[HN Gopher] Timemap.org - Interactive Map of History
___________________________________________________________________
Timemap.org - Interactive Map of History
Author : agilek
Score : 1202 points
Date : 2024-12-12 09:12 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.oldmapsonline.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.oldmapsonline.org)
| petargyurov wrote:
| Oh my god, I've been wanting to create something like this for a
| while.
|
| Gonna play around with this and report back! Looks amazing so
| far.
| t8sr wrote:
| This is amazing, but crashes with a 500 every 30 seconds.
| bibelo wrote:
| Love the concept Clean and clear design
|
| Slider does not work though
| buzzardbait wrote:
| Works for me
| egorfine wrote:
| This is incredibly educational.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| The dates and sovereignties seem in order, but the map is modern
| no matter how far you go back. The boundaries shift, but the
| coastline remains in its 2024 state. This means historical seas
| are missing, and present-day polders are present in the middle
| ages, etc.
| bigtones wrote:
| You can change maps to many older maps under the "Explore Maps"
| option on the home page of the site. it seems you can either
| explore maps or history, but not both at the same time.
| iammjm wrote:
| Very cool and works well (Edge 64-bit 131.0.2903.86 / win10)
| k1kingy wrote:
| For New Zealand in particular, the flags that are used through
| history are wildly inaccurate. It's missing the initial flag used
| before the Union Jack was officially adopted. And the signalling
| flag that is on there between 1907-1947 was never an official
| flag and was only kind of used between 1899-1902 before the
| current flag (Union Jack in the corner with the red Southern
| Cross stars on a blue background) was adopted in 1902.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Apparently nothing happened in Australia before 1788 too.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| I'm mad that Victoria isn't considered independent of New
| South Wales for 50 years before federation.
| soco wrote:
| Does it work in Firefox? Not here...
|
| Suggestion 1: you could show the name of bigger entities also in
| the corners of the screen - now you must scroll up to Italy to
| see that the green region is the Roman empire.
|
| Suggestion 2: I expected to be able to drag the timeline left and
| right. Dragging the cursor over the screen edge for the next time
| period makes you unwillingly jump a few hundred years.
| k1kingy wrote:
| Working fine for me on FF. Once or twice the timeline stops
| working, but clicking around a bit brings it back.
| aembleton wrote:
| It does here. FF 133 on OSX
| someothherguyy wrote:
| Works in larger resolution for me fine, issues on smaller
| viewports.
| speckx wrote:
| Works fine in FF on Fedora.
| h1fra wrote:
| Very nice. I wish cities' names changed with the period (and
| disappear when they were not even a thing)
| gus_massa wrote:
| They may appear as a "ghost", or perhaps a "premonition". I may
| be useful to compare the locations.
| mavhc wrote:
| https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/ is the OSM like version
| klokan wrote:
| The TimeMap is in fact loading the data from OpenHistoricalMap
| on the deep zoomlevels (streets) so if you edit
| OpenHistoricalMap roads and houses it will be displayed there.
|
| See Lille for example - and play with timeline here:
|
| https://www.oldmapsonline.org/en/history/regions#position=13...
|
| You will see directly how the town center has developed,
| fortifications, railways or highway... damn cool! :-)
| okok3857 wrote:
| I don't see mention of OHM anywhere within TimeMap, is there
| something I'm missing? Is there a page about where the
| historical data comes from for the map?
| uneekname wrote:
| I love OHM! Some places are impressively well-mapped, for
| example NYC.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| All the nitpicking here is insane. Can we all just appreciate the
| work that went into this?
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| History is by definition nitpicking. History without nits
| picked is called "ideology" or "myth".
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Call me crazy but I've never seen 'nitpicking' in the
| definition of history: https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/history
| oskarkk wrote:
| GP meant that researching history necessitates doubting
| every claim, and never taking what any historical source
| says at face value.
| egorfine wrote:
| Imagine you are holding a very, very nicely done history
| textbook. Excellent illustrations made with love, excellent
| typeface, high quality print, packaging, etc.
|
| Except it's all totally wrong.
|
| Could you appreciate the work that went into this?
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Is it really "all totally wrong"?
| egorfine wrote:
| Not totally but I have noticed some glaring inconsistencies
| red1reaper wrote:
| Yes, I could appreciate it.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Feel free to participate if you feel that strongly about it:
| https://www.oldmapsonline.org/en/community
| elaus wrote:
| I'm also puzzled by many of the comments that are (for HN
| standards) exceptionally angry and dismissive.
|
| Yeah, apparently the data is incomplete and there are some
| errors/disputes. But that will always be the case when
| processing huge amounts of data in a way that's never done
| before. I'd hope we could provide more helpful feedback (what
| _exactly_ is incorrect and what is the source of the correct
| information).
|
| Edit: upon closer inspection I found many of the comments
| originating from the same users, so maybe it's just a very
| passionate topic for a small but vocal group.
| btiwaree wrote:
| love this! Works well in FF 133.0 (aarch64).
| joren- wrote:
| Perhaps also of interest: A more curated example of a local
| initiative can be found here: https://kaart.gentgemapt.be/. This
| combines historical maps of a city in Belgium with information on
| local heritage.
| jalopy wrote:
| This is awesome. Love this idea. What a great way to make history
| more alive. I've only spent ~30s with it so far but I hope to
| find ways to contribute to it (content and code/different
| visualizations)
| jalopy wrote:
| Digging in a bit more: Love this explainer of how it's done -
| https://www.maptiler.com/story/oldmapsonline/
| iefbr14 wrote:
| Here is a nice one of the Netherlands.
| https://www.topotijdreis.nl
| carderne wrote:
| There's a great big coffee table version of this [1]. As always
| though, I wish there were a way to show not just which "nation"
| ostensibly controlled an area, but what _people_ were actually
| there: what languages, cultures and gods actually held sway in
| each of these areas and times.
|
| [1] https://www.dk.com/uk/book/9780241226148-history-of-the-
| worl...
| WillAdams wrote:
| Arguably the ultimate commentary on that aspect of history and
| politics is to take T.E. Lawrence's original map showing his
| suggestion for dividing up the Middle East based on linguistic
| groupings and factional differences and religious factions and
| interactions and to then overlay it with any more recent map.
| stogot wrote:
| Do you have a link?
| WillAdams wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/2gb4v6/te_lawrenc
| e...
| sofixa wrote:
| > As always though, I wish there were a way to show not just
| which "nation" ostensibly controlled an area, but what _people_
| were actually there: what languages, cultures and gods actually
| held sway in each of these areas and times
|
| That is pretty hard to do, because nationalism wasn't really a
| thing before the 19th century in Europe.
|
| So how do you identify 18th century people living in Wallonia
| under the HRE or Netherlands, speaking French and being
| Catholic? What are they? How would they identify themselves? Or
| people born in Thessaloniki/Salonika/Solun in the Byzantine
| Empire in the 9th century, being Orthodox and Slav? Or people
| speaking Polish but considering themselves German in post-WWI
| disputed territories? Or Baltic Germans living in Russia for
| generations? Or the family in Macedonia where 3 brothers
| considered themselves Bulgarian, Greek and Serbian
| respectively.
|
| Depending on the point in time, locality and even individuals,
| people would identify with their religion, main language, local
| area, monarch, nation state first. Or a combination of all of
| the above. How would you represent that sort of wild variety on
| a 2D map?
| carderne wrote:
| That's kind of my point. That's the interesting stuff (the
| fact that Macedonia at some point nominally controlled
| Kyrgyzstan is much less interesting imo) but it's much too
| complex (and unrecorded) to convey in a satisfying way.
| sofixa wrote:
| And it was rarely clear enough on the ground, let alone in
| the little available data. Just in the first quarter of the
| 20th century there were a ton of conflicts all over Europe
| to try to clarify borders based on different
| interpretations of identity based on
| culture/religion/language/history.
| WillAdams wrote:
| A notable observation from a lecture which touched on
| linguistics I attended:
|
| >Europe was once linguistically a borderless continuum of
| languages which gradually transitioned from Romance
| languages in the south to the Germanic languages in the
| north.
|
| (that is a rough paraphrasing from uncertain organic
| memory)
|
| This a bit facetious, and greatly simplified (the actual
| discussion in the lecture was far more nuanced), but it
| does speak to linguistic archaeology in an interesting
| way --- two notable books on this:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1831667.The_Horse_the
| _Wh...
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/166433.Empires_of_the
| _Wo...
| carderne wrote:
| I enjoyed Empires of the Word, will have a look at the
| other book you recommend.
| sofixa wrote:
| > >Europe was once linguistically a borderless continuum
| of languages which gradually transitioned from Romance
| languages in the south to the Germanic languages in the
| north.
|
| Eh, not really true. Not only is that missing slavic
| languages, there are edge cases like Romania and Albania,
| which are surrounded by Slavic speakers. There's also
| Greece, and even more wild, Hungary which is from an
| entirely separate language family alltogether.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Or Basque...
| WillAdams wrote:
| That (and Basque) were the complications I noted as
| simplified out.
| concordDance wrote:
| One thing you could do is use different axes. A two-color
| pattern where the pattern would be religion, the hue of one
| color language, the other family structure, etc.
| strogonoff wrote:
| I would love if historical maps at least qualified what they
| show and what they don't show.
|
| In a sense, all of the countries today have more in common with
| each other than with a given unique culture they subsumed (or
| in some cases annihilated). Putting all focus on separating the
| former and largely ignoring the latter is a narrow take on the
| meaning of "history", and a more specific term (perhaps
| "political history") seems more fitting.
|
| For example, Russia did not naturally expand into a vacant spot
| eastward, despite resources such as Timemap.org perpetuating an
| image of peacefully walking into vast empty lands rather than
| annexing with a heavy dose of brutality, deadly smallpox,
| forced conversion to Christianity, and just plain old mass
| murder the territories where a range of cultures (Yakuts,
| Nenets, etc.) lived for centuries prior to that (or to Russia
| actually existing as such for that matter).
| MapNavTom wrote:
| You can vote for TimeMap on Product Hunt today:
| https://www.producthunt.com/posts/timemap
| MiklerGM wrote:
| Cool, I wish the project all the best! Making an interactive
| historical atlas is a great idea but the path is not an easy one.
|
| We did a similar project and closed it about 5 years ago
| https://maps.chron.ist/
|
| Had multiple iterations, and put a lot of effort into finding and
| drawing the maps. Later we found some support from the community
| and they promised to provide us with verifiable and trusted map
| sources...
|
| The source code is available here https://github.com/chronhq
| dbspin wrote:
| It's fascinating to see how much more (and more accurate) data
| your project comprised, but how much better the interface is
| for this one. Perhaps they can leverage the data you collected
| for a best of both worlds approach.
| klokan wrote:
| Wow - have not seen this one yet. Looks great!
| k0ns0l wrote:
| Wow, this is awesome!
| PerseusLynx wrote:
| I have been looking for a map like this for a while and even
| considered creating one. Really nice job! I cannot verify the
| actual historical accuracy but it looks great.
| loughnane wrote:
| Love it. One suggestion is to have cities only appear when they
| were founded. Looking at Ireland it felt off seeing limerick
| Dublin and cork in 4000 bc.
| jl6 wrote:
| How cool would it be if the timeline could switch to a log scale
| and show prehistory too, with morphing continent shapes?
| nashashmi wrote:
| Prehistory is less certain. And doesn't fall in category of
| history of people which I think this map is meant to show.
| keithalewis wrote:
| And, like, a LARPing mode I could use while sitting in my mom's
| basement that would automagically post every brain fart I had
| to HN. That would be totally cool!
| Bengalilol wrote:
| Amazing initiative ! I see that recent 'changes' to some
| territories are not taken into account. I bet this is because you
| take the history path with global consensus. Great work !
| egorfine wrote:
| How beautiful is this project exactly if it presents quite an
| inaccurate data?
|
| I'm not talking about minute details.
|
| For instance, lookup wikipedia for "Grand Duchy of Lithuania" and
| note the active years of that state in all its different phases.
| Then compare with what this map shows.
| perfunctory wrote:
| Could you give an example? Like a specific year when the map is
| not accurate?
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Lots of things are missing. The kingdom of Frisia (6th to 8th
| century CE) is completely absent.
| ivan4th wrote:
| Urartu is missing as well:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urartu
| marcusverus wrote:
| Similar to geacron.com--love it! Bookmarked.
| CrociDB wrote:
| Thanks, I just spent two hours exploring the history of Europe
| while I should really be working.
| klokan wrote:
| Yeh. We have made it... in such case the project has
| successfully addictive UX :-)
| WillAdams wrote:
| It is surprisingly difficult to study history chronologically
| when one gets beyond the scope of a given text/item due to
| overlap.
|
| When I was still reading to my children in the evening, after
| running through all the standard texts (Narnia, _The Hobbit_,
| _The Lord of the Rings_, Susan Cooper's _The Dark is Rising_, H.
| Beam Piper's _Little Fuzzy_, &c.), I decided I wanted to read
| biographies to them, in chronological order, starting in as far
| back in history as was possible --- that was a surprisingly
| difficult list to put together (arguably because I missed texts
| such as: _Isaac Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and
| Technology: The Lives and Achievements of 1195 Great Scientists
| from Ancient Times to the Present Chronologically Arranged_), so
| we did a dry run of just American Presidents --- this worked
| quite well, and I found it expedient to read an "adult" biography
| to pair with a children's one so as to anticipate and answer
| questions which came up during the reading. Unfortunately, my
| wife's job schedule changed and we stopped this at Truman, but it
| was very helpful in improving my understanding of the ebb-and-
| flow of American history.
|
| EDIT:
|
| Interestingly, this has been posted about here in the past on
| multiple occasions, but none of them yielded any prior discussion
| AFAICT:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=oldmapsonline.org
|
| It would be really interesting to see this paired with a dataset
| such as:
|
| https://www.explorehere.app/
|
| From: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42381612
| leobg wrote:
| Asimov was a machine. What did he not write about? Materials,
| space, science & exploration, physics, the Bible.
|
| They say Goethe was one of the last people in history who was
| still able to understand everything that was known up to then.
| It seems to me Asimov was as close to that as possible 200
| years later.
|
| Anyone here know a writer of our time who can match that?
| WillAdams wrote:
| Yeah, I'm finishing up a compleat collection of J.R.R.
| Tolkien's writings, and am probably going to collect (and
| read/re-read) all of Isaac Asimov's non-fiction.
|
| There are at least five books with the (partial) title _The
| Last Man Who Knew Everything_ about:
|
| - Leibniz https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15770928-the-
| last-man-wh...
|
| - Athanasius Kircher https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1191
| 31.Athanasius_Kirche...
|
| - Thomas Young https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/763029.The
| _Last_Man_Who_...
|
| - Joseph Leidy
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/119125.Joseph_Leidy
|
| - Enrico Fermi
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34746094-the-last-man-
| wh...
|
| Maybe instead I'll start with those biographies...
|
| surprised Sir Francis Bacon wasn't described thus....
| pauldelany wrote:
| Could be wrong, but think it was Gauss, not Goethe.
| codethief wrote:
| I have always wondered whether anyone had ever put together a
| chronological list of maps of the world, and wow, it's even
| better than I imagined!
| jaysonelliot wrote:
| Excellent UI and very fun to explore, although North America is
| conspicuously blank before 1607. Hopefully more sources can be
| added to this to fill that out.
| klokan wrote:
| Thanks. Great to hear that you like the user interface...
|
| It is indeed super hard to collect or create better data. We
| were considering cooperation with indigenous lands non-profit
| https://native-land.ca/ that would be amazing! Do you know of a
| better source?
|
| If you have tips for how to improve or data - please - post it
| via "Feebdack" button on the edge of the website for area and
| selected time...
|
| To make this project well is super hard.
| ks2048 wrote:
| Wikipedia has plenty of good information. I left this link in
| another comment, but for example,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kings_of_Copan
| SamBam wrote:
| I spent forever trying to drag the year slider, until I realized
| it wasn't a slider but a text box.
| mdavid626 wrote:
| You can drag the red dot on the timeline.
| klokan wrote:
| Hi HN! I'm Klokan, one of the creators of TimeMap. It's exciting
| to see this project here -- thank you for the interest and
| support!
|
| We just launched TimeMap on Product Hunt:
| https://www.producthunt.com/posts/timemap If you find what we're
| building valuable, an UPVOTE there would mean a lot.
|
| Stanford University recently hosted an event to introduce TimeMap
| to the world, which you can check out here:
|
| * Recording on YouTube:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZspMtwYI98
|
| * Event page: https://events.stanford.edu/event/the-future-of-
| history-disc...
|
| The talk dives into how TimeMap was built, including our use of
| Linked Data, OpenHistoricalMaps, LLM pre-processing, indexing
| algorithms, and more. It also highlights amazing partner projects
| like Pelagios, TimeMachine, and our amazing partner institutions
| such as the David Rumsey Map Collection, British Library, ETH
| Zurich and many others.
|
| TimeMap has been a dream project of mine for years -- I'm
| thrilled to see it coming to life and would love to hear your
| thoughts or feedback!
|
| For context: I'm also the founder of OpenMapTiles.org, a
| MapLibre.org board member, author of GDAL2Tiles, and contributor
| to other open-source projects. Currently, I'm serving as the CEO
| of MapTiler.com.
|
| Looking forward to the discussion, and thank you for taking the
| time to check this out!
| egorfine wrote:
| Hi! It's done beautifully but there are some...
| inconsistencies.
|
| Is there a process to provide feedback and correct errors on
| the map?
| klokan wrote:
| Yes! Please just use the "Feedback" button on the side of the
| interface - after you zoom the map and select time - then you
| can annotate, and it gives us most relevant context to your
| feedback
| egorfine wrote:
| Cool!
|
| If I look up the "Grand Duchy of Lithuania" on wikipedia,
| the years for the state do not match the data on the map.
| Is it because the data is disputed, or Wikipedia is wrong
| or there is a bug on the Timemap?
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Where is the Feedback button ? It is not shown in my map.
|
| There is a mistake, The "Northern" is missing from the
| Republic of Northern Macedonia.
| ikurei wrote:
| The map doesn't go that close to the present.
|
| "Northern" was added to the name in 2019, before it was
| just Republic of Macedonia.
|
| > "The Prespa agreement of June 2018 saw the country
| change its name to the "Republic of North Macedonia"
| eight months later." -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Macedonia
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| The UN recognised name before the Prespa agreement was
| "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_naming_dispute
| zamadatix wrote:
| This user does seem to be correct despite the (at least
| current) reception of their report, e.g. see https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Member_states_of_...
|
| I agree it probably makes sense for the map to use UN
| recognized names of the time for times the UN was around
| and had recognized names for. Whether or not it's the
| absolute best answer in a given situation... it at least
| provides a definitive source to defer to for the modern
| period where the most debates might come from. For more
| historic names other methods need to be used and blended
| to the modern names which is sure to be a treat of user
| debate :).
| bonoboTP wrote:
| That was not a "name" but a description.
| mcswell wrote:
| I don't see the "Feedback" button. I'm using the Vivaldi
| browser (based on Chromium, I think).
|
| Most of the place names are clickable, with the notable
| exception of Israel (both Judah and Samariah) around 900
| BC, and for Israel (the united monarchy) around 1000 BC.
| The mouse cursor changes shape, but nothing happens if you
| already have the Wikipedia panel open; if it's not already
| open, you get a blank panel. Broken link?
|
| Israel/Samaria should probably point to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Israel_(Samaria),
| Judah to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Judah,
| Israel/united to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_I
| srael_(united_mona....
| zamadatix wrote:
| uBlock Origin hid the feedback button for me. It's
| possible a similar extension or built in blocking
| functionality in Vivaldi may be doing the same to you.
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| I can second this. This problem happens on Firefox as
| well.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Is it possible to show contested territories? Ex Oregon
| territory/British Columbia
| BehindBlueEyes wrote:
| This would be a very important feature to me! Very
| interesting to understand the dynamics of it, before and
| after changes, how long areas were contested for etc.
| oldmapgallery wrote:
| Great freaking work. Have been waiting for someone to do
| something like this for years.
|
| We also would have some inputs on some of the short-lived
| territories in the U.S. West that were important and had a
| role in later regional development. How much do we need to
| substantiate the addition of a specific territory to the
| project? Aside from the "lost state of Franklin", there
| were territories like Jefferson/Colona, Huron, Lincoln,
| Shoshone and a number of others that pop up from the late
| 1850's up to the 1890's.
| seb1204 wrote:
| Will such feedback lead to improvements in your own hidden
| data or https://www.openhistoricalmap.org or both?
| singularity2001 wrote:
| "inconsistencies" that's a friendly way to put it. The data
| is severely lacking for the world before the bronze age
| collapse. Upside: it can only get better over time.
| seb1204 wrote:
| Indeed, any contribution to
| https://www.openhistoricalmap.org is welcome.
| grahamj wrote:
| Yes I'd like to report the error of Taiwan being labeled
| "Republic of China"
| hosh wrote:
| That is in dispute and depends on which party is in power,
| by the year. Until general elections were opened up in the
| late 80s, it was definitely the Republic of China.
| Trmpos wrote:
| Which party in power ever changed the constitutional
| name? It's always been the Republic of China.
| hosh wrote:
| The Democratic Progressive Party led coalition would
| change the name on the passport the government issues
| when it is in power. It would revert back when the
| Koumingtang led coalition comes back into power. It falls
| in line with what the constituents want, and it isn't as
| if opinions of the citizens are uniform or a clear
| majority.
|
| The situation is fairly complex.
|
| Since this is intended as a historical map going beyond
| the Bronze Age, there weren't always a thing called a
| constitution or international law. So while this does
| apply to whether we call this polity, "Taiwan, ROC" or
| "ROC" or "Taiwan", whether something is constitutional or
| not will not always apply historically.
| dewey wrote:
| Take a look at what is written on a Taiwanese passport.
| hosh wrote:
| That changes depending on when it is issued, and which
| coalition is in power when that passport was issued.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Thank you Kiokan, I've been looking for something like this
| since High School.
|
| They way history is taught misses a lot of the context that
| only makes sense when you put it into a map like this one.
|
| If you could somehow "open source" at least the data side of
| this, I'd be glad to contribute. I have a bunch of history
| books from ancient latino civilizations.
| okok3857 wrote:
| You may be interested in OpenHistoricalMap:
| https://www.openhistoricalmap.org, which anyone can
| contribute to (you can read much more about it here:
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenHistoricalMap). Edit:
| I didn't realize at first but from other comments it sounds
| like TimeMap actually pulls data directly from OHM.
| bhupy wrote:
| This has been a dream project of mine too, so happy to see that
| it exists.
|
| One thing that I've also wanted was to be able to reason about
| the total timeline using the Holocene calendar[1] instead of
| the standard BC/BCE AD/CE timeline. It makes it easier to
| internalize how long ago (or how recent) certain civilizations
| were without having to do the wrap-around math in one's head.
| Would be nice to be able to maybe toggle that view.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar
| zamadatix wrote:
| Or, perhaps a bit more intuitively, an option to show the
| timeline as "years ago".
| abe94 wrote:
| This is something I've wanted to see for years - thanks so much
| for building this - is there a way to suggest edits? Perhaps a
| way to link a wikipedia account in order to create an article?
|
| It would also be cool to have filters of pre history, Hunter
| Gatherer, Early Farming, Bronze age and so on!
| ascorbic wrote:
| The is such a great project. I am a little confused by the
| oldmapsonline.org/timemap.org thing. Are they different names
| for the same thing? Why is the title timemap.org, when the URL
| is different?
| ninalanyon wrote:
| Interesting. It seems a bit slow but perhaps that's my laptop.
|
| Why are the boundaries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden not shown
| for the Kalmar Union? They are for England at Scotland in 1620
| when they were under the personal union of James, (VI of
| Scotland I of England). What's the reason for the difference?
| dotancohen wrote:
| Also the Ottoman Sanjaks are not distinguished. Perhaps only
| top-level boundaries are shown.
| _1 wrote:
| This is awesome! I've been thinking about making something like
| this, but felt like a huge undertaking. One of the major
| reasons I wanted it was to visualize how (ie under which
| treaty) were boundary lines moved or redrawn.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Be careful assuming that the dates are correct and that the
| borders are drawn exactly where they should be. This map is a
| great guide, but don't base decisions on it.
|
| Also many historical treaties did not define borders to the
| level of detail they we are used to today.
| speleding wrote:
| Nice! Small nitpick, as a Dutchie: we changed the shape of our
| country quite a bit over time by reclaiming sea. The map of the
| area now occupied by The Netherlands was very different two
| thousand years ago from what your site shows.
|
| (And this had geopolitical consequences, e.g., the invading
| Spanish could not cross some of the bodies of water present in
| the sixteen hundreds that are not there now.)
| wongarsu wrote:
| The German coast also had notable man-made changes, though
| far less extreme than what the Dutch did
| fifilura wrote:
| And if you extend it even further back in time, you'd have
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland there in the
| middle.
|
| Which means that - Congratulations! This is only the
| beginning! There is so much to add, both in granularity, a
| year is not enough during some events. But also when it
| comes to geography. Or why not integrate it with google
| maps, to get an even more precise granularity in the 2000s
| when all of this accelerates.
|
| But it is very impressive and a huge time sink to be
| mesmerized by!
| BehindBlueEyes wrote:
| I was so excited to see this project as I was dreaming of such
| a thing, followed by immediate disappointment that west coast
| indigenous territories aren't included. Curious how what
| appears on the map or not is decided, is it just repackaging
| existing data sources? Are those sources editable by anyone
| (like OSM)?
|
| Either way, good job! As a low key OSM contributor, this
| motivates me to contribute to the mapping, if data can be added
| by the public.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| This is a well implemented and remarkably responsive version of
| what I've always wanted--a map that travels throughout all of
| human history. I'm so happy to see this today, honestly.
| shireboy wrote:
| Really amazing site. I could spend hours on it. Only real
| suggestion: I'd like to see more stuff. Layers for notable
| events in different categories besides just battles. It would
| need some curation but user- submitted content. Or maybe use ai
| to find various time/place on Wikipedia and decide if it is
| "notable".
|
| Ux is great but I got in a state in maps where I couldn't get
| back the control at the top that lets you pick people/battles
| without refreshing the page.
| phasnox wrote:
| Thank you for this awesome project.
|
| Question, why Ferdinand III does not appear under people during
| 1200s on the Hispanic area?
|
| He is arguably the most important historical figure during that
| time period:
|
| - Unified Castille and Leon
|
| - Lead the reconquest that resulted in what is Spain today.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_III_of_Castile
|
| EDIT:
|
| He was the literally the directly responsible of the map
| changes during that era
| mariopt wrote:
| Hi Klokan,
|
| This is a really project and really helpful to understand
| history. I noticed that several data points about the
| Portuguese Colonial Empire are wrong, is there any place where
| I can submit a ticket about it?
|
| When the royal succession crisis took place in 1580, according
| to the blood line, the King of Spain was indeed the next in
| line but both Kingdoms remain independent, you can also find
| evidence of this in the name: King Philip III was called King
| Philip I in Portugal, the following one (Philip IV) was named
| the Philip II. In Timemap, when you check 1580, it shows the
| Portuguese territories with the Spanish royal flag, which is
| wrong because everyone understood back then that if Spain tried
| to dictated anything about the Portuguese overseas territories,
| this would be taken as a declaration of war. This is reason why
| the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed, Portugal and Spain divide
| the world and would not step on each other.
|
| Also found things like Malacca, the flag is missing the dates
| of duration: 1511-1641 Same for Macau, the map states that the
| Portuguese rule ended in 1845 but in reality it only became
| independent in 1999. Many other important missing bits that,
| although technically they don't as territories, do represent
| groups, example: The city of Nagasaki was built/shaped by
| Portuguese merchants during 1511-1641 and was indeed under
| Portuguese administration during 1580-1586.
|
| Among many other bits that would make this reply too long for
| HN.
| mentalgear wrote:
| Looks great, but this bug keeps from enjoying it: On
| firefox/macos/desktop, clicking on a POI on the map opens the
| sidebar but then redirects the whole page to the wikipedia entry.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Going back in time to the Americas doesn't allow you to see much
| detail. If you're curious to find out, you can visit this
| website, which gives a detailed account of native lands:
| https://native-land.ca/
| ks2048 wrote:
| Some people may be surprised at the level of historical detail
| that has been discovered, particularly for the Maya who left
| written records. for example,
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kings_of_Copan
| RandomWorker wrote:
| Honestly there is so much more to North America than just Maya
| for decennia's. You can review the indigenous people territories
| back centuries ago. There are some really good organizations that
| are tracking this.
|
| https://native-land.ca/
|
| I don't know much about USA/Australia and New Zealand but I can
| imagine they have similar recourses.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I absolutely love this and have wanted something like this for so
| long.
|
| A feature request: in addition to dragging the timeline smoothly
| across years, could there also be a step button that jumps to the
| next (or previous) change in the visible area?
|
| Because if I'm looking at the US in 1623, my main question is,
| OK, so what happened next? I want to click a button and find out.
| And maybe even put a bold outline or something around the new
| border(s).
|
| Having to scrub the timeline, overshoot, go back, now I can't
| remember what it looked like before, did I go too far? Is not the
| optimal UX for education. Like it's really cool to get the grand
| sweep of centuries, but not if I want to read the map over time
| like a story.
|
| Not to take away from the phenomenal achievement that this
| already is! Just to make it even better.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > A feature request: in addition to dragging the timeline
| smoothly across years, could there also be a step button that
| jumps to the next (or previous) change in the visible area?
|
| I think this is especially important, because some areas may
| have changed several times within the same year.
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| I spent half an hour on the site exploring different
| civilizations and time periods. Very fun!
| Petros_S wrote:
| Love it!!!! Really cool way of reading history.
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| leaving the first people's areas blank (presumably due to lack of
| information) still perpetuates the story that those areas are't
| worth talking about until they were
| discovered/settled/conquered/etc by 'civilization'
| throw4847285 wrote:
| Yeah, the first group to show up on the map is the Iroquois
| Confederacy.
|
| I think, fundamentally, the problem with this kind of project
| is that it centers empire as the fundamental force in history.
| Then the nation state shows up when it becomes necessary to
| differentiate between the imperial core and far-flung sea-based
| empires. What that means is, until you start conquering, you
| don't matter.
|
| Still, I won't lie to you. It's fun to watch the Mongol Empire
| grow. Wouldn't have been as fun to experience if you were on
| the wrong side of it.
| butz wrote:
| It would be even more interesting to display OpenStreetMap state,
| as it was on selected year. Of course, this should start only
| when OSM was launched, I'm not asking for someone to map all the
| world from old aerial photography.
| habi wrote:
| You might be surprised that https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/
| exists, the 'sister' project OpenStreetMap...
| maartenscholl wrote:
| Curious about the differences between this map and the Europa
| Universalis IV extended timeline
| https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=21741... ?
| I get the the latter is a videogame and is likely altered to be
| more fun to play, but I wonder how accurate their historical
| research is.
| evanletz wrote:
| I could spend all day long on this site. History is so
| fascinating and there's infinite rabbit holes to go down, so
| being able to visualize everything on the same timeline is
| awesome. Also linking to an embedded Wikipedia is super smart!
| speckx wrote:
| I spent about 2 hours on this so far today. I have yet to dig
| in. This will be a major time investment.
| Tommix11 wrote:
| Typo discovered - Swedish King's name is Karl IX not Kerl IX
| joaquincabezas wrote:
| this is really cool! I have a ruler from metermorphosen.de and
| some posters and cardboards from museums. I will share it :)
| permo-w wrote:
| This is a really cool idea; however, unfortunately, for me
| anyway, the UX is hampered on mobile by the lack of pinch zoom,
| and on PC by the lack of ability to scroll the time bar. Still
| usable, but would be fantastic if either feature was fixed. Great
| app otherwise.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I love the visualization of early human presence over time. Good
| job!
| mezod wrote:
| There seems to be an obvious mistake which is that Catalonia is
| shown as part of Spain.
|
| /joke
|
| great job! :D
| aivisol wrote:
| And Canary Islands as not part of Spain.
| trevoragilbert wrote:
| The interaction is really great and I love the premise. But it
| seems to be missing a huge amount of information from pre-1000BC
| that gives the impression nothing happened/there are no people
| there.
| tonymet wrote:
| Beautiful app and thank you to the developers
|
| Contemporary-ism is one of the most severe cognitive blind-spots.
| We have a tendency to see the past from today's perspective --
| today's borders, norms, regimes, languages, ethnicities.
|
| Nearly all of the countries today didn't exist 200 years ago, not
| to mention 600 years ago. Even the ones that share the same names
| had different ethnicities, regimes, languages, cultures,
| religions. They were hardly the same people. What was "Germany"
| or "Poland" 200 years ago?
|
| Look at Lithuania in 1400 . One of the greatest kingdoms of
| Europe for centuries. Today most people look at Lithuania as a
| tiny , former soviet country (Sorry Lithanians, I don't , but
| it's true).
|
| What will people think of the UK in 100 years?
|
| https://www.oldmapsonline.org/en/history/rulers#position=3.7...
| deadbabe wrote:
| This map is really great for understanding world history, you can
| learn a lot just by scrolling back and forth and see how it all
| fits together.
|
| I wish it would have other items though like wars and points of
| interest, inventions/discoveries, maybe ships on famous voyages,
| etc.
| zuluonezero wrote:
| This is fine but Australian history seems to start in 1860!
| Completely misses about 60,000 years of history.
| https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/map-indigenous-australia
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Very very cool.
|
| Would be nice to add pre-colonial data from North America, i.e.,
| the regions of the native American tribes, not shown AFAIK. There
| must be a good resource to pull from with that data.
| harulf wrote:
| This is amazing to see! I've wanted a good, digital, historical
| atlas for more than 10 years. The ones I've seen have all had
| some kind of limitation that's made them less-than-ideal imo.
| This one seems to check most of my boxes in terms of features &
| UX, plus it looks really nice! Big kudos to everyone involved. I
| will definitely be using this a lot!
|
| That said, seeing it IS a definitely bittersweet since I started
| my own version of this about a year ago (after giving up on
| something nice like this ever showing up). Being a hobby project
| it's far from being able to match the progress that this has
| made. Now I don't know if it's still worth to pursue, which is
| both sad but also nice since I can do other things and take
| pleasure in using this without having to worry about actually
| making it myself...
|
| Some features that I had (or was planning to have) that I think
| would be very nice, for inspiration; in case you're interested:
|
| - Allowing anyone to add and edit data. One of mny gripes with
| many of the existing digital atlases was that they were very bare
| bones in terms of how much content they had. I hoped for a
| "Wikipedia for historical maps" kind of place. Maybe not at all
| what you envision and maybe your setup is too complex to allow
| for it, but I wanted to mention it at least. But at least your
| feedback system was very nicely integrated and easy to use, so
| hopefully that'll be good enough (and spare you the pain of
| having to care about trolls and layman mistakes).
|
| - Showing hierarchical Regions instead of just 1. For instance,
| being able to show the Holy Roman Empire above its various
| duchies/principalities etc, and those above their various
| counties etc. It feels overly simplistic to ONLY show topmost
| Region. And quite often there's not even any single Region that's
| undebatably the "topmost" either.
|
| - Generic "Events" for things that aren't battles.
|
| - Events or something similar to explain what's going on whenever
| a Region's border changes, a Region appears/disappears, a Region
| changes name etc. Basically connect the change you see on the map
| with a link to learn more about what caused that change. I think
| this is super valuable when it comes to going from "cool, that
| country grew a lot there" to "so what actually happened?".
|
| - The search field seems to be connected to modern-day places
| rather than historical Regions. For instance, I expected being
| able to search for "Kalmar Union" to get to the place and time of
| the Kalmar Union. Or to search for "Alexander the Great" and go
| to his time and place. But kudos for supporting native spellings
| of place names, like "Kobenhavn" for Copenhagen.
|
| - I see that some battles have a corresponding war underneath
| their names, which is really nice. I would love to be able to
| filter/find/highlight all battles from a given war. That way it
| would be a LOT easier to get a better grasp of the extent of a
| given war. I'd also like to see the war's duration and its
| belligerents.
|
| Then some UX feedback and bugs I noticed:
|
| - Showing the modern-day names of cities before they exist feels
| pretty weird. It can help for users to navigate and understand
| where they are, but I think it would be very nice to at least
| have an option to turn them off. Ideally also to have them show
| up only after they've actually been founded. A bonus would be to
| also show them with their historically accurate name.
|
| - I notice that you see the name of the Region currently in the
| center of the screen, but I think it'd be more useful to show
| what's at the cursor's position. Especially when you have a bunch
| of small Regions. If you tied it to the cursor you could also
| highlight the currently selected Region.
|
| - The red box for the current year looks reeeeally draggable to
| me. I would combine it with the slider.
|
| - Having keyboard commands for going forward/backward with the
| time slider would be really nice, to complement when you're
| panning around with the mouse.
|
| - I totally understand where you're going with showing BC years
| as "-X", but it looks pretty weird. Especially when it's outside
| the time slider, like underneath the names of people.
|
| - Also, there's no "year 0"; it goes directly from 1 BC to AD 1.
|
| - When there are multiple overlapping things (e.g. all the
| battles in Italy during the 80s BC) it feels a bit random which
| gets shown. It's also not clear that there are stuff that gets
| hidden until you zoom close enough.
|
| - If I open a wiki page for a battle and then click a link in the
| article, I'm then unable to return to the original wiki page.
| Clicking on the battle again does nothing. I have to either close
| the wiki sidebar or click on another battle first.
|
| - There's no way to close the Maps sidebar except by opening the
| wiki sidebar?
|
| - Closing the top panel (the one with Regions, Rulers, People,
| Battles) causes the Maps sidebar to pop out. Feels weird; I was
| expecting the top panel to get minimzed similar to how the wiki
| and Maps sidebars are in their inactive states.
|
| Sorry for the length of this post, but I just had a decade of
| thoughts to get off my chest; not to mention a year of spare time
| work on doing almost exactly what you have here. Whether you take
| any of my feedback or not, thank you so much for making this!
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Much of the story of the Russian empire, Germany's unification,
| WW1, WW2 and even today's war in Ukraine can be told by dragging
| this timeline from 1000 to modern day and focusing on Poland.
|
| The east/west lines of Poland from 1029-1569 roughly correspond
| to today's east/west lines. But between now and then Poland
| shifts east then back west. Only after a ton of wars and death:
|
| 1. Poland basically expands massively to become Poland-Lithuania
|
| 2. Poland-Lithuania gets eaten by Germany (Prussia) to the west
| and Russia to the east.
|
| 3. Poland reappears, but entirely shifted east in the 1800s
|
| 4. Poland gets eaten by Russia again
|
| 5. Poland reappears after WW1
|
| 6. Poland gets eaten by Germany and Russia again in WW2
|
| 7. Poland shifts back west by Stalin and his mass population
| transfer program. Back almost to the original east-west borders
| of medieval Poland.
|
| This is obviously a simplification of a 1000 years of history.
| yks wrote:
| Ukrainian state of 1917-1921 is unfortunately missing on the
| map
| machinetalk wrote:
| It seems like much is missing from Ukrainian history. I did
| notice the brief appearance of the Hetmanate(1648-1667).
| _petronius wrote:
| This is a very cool UI, and I love the inclusion of the Wikipedia
| links. The overaly of a modern map as you zoom in is interesting,
| and very helpful for orientation.
|
| Makes me wonder how hard it would be to show things like
| historical coastlines in England and the Netherlands, or
| historical watercourses, but I guess that could be both hard to
| visualize, and you'd have to compile that data from a lot of
| different sources.
|
| I have two nitpicks with this type of view of historical world
| maps (not this project specifically, it just employs a visual
| vernacular that I have opinions about):
|
| 1.Drawing a border around an area and shading it in doesn't mean
| the same thing in all times and places. It might be a state with
| a central government as we think of them now, or it might be a
| collection of states or proto-states that are conventionally
| grouped by common features of their cultures, or it might just be
| an area where the pottery is consistently similar.
|
| 2. More importantly I think the areas _outside_ the shading can
| be misleading, too: it makes the world look empty, even though
| most of the world (but not all! especially in the places settled
| by the Polynesians much later) definitely had people in it by the
| time this timeline starts.
| jenny91 wrote:
| This looks great. Another similar project is
| https://www.chronas.org, surprised it hasn't been mentioned in
| this conversation yet!
| japol wrote:
| https://TimeMap.org is a great tool that brings history to life.
| Its interactive maps and timelines make exploring the past easy
| and exciting. I can highly recommend it as a fantastic resource
| to visualize how our world has evolved over time.
| guerrilla wrote:
| This is what the Internet was for. Reminds me of when I used to
| have encyclopedias and atlases on CD-ROM for my old Mac Performa.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| One area I recently learned about is the Kentucky Bend, which is
| encircled by the states of Tennessee and Missouri, so not
| connected to the rest of Kentucky. Before 1848, Tennessee tried
| to claim it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_Bend
| sbmthakur wrote:
| Reminded me of
| https://www.runningreality.org/#01/01/1855&47.60530,-122.334...
| vishnuharidas wrote:
| Excellent research and great output, this is something that I
| wanted for a long time, a movable timeline that shows the
| civilization at that time. Thanks for building this!
|
| One improvement that I suggest is for the timeline. Currently if
| I have to go to the past/future, I have to move the timeline knob
| to the extreme left/right, and the timeline will jump. Instead of
| that if I can drag the timeline to the desired era and click on
| the timeline to place the knob (or something like that) it will
| be easy to use.
| crotobloste wrote:
| The historical criteria for Spain seems dubious. It posits the
| ahistorical existence of a "Kingdom of Spain" from 1479 on, when
| this political entity didn't come to be until several centuries
| later (despite some monarchs using the title "King of Spain". For
| that matter, the current Spanish King holds the title of "King of
| Jerusalem", but to my awareness no Kingdom of Jerusalem actually
| exists today).
| niea_11 wrote:
| The same thing for Morocco, it started being called Kingdom of
| Morocco only after the end of the french protectorate in the
| 50s.
| lippihom wrote:
| One of the coolest projects I've seen in a long time. Spent a few
| hours clicking around (I love maps!). Curious why so little data
| for North/South America? Also a very happy user of MapTiler btw.
| theelous3 wrote:
| What stage of "map completion" is this at? Seems overall to be
| very sparse on information. It makes claims like
|
| > Explore over 500k maps down to streets
|
| If I look at the UK - arguably the cartography champions of all
| time, there is nothing though the years other than the shadow of
| current day. There is basically nothing on Ireland at any point,
| even though it's a very well documented history rich area.
| blankton wrote:
| Great Project. I am very thankful for this useful tool.
|
| Small "bug"/Different behaviour than expected I found: I you move
| the slider with Arrow-Keys, you are not able to move it beyond
| the currently visible time frame. If the value on the far right
| ist 750 BC and you press the Key repeatedly it will, at some
| point jump back around 30 years.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I've dreamed about making this for years, so glad someone did.
| cellu wrote:
| amazing! This was in my todo list since, like, forever aha!
| williamdclt wrote:
| Something very related I've been trying to find is a tool to
| create my own timelines. When I read about history, I always
| struggle to remember the order of events, or put them in
| historical context (eg who was the english monarch who sent
| troops to Ireland?). I'm often off by hundreds of years on when
| an event happened because I don't have a good mental model.
|
| I'd love a tool that lets me create my own timeline. Ideally,
| what I'd want is:
|
| - An arrow of time, graduated by year - Ability to create events
| (eg invention of TV) and periods (eg rule of Elisabeth I) -
| Ability to put events and periods in themed swimlanes (eg
| ireland-related stuff, foreign affairs, religion...) - A lot of
| freedom: add arbitrary boxes, notes, nested/collapsable stuff...
|
| Basically diagrams.net with a built-in timeline and first-class
| concepts of event, period and swimlanes would be great.
|
| Does anything like that exist?
| maheshnmurthi wrote:
| Have you tried https://markwhen.com/
|
| I have not personally used it yet, but I would consider it if I
| wanted to work with timelines
| 0points wrote:
| oh my good this is sooo cool!!!! i have been wanting something
| like this since forever
|
| <3 <3 <3 for doing this!
| hnbad wrote:
| Well, it's not really a "map of history", it's more of a
| historical map. It's useful, sure, but there's more to history
| than borders, battles, rulers and famous people.
| msdundarss wrote:
| As a huge fan of Civilazation and Total War Series, the GUI
| definitely impressed me!
| pachico wrote:
| I love it! Very well done!
| iandanforth wrote:
| I like the idea, but it seems like such a cliche how poorly
| represented native peoples are in this project. If you're a
| historian and cartographer is there a more obvious failure that
| everyone knows about? It's like storing your passwords in
| plaintext for services, so many people have made the error, and
| its so famous that making this error _again_ seems like
| deliberate incompetence.
| StepWeiwu wrote:
| Amazing, thank you. I've been meaning to build something like
| this for a while but never got around to it. Glad it exists now!
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