agree with others in this thread that this more probably "information-biased" than "eurocentric" on the part of the Atlas creator. Pretty sure they wish non-european history was easier to find and aggregate as it would make the project much more compelling (I certainly had this problem with https://landnotes.org/).
I am hoping LLMs will do a lot of good at bridging gaps and surfacing world historical information that didn't make it yet to centralized projects like Wikipedia.
It obviously only focuses on the Aztecs so hardly a deep dive on all there is to learn.
This is the type of visualization that would captivate me for hours on end on Encarta in my early teens. Granted, those were a bit more polished and engaging, but the right mix of edutainment was fascinating to my developing mind.
The world lost many of these learning experiences after Encarta went away. Wikipedia certainly has much more information and is an improvement in many ways, but it's sorely lacking this type of curated and interactive content. Information is much easier to digest when it's presented in formats beyond text and pictures. Encarta had all sorts of experiences like this, from quasi-3D environments to mini-games.
The early web was certainly a limiting factor in what could be displayed on it, but today it can deliver far richer experiences. Authors like Neal Agarwal, Bartosz Ciechanowski, Grant Sanderson, and to an extent platforms like brilliant.org, prove that this is possible. I just wish that the world's largest free encyclopedia also had this.
I'm sure you don't want the Iranians claiming ownership of the region due to whatever Cyrus and Darius would have conquered.
Meh.