Inspired by John B. Sparks' 1931 Histomap, this is a zoomable map of human history from roughly 300,000 BC to today. Time flows top to bottom; geography runs west to east — Americas, Europe, Middle East & Africa, India, East Asia.
Stream widths are illustrative. Like the original, at any moment the civilizations alive share the full width of the map, each one's share an editorial judgment of its relative power and influence among its contemporaries — watch shares swell and shrink as empires rise and fall. The time scale is deliberately warped: deep prehistory is compressed, recorded history expanded, so the map roughly tracks how much we know about each age.
Controls — Scroll to travel through time. Ctrl+scroll or pinch to zoom (zooming reveals more detail; minor civilizations grow in as you zoom). Drag the timeline edge to jump. Click the timeline to see everything happening in that moment. Click anything on the map to read its story. Press / to search. The ⇆ button (bottom right) switches the streams between the stacked share-of-power view and the free-floating classic view.
Blurbs are hand-written for this project. Images and "read more" links come live from Wikipedia's public API. Progress is stored only in your browser.