About Histomap Reborn

Histomap Reborn is a modern remake of John B. Sparks' famous 1931 "Histomap" poster, which visualized 4,000 years of world history showing the relative power of different peoples and civilizations.

While the original was a beautiful piece of data visualization for its time, it had limitations: the "power" rankings were somewhat subjective, it ended in 1931, and it was static. Histomap Reborn addresses these issues by using real GDP data from the Maddison Project, extending the timeline to the present day, and making it fully interactive and customizable.

Data Sources

Modern Era (1750-2025)

For the modern period, world power visualization uses GDP data from the Maddison Project Database, one of the most comprehensive sources for historical economic development data.

Bolt, Jutta and Jan Luiten van Zanden (2020), "Maddison style estimates of the evolution of the world economy. A new 2020 update". Maddison Project Working Paper WP-15, available for download at www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/

Ancient & Medieval Eras (pre-1750)

For periods before 1750, the world power estimates are approximations based on scholarly research into ancient economies, including work by Angus Maddison, population studies by McEvedy & Jones, and various academic sources on ancient economic history. These figures should be treated as illustrative rather than definitive.

See our full methodology documentation for details on sources and limitations.

Event Data

Event data for timelines (presidents, wars, notable people, technology milestones, etc.) has been curated from various historical sources and Wikipedia, stored as JSON files within the project.

Methodology

GDP Bloc Visualization: Countries are grouped into geopolitical blocs (Western, Eastern, China, India, etc.) based on historical affiliations. The GDP percentages shown represent each bloc's share of estimated world GDP at each point in time.

Time Scales: Different timelines use different scales:

US History: 1770-2025, linear year scale
World History: 4000 BC - 2025 AD, logarithmic scale for ancient periods
British History: 100 BC - 2025 AD, linear year scale

Event Priorities: Events are classified as "major" (priority 1-2) or "minor" (priority 3+), affecting their visual prominence on the timeline.

Technical Details

Histomap Reborn is built with vanilla JavaScript and SVG rendering—no frameworks required:

Rendering: Pure SVG for resolution-independent graphics
PDF Export: jsPDF + svg2pdf.js for high-quality printable output
Data Format: JSON files for event data, CSV for GDP time-series
Hosting: Static files served via Vercel

The source code is available on GitHub under the MIT license.

License

This project is open source under the MIT License. The Maddison Project data is used under their terms—please cite appropriately if using for research.

About the Creator

Histomap Reborn was created by Rob Ennals.

I wrote about why I built this project and the fascinating way our perception of historical time is distorted in my blog post: "Events in the Past Are More Recent Than You Think".

If you find this project interesting, you might enjoy my other writing on technology, history, and ideas at Messy Progress.

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Contact

For questions, bug reports, or contributions, please open an issue on GitHub.