HistorIQly Map is a discovery tool for exploring broad changes in world geography. It is
not a cadastral survey or a substitute for specialist regional scholarship. This page
explains what each snapshot represents, where the boundary geometry comes from, and how to
report a correction.
Methodology page last updated: 31 August 2026
Boundary source
Historical Basemaps
The political and cultural boundary layer is adapted from André Ourednik and
contributors' Historical Basemaps project. It publishes
georeferenced boundaries of countries and cultural regions as GeoJSON and is distributed
under the GPL-3.0 license.
The source project describes the maps as a work in progress intended for global- and
continental-scale use. HistorIQly preserves its core labels and boundary-precision field,
then adds display colors and connects the map to separate layers for conflicts,
landmarks, trade routes, and historical figures.
Context layers
Conflicts, landmarks, routes, and people
These overlays are maintained as separate HistorIQly editorial datasets and are joined
to each map snapshot by date and location. They are not part of Historical Basemaps and
should not be read as claims made or endorsed by that project.
Selected war and landmark details display links supporting reviewed fields; the catalog
does not yet have a complete item-level bibliography. Treat
their dates, summaries, belligerents, quotations, and classifications as discovery
context, and verify a specific claim with specialist scholarship before citing it in
academic, journalistic, or legal work. Corrections are reviewed against the supporting
source supplied by the reporter.
What a date means
Snapshots, not a claim of year-by-year precision
Border snapshots and event dates
The map contains 49 selected snapshots. Moving the timeline picks
the nearest available border reconstruction; it does not interpolate a newly researched
border for every calendar year. Conflict markers and territory cards use the selected
calendar year within each record’s inclusive start/end interval. A short conflict
between border snapshots remains discoverable through search. A coverage-limit label
identifies a dataset cutoff, not a confirmed end to hostilities.
Approximate pre-modern borders
Ancient and medieval authority often overlapped or changed seasonally. A polygon is a
useful teaching abstraction, not proof of a surveyed border in the modern sense.
Disputed interpretations
Historical names, territorial extent, sovereignty, and dates can be disputed. Where the
source marks a geometry as approximate, the corresponding year page reports that count.
Modern endpoint
A note about the 2026 timeline label
The interface currently uses 2026 as its present-day navigation endpoint. Its boundary
geometry duplicates HistorIQly's 2010 Historical Basemaps snapshot; it is not a 2026
geopolitical dataset. Treat it as a historical comparison endpoint, not an authoritative
map of current borders, international recognition, or active disputes.
Reproducibility
Inspect the data behind a year page
Every dated landing page links to the exact GeoJSON file rendered in its static preview and
interactive map. Start with one of these representative snapshots:
Send the year, territory or feature name, the disputed claim, and a reliable supporting
source to historiqly@cyril.page. Boundary changes
should also be reported upstream when they originate in Historical Basemaps.
