[HN Gopher] OpenHistoricalMap
___________________________________________________________________
OpenHistoricalMap
Author : Tijdreiziger
Score : 329 points
Date : 2021-06-11 05:40 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.openhistoricalmap.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.openhistoricalmap.org)
| nickik wrote:
| Oh wow. I am literally slowly working on something like this as
| well. But my knowledge of mapping technology is very limited.
|
| My focus was actually much more on trying to use partly public
| data, and partly contributed data in order to 'render'
| information on top of such a map. My vision was basically to have
| all historically known people and there locations being visible
| on the map. Wikidata already has a nice start to this, but you
| would need a contributor model to flesh this idea out quite a bit
| more.
|
| Another step after that would be the movement of armies. This
| could be really interesting if you could see armies moving around
| at different times and getting closer to each other, or pass each
| other by.
|
| City population is another interesting thing. There is no easy
| way today to get a good estimate of what some city X population
| might have been at any particular period. That information is
| buried in all all over the place.
|
| There are many more ideas, but having his historical map is
| actually awesome for me, because that was the part that I know
| least about. So it should be an amazing piece of the puzzle.
|
| I will defiantly try to contribute to effort.
| MaXtreeM wrote:
| I am quite bad at history but quickly looking at central Europe
| this project seems to have some inaccuracies.
|
| - I couldn't find any mention of Prussia [0]
|
| - during years 1920-1938 the borders between Czechoslovakia and
| Poland are messing so it looks like it is a single country
|
| I am sure anyone can find what is missing/wrong with the history
| of their country. This is a community project after all so I am
| not surprised but based on Wayback machine this project started
| at least 7 years ago.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussia
| r34 wrote:
| I'm not an expert in history, but I think that Poland should
| reappear in 1918, but it's missing few more years on the map.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Huh? I opened it and immediately in the centre was "Konigreich
| Preussen"
| MaXtreeM wrote:
| I am sorry, I managed to find it but for some reason it
| dissapears after year 1818!
| notahacker wrote:
| Portugal - one of the oldest countries in the world -
| inexplicably not appearing until 1929 is one of the most
| jarring things
| PaulArchivist wrote:
| It tends more to be things which haven't been mapped yet rather
| than inaccuracies as such. Most mappers have concentrated on
| mapping their local town or city rather than national borders.
| See Kiev (https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/#map=16/50.4633/30.
| 5218&la...) and London (https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/#map=
| 15/51.5163/-0.0900&la...) for example. While the project may
| have been going a while, it was only last year that the time
| slider was introduced which made it properly functional as a
| historical map. At the moment there are still few mappers
| (including myself) but I get the impression that OHM is now
| beginning to develop more quickly!
| tda wrote:
| If this gets enough traction this could make historical maps so
| much more accessible. Instead of every historian writing their
| own magnum opus of a particular area and timespan, all the
| geographical information can be combined in a single system. Is
| there a system built in for keeping track of annotations/sources?
| How are debated topics/unresolved locations dealt with?
|
| What if different schools of thought exist for where something
| was in the past, could multiple hypothesized locations exist for
| a single object? Direct link with Wikipedia would also be useful
|
| Very nice project, hope it becomes as useful and detailed as the
| present day OSM
| an_opabinia wrote:
| There is already a super accessible presentation of history
| maps: Paradox games like Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron,
| etc. The games achieved what you're talking about already,
| there's already an old, large and very active community of
| modders across their games that make historical accuracy (or
| gameplay-favorable inaccuracy) changes. It's possible the mean
| Europa player, over all the games, individually spent more
| hours looking and interpreting the historical map in those
| games than anyone has ever spent looking at any Open Street Map
| property ever.
|
| If you're thinking about contributing to OSM History maybe
| consider EU4 instead. Maybe you think these are different
| things. I don't. One satisfies your curiosity (ie entertains
| you) a lot better than the other.
|
| Maybe though OSM History could be a place, like Wikipedia,
| where people could settle "territorial disputes." I don't know,
| that shit, wherever it appears, is a pretty toxic part of any
| community. I'm not 100% sure how Europa deals with it - you can
| download whatever mod you want, after all, it's your game. But
| my feeling is, most of this territorial dispute shit hardly
| affects the people talking about it at all, and the feelings of
| playing a video game and all that entails - positive feelings -
| are better than the negative ones you feel when you're pursuing
| what you believe is justice in a Wiki talk page or a Twitter
| flame war.
| philipov wrote:
| What API does Paradox offer for getting information out of
| their historical games?
| openhistmap wrote:
| I think this is a pretty key question that also applies to
| any effort by any other commercial provider. The detail in
| the historical models in EU4, any of Ubisoft's games, etc.,
| is fantastic. I'd love to see any of them make stripped-
| down versions of their geodata available through open data
| licensing. Maybe there's something we've missed in the EU4
| modding that could be of use? We'll take another look!
| koheripbal wrote:
| It would be fun if it had events/battles listed with dates.
| openhistmap wrote:
| Thanks, @tda!! That's a very kind and optimistic post. I think
| everyone in the OHM community is working with good intents to
| create a rich resource available for easy reuse and download.
|
| You hit the nail on the head about trying to combine various
| different geo/temporal efforts to provide greater context of
| world history.
|
| Our tagging system is like OSM's - very flexible - with all the
| strengths and weaknesses that offers. And, the tagging system
| has limitations that we're currently working through & around.
|
| One strength is that any object (node, way, relation in OSM-
| speak) can have multiple sources. e.g. source:1=url1,
| source:2=url2, etc.
|
| And, tagging areas as disupted=yes is pretty straightforward.
| bit.ly/disputedUSA
|
| We have yet to hit any sensitive areas of debate, but I imagine
| that will happen in the not too distant future. OHM's system is
| inherently vulnerable to vandalism, but the goal is to allow
| conflicting perspectives to coexist, as long as they are
| sourced.
|
| Wikipedia tags are supported & perhaps more importantly,
| Wikidata. Wikidata also supports OHM references. See:
| https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/relation/266127
| https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q159631
| Archelaos wrote:
| "What if different schools of thought exist for where something
| was in the past, could multiple hypothesized locations exist
| for a single object?"
|
| How to represent such things on a map can become quite complex
| very fast. A placename from an old document may refer to
| multiple locations, but these are mutually exclusive. The
| probability of attribution may vary in each case. Different
| scholars may disagree about these probabilities. Etc, etc.
| jobigoud wrote:
| The present-day map must have a system to deal with territorial
| disputes, maybe a similar system can be used.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| The current system from e.g. Google is pretty weak IMO, it's
| made to not piss the sides off, so if you load up Google Maps
| in Pakistan you see the disputed territories belonging to
| Pakistan, and in India you see them belonging to India. But
| if it's the stuff of history it would be interesting to
| display the areas overlapping each other, or to mark that
| there was active conflict over the territory at that point in
| time.
| ketzu wrote:
| > The current system from e.g. Google is pretty weak IMO,
| it's made to not piss the sides off,
|
| It is mostly respecting local regulation on the topic. If
| you are in a country that does not regulate the area you
| see the disputed areas marked.
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| Just wait till the flame wars on Taiwan and the Nine Dash
| Line
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Instead of every historian writing their own magnum opus of a
| particular area and timespan, all the geographical information
| can be combined in a single system.
|
| Isn't that true of all historical data? It seemed so obvious to
| me that professional historians would share data that I asked
| several professional historians what the standard format was.
| Nobody had even considered it, as of ~10 years ago.
|
| Obviously you can't structure all historical information, but
| you can do a lot of it: Location & time, other things present
| at that spot in space-time (people, events, weather, diseases,
| governments, etc. etc.), and sources. And then some
| unstructured fields, including one for analysis.
|
| I'm sure that's misguided, as I'm not an historian, but it sure
| seems like much more value could be extracted from research if
| it was accumulated and shared, and not stuck in someone's
| personal storage, and that it would save a lot of duplication
| of effort.
| openhistmap wrote:
| You're right on. I've asked many for shapefiles of the
| world's historical boundaries & some do exist, but are often
| encumbered by copyrights / licensing that add friction to
| sharing. Our goal is to have as much CC0 data as possible,
| although we have added some CC-BY-SA-NC data. All data is
| copyright / license marked at the object level, with no label
| defaulting to CC0.
| gumby wrote:
| > Instead of every historian writing their own magnum opus of a
| particular area and timespan, all the geographical information
| can be combined in a single system.
|
| The two options are not mutually exclusive: Dr Shmoe and Dr
| Kroe can write fascinating books on the movement of the border
| between Hannover and Braunschweig that mostly agree but
| disagree on a couple of fundamental points; both could be
| represented, and perhaps compared, via different views.
|
| For an existence proof: Wikipedia is able to have decent
| articles about (some) subjects where strong consensus does not
| exist.
| howolduis wrote:
| bruh, 90% of the countries aren't there when I toggle 2020, what
| kind of scam is this?
| Seb-C wrote:
| I hope this gets more contributors, as it could be quite useful.
|
| I wonder how difficult it would be to build some kind of
| `OpenHistoricalStreetView`. We certainly have enough historical
| photos to do something interesting.
| pomian wrote:
| We could add paintings too. Many were very accurate "street
| views".
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| My favourite historical map resource on the internet is the
| National Library of Scotland's georeferenced side-by-side viewer:
| https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=5&lat=56....
|
| View a variety of historical maps on the left, with the same area
| "now" on the right, with the pointer synced between the two sides
| so that you can trace roads, building outlines, etc.
| scoot wrote:
| Neat! On zooming in on the UK, I landed mostly by chance on
| Gatwick Airport, only to discover that it's built on the site
| of a former racecourse. A quick web search brought me to the
| Wikipedia page with a potted history of said racecourse, and
| how Gatwick has named various features after it. Fascinating.
|
| Also, don't miss the swipe view...
| eb0la wrote:
| Very cool idea.
|
| I remember borrowing Kinder & Hermann books when I was in high
| school. They were awesome (you can see them in the Internet
| Archive
| https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Kinder%2C+...
| ).
|
| Worth taking a look at it _in_paper_ ;-)
| matesz wrote:
| Switzerland didn't change it's boarders since 1800. Is this the
| main reason why they are the richest (or one of the richest)
| countries?
| pydry wrote:
| Partly. Its mountains form a natural border and it is rich
| partly because it is treated as a haven for stability.
| h4kor wrote:
| Being able to easily defend your territory and not
| participating in wars probably helps to build and maintain
| capital
| algo_cheese wrote:
| Around 1800 Switzerland was invaded by French armies so it's
| not really true.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland_in_the_Napoleonic_.
| ..
| eCa wrote:
| Yes, but that is almost a quarter of a millennium ago.
| julienreszka wrote:
| No I don't think so. Counterexample: Germany changed its
| borders all the time, still powerful and wealthy tho.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Plus another counterexample from the opposite side: Andorra
| hasn't changed its borders since 1278, but only became
| reasonably rich in the second half of the 20th century.
| Glavnokoman wrote:
| It is like 3 times less wealthy per capita compared to
| Switzerland. So this is rather a co-example.
| julienreszka wrote:
| Germany is 10 times the population of Switzerland
| Glavnokoman wrote:
| And? Is India a rich country?
| Glavnokoman wrote:
| Plus neutrality which it tries to sustain as much as its
| sovereignty allows.
| bumbada wrote:
| I don't think so. I have worked in the Germanic side of
| Switzerland before the pandemic and will go back after it.
|
| IMO the main reason is that Switzerland has no natural
| resources so for this reason it was not invaded. You go to
| Africa and see the same thing, the less resources a country
| has, the wealthier it is.
|
| Then you have Jews and protestant ethics in half the country
| that value work a lot. They welcome and support you if you are
| a good worker.
|
| Then you have cold Winters that develop indoor activities like
| reading or workshops. They used to sleep half of the year.
|
| But the most important thing of all, they don't have socialist
| or communist in power. It is a great thing that I can not vote,
| because the majority of workers that go there to work are
| leftist and will destroy the country in a few years if they
| could vote.
|
| Imagine that you take the better workers, teachers, and
| entrepreneurs in a country and exterminate them. That is what
| happened in Russia and China with the communist revolutions.
| The most lazy and envious, aggressive and worst workers became
| the bosses.
|
| That made people in those countries to literarily starve to
| death from incompetence and population to go down(Russia
| population was bigger than US of A at the start of the
| century). But most important, it was an inverse natural
| selection. The brightest and resourceful people disappeared
| from the genetic pool. And the culture destroyed excellence and
| hard work as a merit.
|
| In Switzerland, merit culture not only survives but prospers,
| because without natural resources, they don't have
| alternatives.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| Is anybody else getting changing data when zooming in and out?
| This might be a mobile issue but there are definitely some
| problems there.
| danuker wrote:
| I suspect the area is being actively edited, and generating the
| map tiles for all scales takes a while.
| ygra wrote:
| The same happens in OSM, to which this seems to be very
| similar, both in name and on a technical level.
| SahAssar wrote:
| It should be possible to import in some data using the wikidata
| "inception" [1] and "OpenStreetMap relation ID" [2] statements.
|
| [1] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P571
|
| [2] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P402
| openhistmap wrote:
| I would love that, but I'm not sure what GIS format data that
| would yield. Any thoughts?
| larusso wrote:
| Why do I have the urge to tap the satellite view button. Common
| you game developers from Flight Simulator. Given some references
| one could fake this really nice :)
|
| But joke aside. I think this is awesome. Does anyone know how
| accurate the borders are in the German area when changing years?
| mik09 wrote:
| not very related but i think our technology is at the brink of
| some actual psychohistory
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Nice initiative but sure it will cause many many user conflicts,
| especially for locations where the boundaries are disputed. I
| hope we don't see comment wars here in HN about different
| regions.
| mdiesel wrote:
| Borders are still disputed today, so any issues that are
| relevant would also exist in the OSM maps. I'd heard that
| Google shows differing borders depending on where you're
| viewing from, not sure if OSM do the same.
|
| Of course there are plenty of borders in history that are
| always going to be debated. Those are academic disputes though.
| Un1corn wrote:
| OSM is showing what's on the ground so there are no dotted
| lines like with Google Maps. For example both the Golan
| Heights and East Jerusalem will be shown as part of Israel
| because it is the de facto ruler of those areas.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| There are a few nice timelapses on youtube of borders of Europe
| changing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-2zaOhYlAM
|
| Fascinating stuff. There were some attempts with e.g. Yahoo's
| Geoplanet to take historical context into account. I know some
| people who are still working on that data set (which Yahoo
| released under a creative commons license):
| https://spelunker.whosonfirst.org/concordances/woe/
|
| I live near a building in Berlin that has a sign "this building
| used to be in a different country". Also, I live on the only
| street still intersected by the wall. It's Bergstrasse which is
| intersected by the wall memorial. I remember listening to the
| news announcements in the Netherlands when the wall fell when I
| was a teenager.
|
| Another interesting thing is that borders are kind of imprecise.
| We've only had GPS for a few decades and most maps predate the
| existence of that. Land surveillance to modern standards pretty
| much developed only in the last 200 years (e.g. Ordnance Survey
| in the UK is one of the older examples of an institute
| specializing in that). Post colonial dividing up of territory in
| e.g. Africa was done with rulers without too much regard for
| history, culture, or ethnical divisions. The border between the
| US and Canada is similar in some places. Also internal borders
| for some federal states are funny like that.
|
| Besides, stuff moves around on this planet by centimeters per
| year in some areas. The meridian does not actually run through
| the little monument they have in Greenwhich for that (by over
| 100m). It hasn't for a long time. Rivers, which are commonly used
| for borders, move as well. There are some minor border disputes
| all over Europe (and a few major ones) as well as occasional
| pragmatic agreements between e.g. Belgium and the Netherlands on
| how to administer certain regions. Baarle Nassau of cause being
| the most surreal example where we are talking exclaves, enclaves
| and enclaves containing enclaves, etc. Some houses cross borders
| and have entrances/exits in different countries. It's completely
| nuts.
| openhistmap wrote:
| We LOVE those youtube timelines. Unfortunately, you can't zoom
| in & you cannot hit pause or easily scrub back and forth.
|
| We're also big fans of WhosOnFirst!
| adflux wrote:
| This is really cool
| rntksi wrote:
| Immediately thought of Europa Universalis IV and all its
| expansions :-)
|
| However so much potential for abuse and misuses .. just think of
| all the border disputes currently countries are having and
| multiply those by all the years
| accurrent wrote:
| Whelps someone has labelled China as belonging to Goguryeo
| (Korea) at around 464AD...Unfortunately I have to sign in to edit
| the map...
| openhistmap wrote:
| Tell us more - is having to sign in to edit a barrier? Should
| we rethink that? (also, I've made a note to fix that... I
| believe that was from an old ThinkQuest dataset. TY!)
| vanous wrote:
| I have a relative who has been spending years collecting data
| from archives and building historical maps of Ostrava, a city in
| Czech republic [1]. He built nine (9) time based layers
| (1860-1940). The amount of time and work this takes is just
| incredible.
|
| He has been considering providing data to OHM, but obviously has
| not been convinced by this prospect yet, one of the reasons has
| been loss of control over his data, as there are academic
| institutions ready to snap this a put their name on it. It was
| already attempted.
|
| I can imagine there are more researchers like this and the
| results of their work, all the data, is fragmented somewhere out
| there... and possibly lost.
|
| 1: http://www.mapomol.cz
| publicola1990 wrote:
| Is this an open project where people can contribute to? There
| isn't much text on the page describing their approach.
| PaulArchivist wrote:
| Yes it is and yes you can! There is more information here:
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Historical_Map
| devill285 wrote:
| I will recommend to chceck https://www.oldmapsonline.org
| artur_makly wrote:
| This reminds me of the nascent stages of a very similar project I
| designed a few years ago[0], that sadly never was able to get
| traction (unrelated to the concept) ..but the idea at the time
| had a lot of vision and potential.
|
| Glad to see it reinvigorated especially in the age of
| misinformation and white-washed historical data.
|
| If the UI/UX, social-graph, and collab features evolve to a much
| more polished level, this could really attract a new generation
| of younger researchers who would really be able to scale it up.
|
| Here is a sample UI/UX [1] of what a well designed timeline could
| potentially look like.
|
| [0] https://www.design2dev.com/work/mosaic/ [1]
| https://www.design2dev.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/timeli...
| contingencies wrote:
| I have seen many issues with historical maps on Wikipedia, one of
| the worst offenders is
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Territories_of_Dynas...
| which is basically propaganda. We desperately need a new one with
| citations.
|
| I would suggest that, if various portions the vectors could cite
| evidence, it would be an excellent basis for historic vector maps
| on Wikipedia. Currently, this whole area is a shambles.
|
| Further, I recently learned some historical maps I had created
| with great effort for my Tang Dynasty text translation at
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Manshu were deleted by
| some Wikipedia policy-thumber who reckoned including low
| resolution satellite backgrounds to contextual maps was grounds
| for erasing them. You'd think being an open source project for
| academic caliber translations you'd be able to use, you know,
| open sources under academic fair use. My tolerance for idiots is
| truly at an all time low.
| openhistmap wrote:
| There's a lot of great work in Wikimedia commons, but I think
| there are 2 primary / very common issues: * Format - many of
| these maps are .svg or illustrator-created images with no
| projection information, which makes data extraction very
| difficult. This is why we're trying to share with GIS-formatted
| data, so people can do with it what they'd like. * Sourcing -
| very often, a map is depicted with a source of "own work".
| That, unfortunately, really isn't good enough & we're trying to
| source all objects in OHM. What's scary is that putting
| something in Wikimedia almost ensures wide propagation as
| "fact", even if it lacks a source. Here's an example... the
| base map is sourced, but where did this red line come from? It
| appears to be hand-drawn on a map... who drew it? How'd they
| get that outline?
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comancheria.jpg
| deepstack wrote:
| >I have seen many issues with historical maps on Wikipedia, one
| of the worst offenders is
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Territories_of_Dynas...
| which is basically propaganda. We desperately need a new one
| with citations.
|
| can you explain a bit more about that? Not too familiar with
| the background of Chinese map.
| contingencies wrote:
| The notion that there is a fixed line between cultures is
| itself a farce, but, historically the majority of such maps
| drawn for empires are written using the implied borders from
| latter-day interpretations of geography that was mentioned by
| an eventual victor as annexed. However, the reality on the
| ground is usually much different. In some cases, thousands of
| years different.
| ferdowsi wrote:
| This is a difficult thing to describe for any pre-modern
| polity, where vassalage and weak frontiers make it
| difficult to describe if a central power actually
| controlled a territory. The Ottoman Empire de-facto
| exercised little control its North African vassals, the
| Roman Empire had increasingly weak control over its
| frontiers due to migrations and incursions, etc.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Well this is a super awesome project!
|
| Can we talk about why the oceans are that sickly, Windows 95,
| color of green? It's kind of offputting..
| openhistmap wrote:
| Hey, dev is ongoing! What hex shade should it be? I agree, it
| needs to be better!!
| rob74 wrote:
| Cool project! Hope they get a lot of contributors - they are
| definitely going to need them, already in the default view I can
| see a lot of room for improvement: in most of Romania they still
| have the Roman/Greek names in 1850, Serbia is shown as "Servia"
| (as it was apparently called by the Romans?!) etc.
| mesbahamin wrote:
| There are some fun things to be found near modern day Seattle,
| WA.
| akavel wrote:
| Awesome idea! I was thinking about something like this too for a
| long time, though it's currently in a mental box labeled
| "probably not in this life" for me. As others in this thread
| mentioned, there are quite a few interesting challenges that
| would probably need some experiments how to resolve in the
| future, though I totally do think "starting small" from a
| somewhat simplified prototype, and then hopefully iterating, is
| most certainly the only possible way to do this.
| Summarizing/expanding on some challenges I've seen noted by
| others in this discussion, and adding "a few" of mine that I
| randomly pondered sometimes (while not even being a history
| buff):
|
| * although (IIRC according to something I've read recently) land
| surveying was practised in established "countries" since at least
| babylonian times, I believe there's quite a few challenges to the
| notion of "firm and precise borders"; going kinda back in time,
| this can include:
|
| - access to precise survey data might not be easy even in modern
| day, with this getting harder and harder + lines more and more
| blurry the further we go into the past;
|
| - as noted by others, some borders and territory ownership is
| heavily disputed even in the modern day;
|
| - during wars, this gets even more unclear kinda by definition (a
| lot of "we control this territory" can change as frequently as
| many times a day, and is anyway often vaguely somewhere on a
| spectrum between "fact" and "wishful thinking"); [as a side note,
| I was kinda thinking it would be even more awesomesauce to show
| army movements and other population data on such a historical map
| as well, however this adds a whole new universe of complexity];
|
| - a notable subcase of the above points being "deep state"
| situations, where the official country's officials might have a
| varying (sometimes tiny or none at all) authority over some parts
| of their territory, controlled e.g. by organised crime;
|
| - in less "organised" countries (incl. more
| "primitive/aboriginal" ones), I suspect land survey might
| sometimes not exist at all; and/or, it may be based on some
| rather different cultural notions of "ownership" and "borders";
|
| - in fact, AFAIU, the notion of "countries" is kinda something
| that is not a given at all historically; I believe throughout
| history something resembling a feudal model (or a kingdom) is
| much more prevalent, i.e. "I [a king] claim to be owner of this
| land", where I would imagine it's much too easy to make such
| claims; and then, with all what I wrote above, even looking at
| "de facto" ownership and fairly "organised" kingdoms, based on
| just some pop-historical literature I believe especially the
| closer you got to a "border" between the kingdoms, the more it
| resembled permanent "war territory", with "quick border raids"
| etc. and local skirmishes being so obvious, that nobody could
| even imagine it might look different in the 20th+ century (with
| things like The Chinese Wall and Hadrian's Wall being kinda
| monuments to that reality); for another possibly nonobvious
| organisation model from modern point of view, see ancient Greek
| city-states;
|
| * time tracking being very different (e.g. "king X's Nth year of
| rule") and sometimes tricky to map to a universal timeline, such
| as the "AD/BC" (a.k.a. "CE/BCE") scheme (e.g. can we pinpoint the
| start of "king X"'s rule based on available sources? was it even
| a real king or is it purely a mythical figure? do all the sources
| claim the same X and N?);
|
| * as others wrote, natural land borders & shapes definitely moved
| & changed over time; this can include but is not limited to:
|
| - rivers (see other comments); artificial islands; volcano
| islands; volcano "mountains"; dams; floods (incl. permanent
| floods into land-locked depressions); drying lakes/seas (see e.g.
| Dead Sea, Caspian Sea);
|
| - ice, incl. the "ice ages"; maybe a stretch case, but IIRC the
| Baltic Sea is known to have frozen in historical times, to the
| extent that inn(s) for travelers crossing it over the ice were
| built on that surface [though "citation needed", i.e. I totally
| did _not_ fact-check it];
|
| - go far enough in time, and _continental drift_ itself becomes
| clearly apparent; this means not just broken landmass continuity
| or new landmass connections, but also _new mountains_ (which
| often tend to become natural borders).
|
| And that's just off the top of my head ;D I think stuff like this
| makes such a project super interesting and novel! :)
| openhistmap wrote:
| These are all great questions - you've clearly thought this
| through. Please join up and help us solve them!
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| The idea is nice, but so many inaccuracies. For the default
| period of 1800 to 2021 more than half of the European countries
| are missing.
| openhistmap wrote:
| Yep - we've just started getting some traction. I would expect
| that we'll have Europe from 1800-2021 done within a few months.
| Perhaps you would like to join in?
|
| Separately, missing data is different from inaccurate data, no?
| I'm sure we have many inaccuracies, as well, but we're working
| to fix those.
| brylie wrote:
| OpenStreetMap is community maintained so will tend to change
| and improve with contribution of time:
|
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Historical_Map/OHM_...
| rendall wrote:
| Finland became independent from Russia in 1917. This map has it
| at 1943.
| julienreszka wrote:
| Why does this start at 1800?
| sellyme wrote:
| It doesn't. That's an input field, you can edit it and go back
| to -4000.
| julienreszka wrote:
| You are correct, The UI doesn't show it very clearly tho.
| howolduis wrote:
| the ui shows false information when u pick a modern date
| omgtehlion wrote:
| Well, currently the data really starts at 1800 though. For
| earlier dates data is filled very sparingly, that's why, I
| suppose, it defaults to 1800.
| timeon wrote:
| Also 1800s has good coverage of sources. Like this one in
| Europe: https://maps.arcanum.com/en/ (actually this one is
| probably licensed - but some of those maps have public
| domain version).
| zucked wrote:
| Current-day Door County, Wisconsin has existed since well before
| this map begins, but shows as Lake Michigan. So, there's that.
| dddw wrote:
| Being Dutch and a history-buff, I have one mayor gripe with
| historical maps, that sees land as 'moving lines' on a fixed map.
| When I look at a historical maps (also in books), I often see the
| Netherlands represented in it's current form, i.e. containing
| land that is not even 50 years old, being prestent hundreds or
| even thousands of years. I get that it is an intricate history,
| and maybe too much effort in some cases, but please at least
| remove flevoland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flevoland
| leokennis wrote:
| Have a look at https://www.topotijdreis.nl, it's a fantastic
| resource on the national and hyperlocal level.
| fjfaase wrote:
| I personally also find https://hisgis.nl/ an interesting
| resource, especially if you want to know about the 1832
| kadaster maps, which are far more detailed that the maps that
| topotijdreis shows of that period. I do not know if this is
| available for the whole of the Netherlands, but the maps of
| Overijssel are available.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I live in the Fens in England and noticed the same thing. You
| can set it back 1000 years and not only is the Fens still
| drained, there are artificial drainage channels that weren't
| dug out for another 600 years. It seems an assumption has been
| made that rivers and coastlines don't change over time but it's
| so far from true! For me it's one of the most interesting, and
| scary, things when looking at old maps. Does the data model
| support changing natural features like rivers and coastlines?
| PaulArchivist wrote:
| Yes any feature as far as I'm aware can have a start date and
| end date so can show the changes over time. As can be seen in
| London (https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/#map=16/51.5108/-0.
| 1086&la...) where the shape of the river changed when the
| Embankment was built in 1869. As far as I'm aware there is no
| reason why changing coastlines couldn't be mapped, though it
| is a lot of work to draw in a long length of coastline.
| gpvos wrote:
| I just added a start-date to a canal, so apparently yes.
| tda wrote:
| It seems like this is adding some vectors on a gridded base
| map. But OSM has every object in a vector form, also coastlines
| etc. So I don't think there is a technical reason why
| coastlines would have to be fixed for a historical map. On the
| timescale of ages and millennia, rivers in delta planes are
| also usually not very static.
| openhistmap wrote:
| Well... coastlines are handled in a deep, dark, arcane part
| of OSM planet and data processing, but you're right. Rivers,
| on the other hand should be straightforward to change. We'll
| have some cleaned up examples in the near future.
| rob74 wrote:
| Not only deltas, any river meandering over any plain will
| change its course pretty "quickly" (which creates problems if
| such a river is defined as the border between two countries
| BTW)
| maze-le wrote:
| It's true, and it is not just a Dutch problem. Basically all
| major river systems change throughout the centuries: meandering
| arms evolve and others get cut off; river deltas grow and
| change shape and of course human activity shapes the landscape
| (canals, irrigation, drainage of swamps and floodplains etc.).
| The ancient city of Eridu for example was a coastal city around
| 5000BC and today lies hundreds of km inland.
| MarcScott wrote:
| I've recently been thinking about this with regards to borders.
| There are plenty of borders around the world that rely on
| rivers as a boundary, but river's aren't static, and meanders
| shift all the time.
|
| Of particular interest to me was the England/Scotland border,
| as I was visiting the area, and noticing that it doesn't always
| follow the path of the river Tweed.
|
| When a river is a border, that is by nature always changing,
| how do countries decide which bit of land/islands are
| sovereign?
|
| https://twitter.com/Coding2Learn/status/1397595858632388608
| [deleted]
| breck wrote:
| Love the idea. Just made a note to self to try and add cape cod
| canal data, as I just checked and it has the canal there far
| before it actually was dug.
| hahamaster wrote:
| They published it waay too early. The quality is abysmal.
| howolduis wrote:
| +1
|
| i dont know why they published this when u cant even see the US
| in 2020
| timeon wrote:
| Probably, like openstreetmap.org, the page may be intended
| mostly for editors.
| openhistmap wrote:
| If we didn't publish it, how would we attract helpers?
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Neat! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret
| maze-le wrote:
| This is also a great resource for a project like this:
| https://www.oldmapsonline.org/
|
| These are mainly links to georeferenced raster images and
| databases, not vectors / OSM data. But, still -- I've already
| spent hours browsing old maps of my home city. For anyone
| interested in contributing to this project, oldmapsonline might
| be a great reference.
| HighChaparral wrote:
| For the UK, the National Library of Scotland's historical maps
| are a fantastic resource:
|
| https://maps.nls.uk/
|
| Ireland's Ordnance Survey also has some good historical
| resources:
|
| https://www.osi.ie/products/professional-mapping/historical-...
| larusso wrote:
| This is cool. For my hometown Berlin I love to browse this map
| https://1928.tagesspiegel.de/ it shows Berlin in 1928 and most
| areas are still the same.
| maze-le wrote:
| Yeah, it's very intersting indeed. Roads and street layouts
| usually don't change that much over the centuries -- they get
| integrated and amended, but seldom disappear. I was pretty
| amazed to recognize the street layout of Leipzig in the
| 1740ies: https://biblio.unibe.ch/web-
| apps/maps/zoomify.php?pic=Ryh_53...
| aembleton wrote:
| Looks like they've added a start date and end date field to
| existing features of OSM. Couldn't this just be fed back into the
| existing OSM database?
|
| We could add dates when pubs opened. Then when they shut we can
| add their closing dates; adding to the historical record and they
| could then be removed from the OSM map.
| imrejonk wrote:
| Cool project! Too bad there's not much detail in these maps. The
| Dutch land registry and national mapping agency maintains a
| website with highly detailed, historical maps of the Netherlands
| that go back to 1815: https://topotijdreis.nl/
| openhistmap wrote:
| :) We've gotta start somewhere! ;) Please join in & help out!
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| Oh, nice. Setting the date to 1800 and looking at Boston shows
| the "pre-fill" coastline, and even the fort at Boston Neck. No
| roads, though, and Logan Airport's land wasn't filled in in 1825,
| but it _is_ editable.
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