Fifty-four maps of the world, from 123,000 BCE to 2026, with the events, people and wars of each period pinned in place. This page is how to move through them — and, at the end, how to tell what the atlas knows from what it is guessing.
Where everything is
Four regions, and almost every control belongs to one of them.
Moving through time
The ruler is the whole of history. The bar beneath it is one era, opened out.
- The ruler
- Drag the playhead, or click anywhere along it. The banded strip above names the eras; the marks below are years with written accounts in them.
- The fine bar
- Opens the era you are standing in, so a single year is reachable. Home and End jump to its two ends.
- Typing a year
- Type into the year readout. There are fifty-four maps, not two thousand, so 1776 shows you 1783 — and says so.
- ← →
- Step the year. Hold Shift to move by the bar's own tick.
The list beside the map
The sidebar always describes what is on screen: this period, this viewport, and whatever you last opened.
- Click a row
- Opens the record in the sidebar and flies the map to it.
- Open in full
- The ⤢ beside the ✕, or the button at the foot of a record. The full view carries the written account, the pictures and the sources.
- ↑ ↓
- Step through the list without leaving the keyboard.
- Enter
- Goes one step further in, wherever you are.
- Esc
- Backs out the way ✕ does — to the region you came in from, rather than always to the year.
- Inside a record
- ← → walk to the record before and after it in time. They ask the database, so they step to the true neighbour rather than to the nearest one that happens to be loaded.
The map
Clicking asks a question of the ground, and everything on screen answers it.
- Click a country
- Selects it and narrows the whole screen to it — the pins, the people, the war shading, the cities and the labels. The borders stay drawn, so the selection still has a world around it.
- Click it again
- Frames it, but only when that takes you closer. Already zoomed in past it, and the map leaves you where you are.
- Click a pin
- Opens that record. A numbered pin is a cluster; clicking spreads it.
- Plain or Detailed
- Plain is countries and the places that name them. Detailed adds provinces and districts, far more places, and the rivers and lakes.
- Zoom
- Scroll, or the buttons at the map's edge; the third returns the whole world.
Finding one thing
Twenty-four thousand events, twelve thousand lives and eight hundred wars. The search box is how you reach a particular one.
- Open it
- / or ⌘ K. ⌘ F opens it too — the browser's own find would search only the forty rows that happen to be rendered.
- What it searches
- Events, people, wars, places, polities and years, across the whole atlas.
- Choosing a result
- Takes you to its year and its place. Finding Avicenna by moving only the clock would leave you looking at the wrong continent.
Making it yours
- Layers
- Events, People and Wars — what is drawn at all.
- Filters
- Nine categories: War, Politics, Society, Art, Science, Religion, Economy, Exploration and Disaster. They reach the people too — a life is filed by the first of its occupations that matches, so switching off War takes the generals with the battles.
- Saving
- The star on any event or person. Saved records get their own list and show as marks along the ruler. Needs an account.
- Notes
- Your own writing on a record, private to you.
- Light and dark
- Follows the clock — dark from six in the evening. Choosing for yourself wins for twelve hours and then lapses, so nobody is handed a dark map at ten in the morning.
What the atlas admits it does not know
Historical borders are disputed, and most of them were never surveyed. Rather than footnote that, the map draws it.
Three other admissions
- Written or imported
- A few hundred records carry an account written for this atlas. The rest were imported in bulk and are marked as such — a single line rather than a page, and not checked by hand.
- Unnamed ground
- Territory the source does not name is left neutral and labelled unattributed, rather than coloured in as though it were known.
- Counts are counts
- Where a list is capped it says so. A number here is never a display limit wearing a total's clothes.
Every key
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| / or ⌘ K | Open search |
| ⌘ F | Open search, in place of the browser's find |
| ← → | Step the year; Shift steps further |
| Home End | The two ends of the fine bar |
| ↑ ↓ | Move through the sidebar, or the search results |
| Enter | Go one step further in |
| Esc | Back out of whatever is open |
| ← → in a record | The record before and after it in time |
| ← → in a picture | Through the pictures on that record |
Still stuck, or found something wrong on the map? Get in touch — one person reads those.
Where the maps and the records come from is on the sources and licences page. What this site stores is on the privacy page.