As you know, the world wasn’t always how you know it today. Land was discovered, people migrated, and significant events in history played out to shape what society is like now. For a glimpse in this sort of evolution of the world, Gareth Lloyd scraped all geotagged Wikipedia articles with time attached to them, providing a total of 14,238 events. Then he mapped them over time.



Your history lesson begins in 499 BC, when most of the documented events appear in Europe. Around the middle mark, you see some activity in Asia. Finally, around 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, got lost, and thought he was in India, there’s a burst of activity worldwide. Fast forward to present day, and you’ve got an image that resembles a modern map.

Can you do something more with the data? Lloyd put all geotagged Wikipedia articles in a Google Fusion Table as well as the subset that has time attached.

[Ragtag via @aaronkoblin]