A History of the World in 500 Maps

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The Celts are now coming to dominate France and other parts of western Europe, populating it with their hill forts and warlike chieftainships.

A History of the World in 500 Maps | RIBA Books

In Central America, Toltec power has vanished, and the Aztec empire is expanding. To the north, farming societies across North America have been experiencing difficulties, though the reasons for these are unclear. The weakness of China has not prevented her from exporting her civilization wholesale to neighboring peoples. States modeled along Chinese lines are being built in Korea and Japan, and their inhabitants are importing Chinese culture and religion in large doses. This includes Buddhism, which is now spreading throughout East Asia and South East Asia. Here, Chinese cultural elements vie with Indian influences to produce a unique synthesis. The Asian steppes History teaches us valuable lessons, and its philosophy shows us what mistakes we should avoid and engages people to look into their cultural heritage. A great way to visualize history is by studying history maps, graphic representations of past events. At the heart of this new civilization are the European nations and their offshoots around the globe. By this date, one can start speaking of the nations of Europe and the Americas – North America especially – as “the Western World”. They make up a global bloc with a shared civilization.Being the first to experience the transformations which industrialization brings, these societies find themselves with a huge (though, as it will turn out, temporary) advantage over all other societies on the planet. They naturally set about exploiting this advantage to the full. Within the USA, tensions are growing between Northern and Southern states. These are caused by contrasts between their very different societies: the northern states are home to the most economically dynamic and egalitarian societies in the world at that date; the southern ones have very unequal plantation societies, with their economies based in the institution of slavery. Central and South America

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In the Pacific, Polynesian culture is taking shape as the islanders adapt their way of life to local conditions. The Americas To add to these political changes, European society is now starting to be transformed by the Industrial Revolution spreading from Britain. The growing industrial towns, the multiplying factories, and now the expanding railway networks, are helping to undermine old social structures and create new ones in their place. North America South East Asia continues to experience two waves of migration, both originating in southern China a millennia or more before. The people of the western migration are settling down in the mainland parts of the region as the Mon and Khmer peoples, while the eastern migration has continued to settle the coasts and islands, where they will be known as the Malay peoples. In the Middle East, the Parthian empire has been replaced by the more effective Sassanid empire. Under the Sassanids, classical Persian civilization is brought to a peak. The Roman empire is at its height, but is just about to enter its long decline. It has given its inhabitants two centuries of almost unbroken peace, and so, like the Han dynasty in China, ranks as one of the longest periods of peace in world history. The appearance of Roman merchants in south Chinese ports shows the strength of trade links between different parts of the Eastern Hemisphere by this time. East Asia

A History of the World in 500 Maps by Christian Grataloup

Elsewhere in Africa, the trans-Saharan trade routes continue to expand, and as a result, new states are appearing in West Africa. South East Asia East Asia has seen great economic and technological progress over the past two centuries or so. Chinese inventions such as the compass, gunpowder and printing are of key significance to global history. Song Dynasty China is, by a stretch, the wealthiest and most technologically advanced society on earth. The Koreans are also a dynamic and innovative culture, whilst the Japanese experience centuries of on-off civil war, in which Samurai warriors will come to prominence in Japanese society. Islamic expansion 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. 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. The “universal” empires which marked the latter phases of the Ancient World ( Roman, Parthian/ Persian, Mauryan/ Gupta, Han) consolidated the achievements of the previous centuries, and spread them beyond their original core areas. Now we enter a period where the connections between different regions and civilizations expand and deepen, as do conflicts. In each of the major civilizations, religion or ideology plays a more dominant role than in the past: Europe becomes “Christendom”, and goes to war against “the world of Islam”, now ruling the Middle East and North Africa. In India, a three-way contest between Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam plays out; and in China and East Asia, Buddhism and Confucianism interact with each other. In South-East Asia, Hinduism, Buddhism and then Islam mould the new societies developing there.This period of world history sees one of the most important advances in human know-how. This is the development of the decimal number system, which uses the concept of zero. Without this breakthrough it is hard to see how modern mathematics and science could have evolved. Although this conceptual advance is the basis for what are known as “Arabic” numbers, in fact it originated in India. However, this is not the only place in the world that such a discovery has been made. Quite separately, and thousands of miles away, the Maya use the concept of zero in their calendars.

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In the steppes of central Asia, the nomadic horsemen have become a major threat to the settled civilizations of Eurasia. In the East, these “barbarians” have already had an impact on Chinese history by helping break up the unified Zhou kingdom into numerous different states; and in the West, deep raids by the Cimmerians have caused much destruction. On the eastern steppes, a power-vacuum in Mongolia has now been filled by the vigorous activities of one of the greatest conquerors in all world history, Genghis Khan. South Asia, South East Asia, and OceaniaIn the mid-6th century, much of the steppes of central Asia fell under the sway of a Turkish confederacy. This extended its power right across from China to Europe. It soon divided into Eastern and Western halves, and on the western steppes a Turkic people called the Khazars seized the leadership in the early 7th century. The Khazars have had to fight hard to stop Arab armies from pushing into the steppes. Perhaps because of this their rulers have recently converted to the Jewish faith. First, Genghis Khan and his successors forged the huge Mongol empire, which took in much of Eurasia, from Russia to China. After Mongol rule had declined, another central Asian conqueror, Timur the Lame, briefly seized a large territory.

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

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

Europe will also be changed by another development which has started by now. This is the Italian Renaissance. This sees itself as a rebirth of Greek and Roman learning; in fact it is nothing less than a revolution in European culture. Along with the voyages of exploration, it forms a major turning point in world history. Amongst other things, it will give birth to modern science. Russia