Periodis Web – A Historical Atlas and Gazetteer of Europe from Year 1 to 2000

http://www.euratlas.net/history/europe/index.html

by atas • 13 years ago

124 48 13 years ago

Kototama• 13 years ago

This is great, thank you.

jfaucett3• 13 years ago

I especially found the map of europe Year 1 vs 2000 interesting. Hopefully, it won't take another 2k years for the EU to grow back together as a community. Of course, there are the intermittent 2k years that have divided us, but if you compare the progress over the last 50 to the previous roughly 2k I think we've done quit well.

nagrom4• 13 years ago

Not sure whether you are pro- or anti-EU with that comment...

You are aware that the union in year 1 was effectively a somewhat brutal dictatorship imposed by force where human life was treated as a toy for an elite caste that ruled from afar, right? There was no 'EU community' then. There was the brutal rule of hierarchical violence and fealty to pay to a foreign emperor.

Regardless of what you think of the EU, the Roman empire is not something to which anyone should reasonably aspire!

jfaucett3• 13 years ago

I'm definately pro EU and also quite aware of the Roman Empire's injustices, I just think its interesting that a map of the current EU member states - http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:EU_Member_states_and_Cand..., has a large overlap, minus Turkey and the arabic countries. Which makes me wonder/hope that perhaps they could also one day become member states in a harmonious union. Obviously, this observation only comes from the maps not historical events, which most certianly is one of the main reasons Turkey is not an EU member as of now.

JoeAltmaier2• 13 years ago

Should be a link to "Life of Brian" here - where Cleese says "What have the Romans every given us? Nothun'!" and a cell member raises his hand. "The Aquaduct?" "Oh yeah, the Aquaduct, yeah, that." And on and on until they have a long list of improvements instituted by the Romans.

d_theorist3• 13 years ago

This comment exposes the elitist Europhile mindset beautifully. Yes, another Roman Empire to allow a small imperial caste to rule the entire continent is exactly what they are aiming for.

jfaucett3• 13 years ago

That's not what I meant to convey at all. The idea is that cultures that have a different history, a history of conflict, blood and war - as one would probably guess just by observing the lines on this map - can come together, work together and overcome their different antagonistic histories, in order to attain peace. If other states were to join, islamic states, such as Turkey, and it were to work, this would be an even more amazing historical event. I'm not saying the EU is without its problems, but I think its going far in moving away from cold-warish pre 21st century nationalistic tendencies that have led to so much disaster in the world.

skrebbel• 13 years ago

Straw man.

vidarh• 13 years ago

Do you realize that the current convoluted lack of accountability is largely a result of the lack of deeper integration?

E.g. the EU is limited in how much of the power that is vested in EU organizations that can be transferred to the parliament, because much of the power that is elsewhere is there as a side effect of that power nationally being delegated to the sitting cabinets, and so in most countries it will take constitutional changes to hand that power away from the cabinets, that exercise it as part of the EU Council and EU Commission, to the parliament.

This is a "workaround" to problems similar to what the US endured under the Articles of Confederation (where the central government was pretty much powerless to implement many decisions because the states simply could decide to not follow decisions they didn't agree with), and a lot of the work on deeper integration in the EU has focused on how to change this situation to grant the EU parliament more of these powers.

There are plenty of problems with the approach. But there are also plenty of "Europhile's" for whom reforms are simultaneously about tighter integration and democratizing the decision making, and in fact it's hard to find anyone that are happy with the current power split between the EU Commission, Council and Parliament.

igravious• 13 years ago

Where on earth did you get that reading from? Just because someone wishes for the artificial divisions that divide us to melt away does not they want a return to imperial hegemony. Your comment reflects more on your euro-skepticism than the claims you are making of the grandparent.

troels• 13 years ago

The one thing you're missing, is the USA. Europe, as a cultural whole, should really include USA. In that perspective, the map has actually changed quite a bit since year 1.

lifeisstillgood• 13 years ago

Never thought of it quite like that - yes, we did expand the Borders a little:-)

onemorepassword2• 13 years ago

Yeah, we really dream of being swallowed up and exploited by a greater empire again, because we haven't had enough of that fun yet in the period between the Roman empire and the 3rd Reich...

There's no "back together" because there has never been a together that wasn't under the sword or the gun in the first place. Peace, cooperation and wide open borders within the EU, great. The EU as the next empire, no thanks.

If anything, the ideal future map of Europe has more borders as communities peacefully regain their autonomy and independence.

_b8r02• 13 years ago

Not to mention the former Soviet members of the EU, some of whom have had the opportunity to be swallowed up by other empires several times now.

nagrom4• 13 years ago

If someone was to download these images and make a simple site that links them all with transition fades to show the change over time, would it be an infringement of the Euratlas copyright?

Svip4• 13 years ago

Contact them, they licence their maps out. You can even get in high resolution SVG format: http://shop.euratlas.com/maps_gis/index.html

As for the copyright, see: http://www.euratlas.com/conditions.html as well as:

> You may use the Euratlas images and maps, as they are available on the websites euratlas.com and euratlas.net, for educational or illustration purposes but you must mention the source in that way: © 2010 Christos Nussli, www euratlas.com No commercial use is allowed.

http://www.euratlas.com/about.html

jamesmcbennett• 13 years ago

You guys might like a TEDx talk by a friend of mine Grzegorz 'The collapse of complex societies' specifically Roman Empire. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcE0rIEHEFI

youngerdryas2• 13 years ago

Well it is only 130 euro per map for direct download

http://shop.euratlas.com/maps_gis/gis_2000.html

seems reasonable /s

fractalsea• 13 years ago

Great. I love maps, and I love history. I feel like I don't have enough time to read enough history. Looking at maps gives a good summary of the rise and demise of various empires and states.

Svip4• 13 years ago

Then I will highly recommend this: http://www.the-map-as-history.com/

It's a pay-site, but its content is well worth the small price. The commentary is excellent and the attention to detail is high, without being boring. My only issue would be that they use Flash, but I guess I can forgive this site for it.

icehero• 13 years ago

News flash: there are more then 2000 years of Europe.

tzury• 13 years ago

Atlas of The World History (animated)

http://www.atlasofworldhistory.com/

also

http://www.timemaps.com/history

maxprogram• 13 years ago

The project I'm currently working on is called Atlastory, and would be a Google Maps-like interface throughout history. The idea is to eventually have political maps like those in the OP + specific maps for historic events.

Demo is up at http://atlastory.com (for now only maps are WWII and Civil War). If anyone's interested in helping out please contact me. (Currently looking for another developer to help with the much more complicated back-end)

g2e• 13 years ago

Currently working on a similar project as well!

jsc• 13 years ago

Frontiers of Europe from -500 to 2013.

https://itunes.apple.com/app/id543207391

dimitar2• 13 years ago

I prefer the maps in Wikimedia Commons - there are some amateur maps, which may be even better than some lifted from expired-copyright atlases.

There are quite a few different historical maps of the same year/region - it is very important to have them side by side, because history is very subjective and historical maps are only a subjective and deficient in data representations of historical presence.

Maps (by century): http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Maps_by_century_s...

dimitar2• 13 years ago

For example:

- Bavaria is shown to be a Austrian possession in 1800, which is incorrect. Consider the implications if Bavaria was a part of Austria for a while - would there be a Southern German nation? Or would be in fact inconsiderable that Austria is a separate state given the overlap with other German states? If you have only this map as a teaching tool you are implicitly giving a false impression of history.

- There are no Ukrainian states or predecessors (the Cossack Sich) after the 14th century on any of these maps. By omitting this state the appearance of Ukraine seems mysterious in 20th century and a key narrative in the histories of Poland, Russia and even Sweden (the winter war) simply disappears.

dspeyer• 13 years ago

There's a lot of blank space in the year one map. I bet there were people living in those places.

AlexeiSadeski• 13 years ago

Remarkable that the French & English won WWI when you look at the year 1900 map. Between Germany, Austria, Ottomans, and Italians, it seems that ~75% of the at war landmass was on the German side.

epynonymous• 13 years ago

interesting that germany didn't even come into existence until the 1900's according to this tool.

Periodis Web – A Historical Atlas and Gazetteer of Europe from Year 1 to 2000

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