A History of the World in 500 Maps

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At this time, many of the classical civilizations of the ancient world enter their period of greatness: Greek, Chinese, Indian and Israelite civilizations all experience a burst of creativity, each producing thinkers who will profoundly shape the future course of world history. The Buddha in India, Confucius in China, the Greek philosophers of the Ionian school, and the Jewish prophets of ancient Israel – all lay down modes of thought whose influence is still with us today. Technology and culture Agriculture is also practiced in a few places in the Western Hemisphere, in parts of Mexico and Peru. The rest of the populations of North and South America are hunter-gatherers.

World map 550 BC - World History Maps World map 550 BC - World History Maps

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.This is an era of the ancient world when all the major centers of civilization see huge empires at various stages of development. China In the Spanish-ruled territories in the rest of Central and South America, a scarcely less equal society has grown up. Here, a small colonial elite has divided the land into vast estates, leaving the native population as impoverished serfs tied to the lands. Expanding European influence To the north, in that part of North America still under British rule, a large French-speaking community along the banks of the St Lawrence river stands out from the English-speaking settlements surrounding it. Japan narrowly escaped Mongol rule. However, it has not escaped political instability and recurrent bouts of civil war. South East Asia

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Another great state whose end is fast approaching is the Parthian empire, which has ruled much of the Middle East for the past 300 years (though without the stability of the Roman and Han empires). Nevertheless, the global picture in 1789 is clear: the entire world is being drawn into one overall trading system, based on the ports of Western Europe. A globalized economy is taking shape, and world history has acquired a unifying momentum which is leaving no region of the world untouched. In North America, Native American tribes still hold sway in most of the continent. Apart from in the east, people of European extraction live in widely scattered, very isolated settlements – trading posts, forts and mission stations – and make only the most minimal impact on their surroundings. In the Western Hemisphere, the Mayan civilization of Central America continues to thrive, and in South America two new centers of power have arisen in the Andes, Tiwanaku and Huari.The TimeMaps Premium service offers a growing range of exclusive resources not available in the free area. These are especially useful for teachers and their students, but will also be of interests to anyone wanting to learn more about history. The eastern parts of the continent, however, are now home to societies of European – mainly British – descent. Their way of life has been transplanted wholesale from their original homelands. Most of these societies are now part of the United States of America, a new, independent nation which in 1789 completes the task of equipping itself with a constitution whereby to govern itself.

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European off-shoots have not yet been established in any significant way in other parts of the world. A small farming colony has been planted in South Africa by the Dutch, mainly to provision the ships of the Dutch East India Company on their way to trade with the East; and a tiny penal colony has been established on the south-east coast of Australia by the British. However, other parts of the world are coming under European control, even though not settled to any great extent by European colonists. The Dutch have established their rule over much of the East Indies, and are expanding this control as the years go by. Similarly, and on a much larger scale, in the chaos left by the decline and fragmentation of the Mughal empire, the British are gaining control of more and more of the Indian subcontinent. In most of the rest of the world, in the Middle East, Africa and the East Asia, European influence is still confined to small coastal enclaves from which they trade with the native populations – either on a more or less equal footing or even in conditions of inferiority and difficulty. East Asia This may be the achievement of steppe peoples of East Asian origin. This gives them a military edge in these wide landscapes. It is from this time that non-Indo-European groups begin to challenge the Indo-European speakers for dominance in central Asia. Their descendants will have an enormous impact on global history. Migrations Denis Bellemare. Historical Atlas of Late Antiquity. Maps of “ Southern Arabia in 540 AD” and “ North Arabia in 540 AD”.Beyond the Middle East, the closely-related Sanskrit script has evolved amongst the Aryans in India. To the west, Phoenician traders have carried the alphabet to the Greeks, Italians (including of course the Romans) and other peoples of the Mediterranean. The Middle East Another branch of this migration is heading down via the Philippines and New Guinea into the Pacific. The spread of farming peoples