City, sized by recorded population: 10,000 · 100,000 · 1,000,000
City with no figure for this year (records too far apart)
Independent early city-state
Early state or major settlement known from archaeology (no written records)
Site of a culture: a shared way of life across a region, with no single centre. Hover for its name; faint where a drawn state covers it.
States
State (rough outline). One colour follows a state through its renamings.
Zone: a sphere of influence, a mobile people, or a state known from four places or fewer. Not a hard border.
Overlapping: the sources draw two states over the same land (a rival claim, a disputed border, or land changing hands). Click either state to see which.
Client or vassal: a state with its own ruler under a larger power, in its own colour, ringed in the overlord's colour.
Evidence
CheckedChecked source or peer-reviewed dataset
Ancient textRests on an ancient text (annal, inscription, historian) in a scholarly edition
To checkEstimate, or source still to check
No sourceNo source found
Why some regions look thinner
States and city populations come from written and dated records, so places without writing show fewer of them. Cultures and early states known from archaeology are shown as site markers with italic names when peer-reviewed work recognises them, dates them and places them.