This is a very cool UI, and I love the inclusion of the Wikipedia links. The overaly of a modern map as you zoom in is interesting, and very helpful for orientation.
Makes me wonder how hard it would be to show things like historical coastlines in England and the Netherlands, or historical watercourses, but I guess that could be both hard to visualize, and you'd have to compile that data from a lot of different sources.
I have two nitpicks with this type of view of historical world maps (not this project specifically, it just employs a visual vernacular that I have opinions about):
1.Drawing a border around an area and shading it in doesn't mean the same thing in all times and places. It might be a state with a central government as we think of them now, or it might be a collection of states or proto-states that are conventionally grouped by common features of their cultures, or it might just be an area where the pottery is consistently similar.
2. More importantly I think the areas _outside_ the shading can be misleading, too: it makes the world look empty, even though most of the world (but not all! especially in the places settled by the Polynesians much later) definitely had people in it by the time this timeline starts.
Makes me wonder how hard it would be to show things like historical coastlines in England and the Netherlands, or historical watercourses, but I guess that could be both hard to visualize, and you'd have to compile that data from a lot of different sources.
I have two nitpicks with this type of view of historical world maps (not this project specifically, it just employs a visual vernacular that I have opinions about):
1.Drawing a border around an area and shading it in doesn't mean the same thing in all times and places. It might be a state with a central government as we think of them now, or it might be a collection of states or proto-states that are conventionally grouped by common features of their cultures, or it might just be an area where the pottery is consistently similar.
2. More importantly I think the areas _outside_ the shading can be misleading, too: it makes the world look empty, even though most of the world (but not all! especially in the places settled by the Polynesians much later) definitely had people in it by the time this timeline starts.