A History of the World in 500 Maps

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The Huns had brought with them many confederate tribes from the steppes of eastern Asia, and these had established themselves as the ruling warrior elite within the Hun-dominated territory. The Indo-European chieftains of the steppe had had their day. These new Turkic groups probably included the ancestors of the Avars, Bulgars and other peoples destined to play a large part in East European history. In the Indian subcontinent, the Maurya empire has given unity to the Aryan states and spread their culture far down into the Indian peninsula. Unlike the Han empire of China, however, which has 400 years of history ahead of it, the power of the Mauryan empire is already unravelling. The Middle East and the Mediterranean region The past few centuries have seen the ancient civilizations of the Middle East and the Aegean experience steep decline – in some cases, such as the the Hittites, complete collapse, and others, such as Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia, significant weakening. In 2500 BCE much of the world is still populated by hunter-gatherers. But farming and pastoral populations are continuing to encroach on their lands, and in many parts of the world the rise of civilization is astonishing. The Middle East and Egypt To the south, the Bantu migration is now moving down into southern Africa. South East Asia and Oceania

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Islamic civilization has continued to make great strides, with discoveries in mathematics, physics, astronomy, medicine and other branches of knowledge. This knowledge has been spreading west into Europe, where it will soon bear fruit in extraordinary ways. The long wars in Europe have left Britain’s navy in undisputed mastery of the seas. As well as underpinning the growing reach of the British Empire, this navy is used to keep the seas open to the trade of all nations – which in reality means Western nations. No people seeking to resist western commercial power can shut it out for long, as the British navy can brush away any non-Western nations’ attempts to defend ports and coasts. All countries with coasts are open to invasion, wherever and whenever Britain or her allies choose to strike. In Europe, Crete, Greece and the Aegean are home to literate cultures, whilst in China a sophisticated civilization has emerged, capable of fashioning some of the most beautiful bronze artifacts ever produced in history. On the Indian sub-continent, however, the many cities of the Indus valley have all vanished, for reasons modern scholars can only guess at. Far to the south, the Chavin civilization, the first of a long series of urban cultures in the Andean region of South America, has appeared. At the same time, the use of alphabetic scripts has been becoming widespread. The Aramaean script is now used throughout the Middle East. Its employment is fostered by the rise of huge imperial states in the region, and the transfers of population that this has involved.Trade links are being extended in West Africa, where Berber traders are pioneering the trans-Saharan trade routes, with the vital aid of camels. On the islands and coasts of southern China the ancestors of the Malays and Polynesians are starting their great migration down into South East Asian waters. From here, in the course of their history they will travel over a vast area of the globe: eastwards as far as Hawaii and Easter Island, and westwards as far as Madagascar. Europe and Central Asia In Africa, the future expansion of agriculture is being assured by the domestication of tropical plants as food crops. At the same time, a civilization, made possible by irrigation, is emerging in the southern tip of Arabia. To the north, the Russians have come into the Christian fold, looking to Constantinople for religious leadership. They are developing a unique culture of their own, drawing largely on Byzantine models. The Steppes

A History of the World in 500 Maps By Christian Grataloup

While western European countries have been extending their reach across the oceans, the Russians have been spreading across Central Asia and into East Asia. They reach the Pacific Ocean about now. This expansion is carried out mostly by thousands of ordinary farmers, but coming up behind them comes the authority of the Russian state. The control this imposes on the region means that, from this time forward, the nomadic steppe peoples of Central Asia will no longer pose a threat to the settled peoples of Europe or East Asia. South Asia European ships have also carried out their first reconnaissance of the waters around Australia and New Zealand. This is the precursor to these land masses being brought into the mainstream of global history. In the political sphere, also, Europe and its offshoots in the Americas have been experiencing unprecedented change. In England, the Glorious Revolution of 1688-9 led to rights of individual citizens being guaranteed by law. Ironically, these very principles which Britain pioneered led to a rebellion against her by her American colonies. Most of these have now broken away from British rule to form a new nation with its own deliberately designed constitution, the United States of America. The eclipse of the leading Middle Eastern states has allowed new nations to come to the fore, notably the Phoenicians and the Israelites. In their brief flowering as leading powers they make a big mark, playing a central part in the development of the alphabet and the rise of the first great monotheistic religion of world history. The Americas have seen a further expansion of farming. In Central America, the first civilization of the Western Hemisphere has arisen, that of the Olmecs. In South America, intensive trade links between the high Andes and the coastal plains of Peru are creating a single cultural area. In North America, irrigation farming is already becoming established in the dry south-west of the present-day United States. Further east the Adena culture is emerging in the Mississippi valley, starting a tradition of mound-building which will last for two and a half millennia.

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This period of world history is indeed a time of commercial expansion over a large part of the Eastern Hemisphere. Another trade route between east and west has opened up across the Indian Ocean. By now, the Monsoon-driven Indian Ocean trade between Arabia and the west on the one hand, and the Indian sub-continent on the other, is well established. This links to the sea routes connecting India to South East Asia. This in turn links up with routes to China. The history of the world is experiencing one of its key turning points, with the beginnings of the rise of a truly global civilization. All corners of the globe are being affected. The Western World In Australia, the tiny British settlement has grown slowly, and new colonies have been founded on different parts of the coast. The New Zealand coasts are now dotted with small European settlements, leading to clashes with Maori tribes.

World History The Timemap of World History

BC | 550 BC | 549 BC | 540 BC | 527 BC | 500 BC | 400 BC | 350 BC | 335 BC | 323 BC | 300 BC | 250 BC | 220 BC | 200 BC | 150 BC | 100 BC | 50 BC Albert Herrmann, Ph.D. History & Commercial Atlas of China. Map of “ Chun-ch’iu Period, 722-482 BC”.In Africa, cattle-herding and farming have probably reached as far south as the Great Lakes region by now. The Americas Europeans have already embarked on their long-distance ocean voyages. Unlike their Chinese counterparts, these will not be abandoned. They will end some centuries hence only with the European nations dominating all the seas of the world. From this much else will flow. Western traders and missionaries are also active elsewhere in Oceania. Sadly, they bring with them disease, guns and destabilization. For these, as for other non-Western societies, the process of being drawn into the emerging, Western-dominated Global civilization is a hard and stressful one. This is the age when many of the great cathedrals of Europe are being built. This testifies to the power of the Church, and this period sees a fierce struggle between the Church and secular rulers. This struggle will lead to different outcomes in different countries, with the rise of strong monarchies in some and the undermining of central royal power in others. History maps have different purposes. You can learn about the distribution of ancient tribes and populations, social movements or trade routes, and how the boundaries shifted over a certain period. Thanks to historical maps, the location of ancient kingdoms is no longer a mystery. Historical resources maps give us some hints on what resources one region possessed and how that particular area evolved.

World in 500 BCE.png - Wikimedia Commons File:World in 500 BCE.png - Wikimedia Commons

In South East Asia, the Khmer kingdom of Cambodia has reached its height, its power and wealth expressed dramatically in the huge temple mountain of Angkor Wat. On the eastern steppes, meanwhile, the collapse of the Han empire of China allowed various steppe tribes to occupy large areas of northern China. Hundreds of thousands of nomads flooded into China, causing a power-vacuum on the steppes themselves. This has been filled by the Rouran confederacy, which briefly covers a vast area of central Asia. The Middle EastAnother manifestation of the power of the Church has been the launching a series of great military campaigns, called “crusades”, against the Muslim world to reclaim the pilgrimage center of Jerusalem and surrounding lands from Islamic control. These have been a woeful failure. However, one result has been a great upswing in Mediterranean trade. This is dominated by north Italian merchants, and the wealth this trade brings will, in following centuries, help bring about the great cultural movement known as the Italian Renaissance, and all that flows from it. On the western steppes, the Scythians continue their domination, but their power is being challenged on their eastern flank by the rise of new Iranian peoples, the Parthians and Sarmatians. This development may well be linked to the rise of heavy cavalry. Larger, stronger horses were now being bred on the Iranian tablelands, and these could support a mounted warrior clad in chain mail. Indeed, the animals themselves were being given an armored coat. In the Pacific, the Polynesians have now settled even further afield, in Tahiti and the Society Island. The Americas