The Histomap

davidrumsey.com

55 points·d99kris··12 comments

This looks very Eurocentric to me. China and the various Indian empires are getting short-shrift here, at least from an economic and military power perspective. It's a cool diagram, but what was the methodology used to generate this?

EDIT: Makes sense in the context of the times. Would be interesting to see an updated version, based on modern historical estimates.

Probably because it was made in 1931. Eurocentric times.

How is relative power measured? I am curious, because it reminds me of the Civ III Histographs which had some underlying formula.

Ex: http://www.civ3.com/previewwin.cfm?mode=screenshot&img=image...

No idea in the case of this map, but in Why the West Rules--For Now, the author comes up with a fairly complex social development index which factors in things like population, largest city, agriculture, etc. http://shc.stanford.edu/news/research/why-west-rules%E2%80%9...

He focuses solely on the Western and Eastern cores however.

If you're interested in the topic, you might want to check out that book. (It's a good read as a whole as well.)

This is awesome. I have something like it that I bought on Amazon [0], but I think this is better looking and far more detailed.

[0]http://www.amazon.com/World-History-Timeline-Schofield-Sims/...

An interactive version of this by Santiago Ortiz

http://intuitionanalytics.com/other/histomap/

Where can I buy a poster of it that ships to Spain?

Print version, http://www.amazon.com/Time-Chart-World-History-Histomap/dp/1...

Digital: https://www.google.com/search?q=histomap+high+resolution

Thanks!!

someone's selling a copy of one on eBay right now. Not cheap though: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rolled-Map-John-Sparks-5-1-2-HISTOMA...

You may want to also consider this alternative:

http://www.amazon.com/World-History-Timeline-Schofield-Sims/...

It has the advantage of being a little more modern/complete than the original Histomap, even if it's a little lighter on that nice minimalist aesthetic. I have one hanging on my wall and it looks good.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com