Sources and coverage
About the data
What the atlas holds and what it lacks, how to read it, and where it all comes from.
- Counted on 15 November 2026
What it holds
Counted on 15 November 2026- 531,070Events145,581 of them dated to the day
- 151Civilizations124 realms and 27 culture spheres; 126 with borders on the map
- 1,271Other realms on the mapfrom Cliopatria, in 10,848 shapes over time
- 363Places with a pageand 17,942 named places that events point to
- 159Great peoplein 12 halls of the Agora of Ages
- 1,469Rulersthe reigns of 68 realms
- 50Wonders of the worldstanding on the map for as long as they stood
- 66Trade routesby land and by sea
- 14Religionsand 4 other spreads, from the Black Death to printing
- 630Battle pages7 reconstructions and 623 plans from CDB90
- 2Guided toursstop by stop through the atlas
- 12World regionsand 56 centuries, each with its page
Events by region and era
Counted on 15 November 2026How many events began in each of the twelve world regions in each era. The paler a cell, the thinner the record there; the shading follows the count’s order of magnitude, so a few dozen still shows beside tens of thousands.
| Region | 3500 – 1001 BCE | 1000 – 501 BCE | 500 – 1 BCE | 1 – 500 CE | 501 – 1000 CE | 1001 – 1500 | 1501 – 1800 | 1801 – 1900 | 1901 – 2000 | Since 2001 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Africa | 55 | 26 | 89 | 93 | 151 | 323 | 454 | 425 | 1,824 | 993 |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 3 | – | 3 | 19 | 20 | 124 | 321 | 1,173 | 4,116 | 3,434 |
| Middle East | 168 | 193 | 364 | 436 | 834 | 1,589 | 1,214 | 1,735 | 8,283 | 5,874 |
| Europe | 71 | 169 | 957 | 925 | 2,493 | 33,027 | 52,774 | 54,614 | 105,703 | 31,407 |
| Central Asia | 2 | 6 | 21 | 18 | 65 | 111 | 122 | 213 | 1,157 | 568 |
| South Asia | 9 | 29 | 64 | 45 | 111 | 342 | 1,067 | 1,053 | 4,462 | 4,302 |
| East Asia | 31 | 28 | 101 | 212 | 1,432 | 1,898 | 3,169 | 3,820 | 29,467 | 10,538 |
| Southeast Asia | 5 | 2 | 14 | 108 | 209 | 585 | 1,144 | 1,289 | 6,366 | 4,127 |
| Mesoamerica and the Caribbean | – | – | 2 | 9 | 24 | 74 | 1,070 | 1,209 | 2,835 | 1,493 |
| South America | 5 | – | 4 | 6 | 6 | 42 | 1,263 | 2,346 | 6,474 | 2,922 |
| North America | 6 | 1 | 2 | 20 | 2 | 18 | 4,533 | 24,713 | 47,495 | 12,729 |
| Oceania | 3 | – | – | 13 | 3 | 2 | 30 | 1,532 | 4,159 | 1,416 |
| Region | 3500 – 1001 BCE | 1000 – 501 BCE | 500 – 1 BCE | 1 – 500 CE | 501 – 1000 CE | 1001 – 1500 | 1501 – 1800 | 1801 – 1900 | 1901 – 2000 | Since 2001 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Africa | 16 | 10 | 74 | 38 | 89 | 176 | 299 | 186 | 763 | 557 |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 1 | – | 2 | 4 | 3 | 35 | 147 | 468 | 1,610 | 2,279 |
| Middle East | 63 | 110 | 283 | 268 | 539 | 857 | 543 | 396 | 2,483 | 3,236 |
| Europe | 20 | 49 | 694 | 393 | 789 | 3,653 | 7,610 | 5,684 | 25,547 | 14,041 |
| Central Asia | 2 | 1 | 13 | 12 | 45 | 77 | 38 | 39 | 306 | 286 |
| South Asia | – | 12 | 41 | 17 | 49 | 125 | 465 | 229 | 1,477 | 2,080 |
| East Asia | 10 | 17 | 77 | 132 | 235 | 412 | 1,006 | 723 | 5,134 | 3,707 |
| Southeast Asia | 1 | – | 7 | 79 | 143 | 418 | 581 | 527 | 1,870 | 1,852 |
| Mesoamerica and the Caribbean | – | – | 1 | 4 | 12 | 18 | 326 | 583 | 911 | 842 |
| South America | 3 | – | 1 | 2 | 1 | 27 | 323 | 1,063 | 1,695 | 1,746 |
| North America | 5 | – | 1 | 19 | 1 | 8 | 756 | 4,282 | 10,618 | 8,414 |
| Oceania | 3 | – | – | 12 | 3 | 2 | 21 | 278 | 1,364 | 831 |
19,818 events have no region (no place at all, or one far from any land) and are left out.
How to read it
Dates
A date is as precise as its source gave it: a day, a month, a year, a decade, a century or a millennium. Pages write it so, “c. 480 BCE” or “5th century BCE”, and when sources disagree the widest span is kept, with its bounds.
Years before 1 CE are BCE, and there is no year 0. Days are those the sources give: before 1582, and in some countries later, the Julian calendar’s, as on Wikipedia’s day pages.
| To the day | 145,581 |
|---|---|
| To the month | 13,011 |
| To the year | 332,455 |
| To the decade | 7,894 |
| To the century | 31,839 |
| To the millennium | 290 |
Places
An event with coordinates of its own, or its Wikipedia article’s, is a solid dot on the map; so is one placed at the town or building it names. One placed only by its province or district, its present-day country, or a realm it concerns is a hollow ring, and its card says the place is approximate.
| Its own coordinates | 405,343 |
|---|---|
| The place it names | 29,209 |
| Its province or district | 28,573 |
| Its present-day country | 50,465 |
| A realm it concerns | 266 |
| No place: not on the map | 17,214 |
Solid dotHollow ring
Significance tiers
Each event has a significance score, from how many Wikipedia languages have an article on it, its English article’s page views, and the importance WikiProjects give it. Within each century the events are then ranked into five tiers: the century’s top 60 are tier 1, the next 140 tier 2, the next 400 tier 3, the next 1,400 tier 4, and the rest tier 5. So an ancient century has its headlines as a modern one does.
Far out the map shows tier 1 alone (Headlines); at zooms 3 and 4, down to tiers 3 and 4 (Balanced); and from zoom 5, every event (Everything).
| Tier 1 | 2,296 |
|---|---|
| Tier 2 | 3,941 |
| Tier 3 | 8,407 |
| Tier 4 | 17,931 |
| Tier 5 | 498,495 |
Buildings and foundings
383,239 of the 531,070 events (72%) are “Construction of …” and “Founding of …” events: the dates on which Wikidata says a building was built, or a town, a school or a state was founded. They would bury everything else, so the map hides them until “Foundings” and “Buildings and works” are ticked in its key; disasters and “Others” start hidden too.
| Buildings and works | 257,693 |
|---|---|
| Foundings | 125,546 |
| Everything else | 147,831 |
Where it comes from
Each source with what it gives the atlas and its licence. Pages credit the text they show, and the map credits its borders.
Events and realms: their dates, places, participants and kinds, and their names in many languages.
Licence CC0 1.0
The summaries and articles on the pages, credited on each; page views and WikiProject ratings for significance; articles’ coordinates.
Licence CC BY-SA 4.0
Borders of about 1,600 polities from 3400 BCE to 2024: our civilizations’ and every other realm on the map.
Licence CC BY 4.0
historical-basemaps (A. Ourednik)
Borders only where Cliopatria has none: Champa in 1206–1219 and the Hồ dynasty in 1407.
Licence GPL-3.0
Significant earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis from 2150 BCE: 4,481 events.
Licence US public domain
Present-day countries, grouped into the twelve world regions.
Licence Public domain
CDB90 (CAA Database of Battles, 1990), tidy edition by J. B. Arnold
624 battles from 1600 to 1973, with their strengths, losses, terrain and weather, on the battle pages.
Licence Data ODC-BY 1.0; the original CAA data public domain
Curated events
1,395 events of Vietnam’s history that Wikidata lacks or leaves bare, each written from cited sources, which its page lists.
Licence Ours; each fact cited to its source
Wikimedia’s machine translation, with open models such as NLLB-200: Vietnamese names for events that have none.
Licence As the text it translates (MinT’s terms): here names from Wikidata, CC0
The map’s relief comes from NASA, its satellite view from EOX and its street map from OpenFreeMap; the map credits them.
The credits name the scans, photographs, models and textures the Agora of Ages is built from, each with its licence.
Known gaps
Counted on 15 November 2026Said plainly, with the numbers.
Early history outside Europe is thin
Of the events up to 1500, Europe has 37,642 and Oceania 21. Much of it is Europe’s buildings and foundings, but without them the gap stays wide: Wikidata, the main source, describes some parts of the world far better than others.
Events up to 1500, by region
| Events up to 1500, by region | all events | without buildings and foundings |
|---|---|---|
| Europe | 37,642 | 5,598 |
| East Asia | 3,702 | 883 |
| Middle East | 3,584 | 2,120 |
| Southeast Asia | 923 | 648 |
| North Africa | 737 | 403 |
| South Asia | 600 | 244 |
| Central Asia | 223 | 150 |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 169 | 45 |
| Mesoamerica and the Caribbean | 109 | 35 |
| South America | 63 | 34 |
| North America | 49 | 34 |
| Oceania | 21 | 20 |
Little before 2000 BCE
129 events began before 2000 BCE.
Possible duplicates
2,268 names are shared by 5,337 events of the same year. Many are one thing with two Wikidata items, such as a town and its commune both giving “Founding of Ovidiu”; some are different events that happen to share a name.
Most Vietnamese event names are made by machine
521,282 of the 531,065 Vietnamese event names (98%) are made by machine: by fixed patterns (“Xây dựng …”, “Thành lập …”) and by MinT. 1,268 are reviewed by hand, 1,403 written with the curated events and 7,112 come from Wikidata. Event pages mark a machine-made name “Tên dịch máy”.
Many events sit at their country’s centre
50,465 events are placed only by their present-day country, 28,573 by their province or district and 266 by a realm they concern. They are hollow rings on the map, at a point that stands for the whole country, province or realm rather than where they happened.
17,214 events have no place at all and are not on the map.
Events without an English name
16,890 events in the database have no English name yet, so the atlas does not show them.
How to help
Seen a wrong date, a misplaced event or a missing realm? Every page’s facts end with “Suggest a correction”, which opens a short form; the Feedback button in the header takes anything else.