A History of the World in 500 Maps

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In North America, arctic hunters, ancestors of the present-day Inuit, are beginning to spread over the far north. In South America, farming is expanding over a wide area, and large, permanent villages are appearing in Peru. The majority of the continent, however, remains home to hunter-gatherers. In the Western Hemisphere, several centers of the Olmec civilization of Mexico have experienced a mysterious development, with the ritual burial of great sculptures accompanying the destruction of their communities. Nevertheless, by now the Olmec culture’s influence has spread over a large area of central America. This period in world history is seeing the “Ancient World” giving way to the “Medieval World”. Apart from being a convenient demarcation to help us moderns make sense of the past, does this actually mean anything? Perhaps it does, in the Eastern Hemisphere at least. The Medieval epoch (roughly 500 to 1500) is a time of building on the achievements of the Ancient World, but also of moving societies in new directions, preparing the way for the modern world. From Ancient to Medieval

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In the Middle East, the Parthian empire has been replaced by the more effective Sassanid empire.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. Naval supremacy has gone hand in hand with commercial supremacy, and London, Britain’s capital, is now effectively the financial and commercial center of the world. The slave trade 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.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.

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Indian traders are pioneering maritime trade routes between India and South East Asia. As a result, Indian civilization is beginning to spread amongst the peoples of Burma, the Malayan peninsula and the islands of Indonesia. South East Asia is experiencing two migrations. In a sort of pincer movement originating in southern China, farming populations are coming down via Burma into Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. These are the ancestors of today’s Mon and Khmer. To the east, meanwhile, the ancestors of today’s Malays are spreading along the coasts and islands of Vietnam, Malay and Indonesia. The Han dynasty has given almost two centuries of peace and stability to China – one of the more enduring periods of peace in global history for a significant portion of the world’s population. For the Chinese, it has been a time of prosperity and expansion. Commercial expansion 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

World History Maps website

Denis Bellemare. Historical Atlas of Late Antiquity. Maps of “ Northwest Africa in 500 AD” and “ Northeast Africa in 500 AD”.

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

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. Indo-European-speaking, horse-breeding peoples have spread over a huge area – across central Asia, towards China in the east, into central and southern Europe in the west and northern India to the south.

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To the south, the Bantu migration is now moving down into southern Africa. South East Asia and Oceania In the Pacific, a small group of Polynesians discover and settle New Zealand about now. The Americas and Greenland In Africa, the Bantu peoples, with their iron-using farming culture, are spreading across the central grasslands from their homeland in western Africa. As they go they displace or absorb the hunter-gatherer peoples they encounter. South East Asia and Oceania Japan narrowly escaped Mongol rule. However, it has not escaped political instability and recurrent bouts of civil war. South East Asia