The Histomap

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Couldn’t find a thread on this and thought it deserved one. Check out this Slate article on the so-called “Histomap”. I’m surprised that this isn’t more popular; someone should really update it for the 21st century*. Imagine spending the first half of your life learning about geography only through prose and then seeing a globe (or even a world map) for the first time. Replace “geography” with “history” and “globe” with this Histomap, and that’s how I felt when I first saw this earlier today.

*A possible way in which it might be updated, aside from adding 1932-2013: the map as it currently stands is not entirely PC since it only represents world powers. I wonder if it should be augmented to include native populations that never rose to world power but nonetheless have their own rich history.

2

They had one of those in my home town library in the 60s. I used to pour over it, wondering who the Hittites where.

3

Ooh, somebody’s gonna get in Big Trouble with the Librarian–you’re not supposed to bring food and drink into the library!

4

I have one of those in my classroom. A parent gave it to me a few decades ago. Fascinating to peruse.

5

<snerk>

6

This book: the People’s Chronology does this in book format.

Year by year from prehistory forward, what events happened in art, politics, science etc all over the world.

7

I showed this to my husband who now wants to find one. He also pulled out the 1988 version of this: Wall Chart of World History which is similar and I didn’t even know we had it. Very cool.

8

There’s one of these histomaps in the Bible that I got in Sunday School in the early 1970s - I loved to look at it and see the growth and decline of the various empires (and the stunning growth of Rome at the end - the time line ended in the early AD era)