One slider. Two thousand years.
Drag it and the borders move with your hand. Hit play and watch Rome recede, the caliphates sweep west, the Mongols ride out of the steppe and Europe shatter into confetti and reassemble.
2,026 years · 1,420 territories · one slider
What did the world look like the year you were born?
Now drag the slider back. Watch empires swell and burst, kingdoms split between brothers, whole countries appear out of nothing and quietly vanish again. Two thousand years of the map redrawing itself — and you can stop anywhere and ask what you're looking at.
AD1914
The last summer of the old order.
Or start somewhere interesting
- Years
- 2,026 AD 1 to today, every one of them
- Territories
- 1,420 Click any of them, in any year
- Glossary entries
- 1,280 Researched across 12 regions
- References
- 1,681 Named, linked and checkable
New in Knowledge
Read the story, then see it on the map.
What it does
Less reading. More falling
down the rabbit hole.
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Territories on the map: 45 in AD 1, 190 today. Every step is a real border change. -
Wait — who were they?
The map is full of names you've never heard of. Click one to find out who ruled it, how long it lasted and what swallowed it. 1,280 territories have a full article.
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Sizes you can actually trust.
Most world maps inflate Russia and Canada into monsters. This one defaults to the Equal Earth projection, so when an empire looks enormous, it really was. Mercator is one click away.
MercatorEqual EarthGreenland Africa — drawn as each projection makes them look. -
Found something? Share it.
Spotted an empire you want a friend to see? Copy the address and send it — they'll land on the same year, looking at the same place.
theworldthroughtime.com/app?year=1492→ -
Right in your browser.
It works on a laptop, a tablet or a phone — open it and start exploring.
- No account
- No install
- No paywall
Same frame, four moments
Watch the world fill in.
Look how empty it starts. That's not missing data — for most of history, most of the world simply had no borders on it at all.
The honest part
It tells you when
it doesn't know.
Historical borders are disputed, approximate, and often anachronistic as an idea. Plenty of maps hide that. This one says so — quietly, next to the thing it's unsure about.
Blank means blank
Empty land is an answer, not a gap. AD 1 has 45 states on the whole planet. Today there are 190.
Borders weren't always lines
Before 1648 territory was a tangle of overlapping rights, not an outline. The map admits where it's simplifying.
Sources you can check
Every shape comes from a published academic dataset. Nothing is drawn by hand to make a gap look tidier.
Known flaws, left visible
Where the underlying data is wrong or coarse, it's flagged rather than smoothed over. Full detail inside, under About the data.
The part nobody else writes
Every shape has a story.
We've written 1,280 of them.
Clicking a territory tells you what it was, when it was and who ran it — in seconds. The glossary is the long version: where a state came from, how big it really got and how it ended, researched against named sources and linked back to the exact year it stood on the map.
Recently expanded
New long reads in the glossary
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Central Asia · 1459–60, 1466 or 1502
Astrakhan Khanate
The Astrakhan Khanate on the lower Volga: its disputed founding, khans, Crimean and Nogai rivals, Russia's conquest in 1554–1556 and the Ottoman attack of 1569.
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Central Asia · 1438 or 1445–1552
Khanate of Kazan
The Khanate of Kazan, 1438–1552: its founding, khans, Volga trade, Queen Süyümbikä, Sviyazhsk and the storming of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible on 2 October 1552.
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Europe · 1440s–1783
Crimean Khanate
The Crimean Khanate, 1440s–1783: the Giray khans, Ottoman rule, the burning of Moscow in 1571, the slave trade, Bakhchisaray and Russia's annexation in 1783.
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Europe · 1260s–1547
Grand Principality of Moscow
The Grand Principality (Duchy) of Moscow, 1260s–1547: Ivan Kalita, Dmitry Donskoy, Ivan III, the Horde and the Ugra, the flag question and the Third Rome.
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Central Asia · c. 1242–1502
Golden Horde
The Golden Horde (Ulus of Jochi): Batu and Berke, the capital Sarai, the yarlyk and tribute in Rus', Özbeg's Islam, Timur and the fall in 1502.
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Central America · 1974–present
Grenada
Grenada from French settlement and Fédon's rebellion to the 1979 revolution, Bishop's murder, the 1983 US invasion and Hurricane Ivan.
Popular starting points
Where it comes from
Standing on real scholarship.
The borders come from open academic datasets, all credited and checkable. The glossary cites 1,681 books, papers and archives — every one listed on the sources page, linked to the entries that use it.
CC-BY-4.0
Cliopatria v0.12
Seshat Global History Databank
The world layer — every year from AD 1 to 2026
GPL-3.0
Historical Basemaps
André Ourednik
The optional German states overlay, 1715–1814
Public domain
Natural Earth
1:110m land · 1:50m shaded relief
The coastlines, and the terrain under the Mercator view
1,681 references
Every glossary source
Grouped by publisher, linked to each entry
See the full list →
Two thousand years, one slider
Go on. Pick a year.
The one you were born. The one your town was founded. The one you had to learn at school and never quite pictured.
Or open it at 1492, the year most people try first.