3 ms·

Much better link: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/histomap/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/histomap/ Without context this map seems to be ridiculously wrong

Much better link: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/histomap/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/histomap/ Without context this map seems to be ridiculously wrong, until you learn that it was created in 1931 by an American, and as a product of that time includes all possible Eurocentric biases. For example, on that map thousands of years of American history are missing. Inka? Aztecs? Mali in Africa? Khmer empire in South-East Asia? Majapahit? It would be interesting to see more modern visualization that has more focus on cultural and technological achievements rather than on wars and power games.

drbig 3y ago
Indeed Americans are even worse than Europeans in "(dis)missing the rest of the planet". Have no idea how selective the default is on the other side of the planet, though I can only hope it is _less so_. Inventions and discoveries sounds as something as close to "objective" as we can get. Cultural would be interesting, but I believe more heavily dependent on the author of the comparison than the achievements. And thanks for the link with _context_!
dang 3y ago
Ok, we've changed to that link from https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/histomap-big.html https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/.... Thanks!
saulpw 3y ago
I'd love to have this. Not just an updated visualization for 2024, but an ongoing project, with an automatic visualization generator, and the data behind that visualization open-sourced, in such a format that invited the history nerds to contribute wiki-style. Even though it will never be "perfect", hitting some 80% mark of relevance/accuracy would be a tremendous boon to anyone studying history.
- walterbell 3y ago
  Imagine the wiki-style edit wars! One rendering of Wikipedia events: https://histography.io https://histography.io
- Archelaos 3y ago
  You might perhaps be interested in my ongoing side-project "Factonaut" at https://www.factonaut.com/ https://www.factonaut.com/ It is a (closed-source) Windows application that allows you to compile historical events in a knowledgebase and easily create chronological overviews. Currently it only supports very simple chronological tables, not maps. The project is in an early stage, and I have a huge to-do list, but only little free-time to work on it. But the application is useable. Its main speciality is that it can handle Julian and Gregorian calendar dates in the same chronology and sort them correctly.
  - saulpw 3y ago
    Looks interesting. But, I want something open-source that runs on Linux, takes csv/json as input, and generates a clickable .svg. We come from different worlds :)
kqr 3y ago
I wonder if geographical spread of language families would be a decent proxy for that. Though I guess that biases the record in favour of writing systems. Also wouldn't capture second languages which is how a lot of culture spreads. (I should know; English is not my first language.)
- ivan_gammel 3y ago
  I was thinking about something similar, but from a different angle. Language history can demonstrate connections between peoples, times and places. The words show what was important enough to be encoded: say, we have the word „computer“ and it means that very important technology has been developed. Looking at such words we can judge on what could be included on the timeline, which discoveries and inventions have been made. We may find for some words how old are they and what could be their origin. We may trace the words and language structures across continents and thousands of years and reason about technology and knowledge needed for such journey, what climate was there etc. This would create a very interesting map.

drbig 3y ago

Indeed Americans are even worse than Europeans in "(dis)missing the rest of the planet". Have no idea how selective the default is on the other side of the planet, though I can only hope it is _less so_. Inventions and discoveries sounds as something as close to "objective" as we can get. Cultural would be interesting, but I believe more heavily dependent on the author of the comparison than the achievements. And thanks for the link with _context_!

dang 3y ago

Ok, we've changed to that link from https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/histomap-big.html https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/.... Thanks!

saulpw 3y ago

I'd love to have this. Not just an updated visualization for 2024, but an ongoing project, with an automatic visualization generator, and the data behind that visualization open-sourced, in such a format that invited the history nerds to contribute wiki-style. Even though it will never be "perfect", hitting some 80% mark of relevance/accuracy would be a tremendous boon to anyone studying history.

walterbell 3y ago
Imagine the wiki-style edit wars! One rendering of Wikipedia events: https://histography.io https://histography.io
Archelaos 3y ago
You might perhaps be interested in my ongoing side-project "Factonaut" at https://www.factonaut.com/ https://www.factonaut.com/ It is a (closed-source) Windows application that allows you to compile historical events in a knowledgebase and easily create chronological overviews. Currently it only supports very simple chronological tables, not maps. The project is in an early stage, and I have a huge to-do list, but only little free-time to work on it. But the application is useable. Its main speciality is that it can handle Julian and Gregorian calendar dates in the same chronology and sort them correctly.
- saulpw 3y ago
  Looks interesting. But, I want something open-source that runs on Linux, takes csv/json as input, and generates a clickable .svg. We come from different worlds :)

kqr 3y ago

I wonder if geographical spread of language families would be a decent proxy for that. Though I guess that biases the record in favour of writing systems. Also wouldn't capture second languages which is how a lot of culture spreads. (I should know; English is not my first language.)

ivan_gammel 3y ago
I was thinking about something similar, but from a different angle. Language history can demonstrate connections between peoples, times and places. The words show what was important enough to be encoded: say, we have the word „computer“ and it means that very important technology has been developed. Looking at such words we can judge on what could be included on the timeline, which discoveries and inventions have been made. We may find for some words how old are they and what could be their origin. We may trace the words and language structures across continents and thousands of years and reason about technology and knowledge needed for such journey, what climate was there etc. This would create a very interesting map.