# What's a good website to show shifting boundaries to students?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [September 23, 2021, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190 "2021-09-23T13:29:11Z")
**Posts on this page:** 19
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2021, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/1 "2021-09-23T13:29:11Z")
We’re discussing civics/world history and I’d like to display how the borders/names of countries have changed over the years. Any recommendations?
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### Author:  [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2021, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/2 "2021-09-23T13:39:26Z")
Europe specifically? Or the whole world?
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### Author:  [@Chad\_Sudan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chad_Sudan)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2021, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/3 "2021-09-23T13:46:30Z")
Not a website but a video:
The History of Europe: Every Year
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY9P0QSxlnI)
History of the World: Every Year
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymI5Uv5cGU4)
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### Author:  [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2021, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/4 "2021-09-23T15:24:06Z")
Actually, that’s a good point. Would the whole world be too confusing or too much?
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2021, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/5 "2021-09-23T17:21:36Z")
OTOH, if you want to simplify things, [just use a map of Poland for the last 500 years](https://fromshepherdsandshoemakers.com/2017/01/15/those-infamous-border-changes-a-crash-course-in-polish-history/)
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### Author:  [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2021, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/6 "2021-09-23T17:31:18Z")
I saw this on Twitter and thought it demonstrates it pretty well. Dating when a globe was made to within months by looking at the boundaries and names of the countries:
>
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### Author:  [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2021, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/7 "2021-09-24T13:00:52Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#):
>
> OTOH, if you want to simplify things, [just use a map of Poland for the last 500 years](https://fromshepherdsandshoemakers.com/2017/01/15/those-infamous-border-changes-a-crash-course-in-polish-history/)
Well, it depends on how you want to frame the discussion.
The shifting borders of Poland have unfortunately mostly been a case of non-Poles carving up and pushing Poland around.
Lviv in modern/current Ukraine was a major Polish city for most of the 500 years prior to WW2, during which time what is now Gdansk in Poland was predominantly ethnically German (Danzig); and getting into the hows and whys of that within-living-memory transformation of borders could get kind of messy.
Maybe start with why “France” is named after a “Frankish” kingdom?
Or the pre-1848 borders of the US, Mexico, and the “Indian Territories” of the American West, such that there are generations of “Mexicans” in California, New Mexico, etc., resident there since before the area’s incorporation into the US? (Like, how all the demographic data showing how many self-identifying ethnic Mexicans there are in the Southwest do not only reflect immigration, much less “illegal” immigration, but also _people who were there all along_?)
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### Author:  [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2021, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/8 "2021-09-24T13:06:00Z")
Just show them a timelapse of a Crusader Kings 3 playthrough!
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### Author:  [@Limmin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Limmin)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2021, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/9 "2021-09-24T17:56:02Z")
YT also has some videos showing the movement of the Eastern Front in WWII, back and forth. Such as [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AUdP-QVEKA).
Lest ye believe this to be an obscure topic not worthy of study, remember that the Germany vs. USSR struggle pretty much _was_ WWII, in terms of numbers of soldiers and civilians involved, and deaths. The numbers are so staggeringly large it puts the Allies’ effort in the west into an entirely new perspective.
And to stay entirely on topic, note that “Eastern Prussia” which was the jump-off point for the invasion of Poland and the later invasion of USSR by Germany, ceased to exist after WWII, after the Red Army rolled across it on its way to Berlin. And Poland’s borders were once again redrawn.
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2021, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/10 "2021-09-26T01:16:05Z")
> [@Chad\_Sudan](#):
>
> History of the World: Every Year
That’s rather an odd map. Most of the world’s shown as entirely blank until the 1500’s or later; as if there weren’t anybody anywhere until someone in Europe or the Mediterranean had hung a name on the place, maybe?
I really don’t think it’s a good idea to use that with students unless that issue’s going to be discussed.
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### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2021, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/11 "2021-09-26T02:33:37Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> That’s rather an odd map. Most of the world’s shown as entirely blank until the 1500’s or later
Yeah, the impression I got is that the map creators were taking the term “history” very literally. I.e., only places for which there’s some kind of textual historical record get colored in.
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### Author:  [@Mr\_Downtown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Downtown)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2021, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/12 "2021-09-26T04:53:09Z")
I might be inclined to narrow things down a bit, and do Africa since 1950, or Southeast Asia since 1920. Old atlases or National Geographic maps are cheap and easy to come by, and students might find it intriguing to make the comparisons on their own. I sense that one of the points you’re trying to make with them is that political borders are not things that have “just always been,” but get moved by deliberate human action. That seems more real when passing around a map their grandmother might have had gotten in a magazine as current.
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### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2021, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/13 "2021-09-26T05:53:36Z")
> [@Mr\_Downtown](#):
>
> I might be inclined to narrow things down a bit, and do Africa since 1950, or Southeast Asia since 1920.
I can see narrowing it down, but I’d personally pick a place they might be more familiar with. I suspect that, even as kids, they’d be more familiar with, say, Europe.
I know that, as a kid, I thought the borders of Europe had been fixed for a lot longer, as I’d only ever seen the different borders in, say, Africa.
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### Author:  [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2021, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/14 "2021-09-26T15:11:15Z")
[World History Maps & Timelines | GeaCron](http://geacron.com/home-en/)
How about this?
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2021, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/15 "2021-09-26T19:16:56Z")
> [@P-man](#):
>
> How about this?
Kind of the same problem: nothing there anywhere till Europeans hung a name on it.
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### Author:  [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2021, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/16 "2021-09-26T19:25:29Z")
Yeah, there were just barbarians everywhere.
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2021, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/17 "2021-09-26T19:37:11Z")
By the definition “people who don’t talk like us”?
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### Author:  [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2021, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/18 "2021-09-26T22:39:08Z")
Well they have red symbols on their flags and only get tech if someone else does it first.
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### Author:  [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2021, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-website-to-show-shifting-boundaries-to-students/951190/19 "2021-09-26T23:20:17Z")
Yep; I learned that usage from Cecil way back when.