A Web-based resource I'd like to see.

[womzilla]

And by posting about it here, I hope to find it:

A comprehensive set of political maps of the historical world. That is, a site where you could specify a date (ranging from, say, 100,000 BCE to 2005 CE) and you could get a set of maps of the known and conjectured political boundaries of the human population. Population charts would be great, too, but I really want a site where I can choose 1770 and see the boundaries of the New World colonies, then zip to 44 BCE and see the extent of the Roman Republic at the death of G Julius Caesar, then to 7890 BCE and see what the best guesses of the migration of human settlement are. Anyone know of such a thing?

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I do not, but I'll piggy-back on your request with mine:

I want a simple demonstation of how large countries are relative to each other. If you overlay Portugal on the US east coast, is it... Maine to Cape Cod? Bigger? Smaller? How much of the prairie provinces would equal the same land area as Bolivia? Can you fit Luxembourg on Manhattan Island? Which is bigger, Tunisia or Poland? Etc. etc.

Anybody have anything to suggest?

K.

[readwrite.livejournal.com]

Back when I lived in Seattle, a magazine I worked for had a series of such maps in the loft where they did production. Someone must have retrieved it from a school somewhere. The maps were huge, maybe 4' x 2-1/2', and folded over each other like the pages of a book. I love maps, and I must've spent hours looking at these. I especially liked seeing the whole world at once, and viewing the relative sizes of, say, the Chinese, Inca, and Holy Roman empires.

[hhw]

passing through on friendsfriends --

not a perfect fit, but try these:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Eatlas/
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/index.html

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

There is this "watch the colors overrun Europe" software, with I think a web demo:

http://www.clockwk.com/ (http://www.clockwk.com/)

[mylescorcoran]

I can recommend the various atlases produced by Colin McEvedy. He produced a series of historical atlases covering specific locations, tracking the movement of peoples, borders and trade through time. I have found them invaluable.

For example this book covers Europe and Asia Minor from about 50,000 BC up to CE 362 (or it did in the older copy I have).