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TimeMaps Interactive Map of World History is a history of the development of ‘civilisation’. This is defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary as “an advanced stage or system of social development”.
Clearly, we can’t include every society that has ever existed, however small-scale it was. The map would be far too complicated. Also, for many hunter-gatherer societies, or even fairly large-scale farming tribes, we have virtually no information. We have therefore been forced to be selective.
For our purposes we have followed most other historians by calling a society “civilized” when it has one or more of the following features:
- Literacy
- towns and cities
- well-organized states
We have used these parameters quite loosely. Several of the African kingdoms we have included, for example, did not have either literacy or proper cities, but they did have well-organised states. On the other hand, we have not coloured in some areas of the world where there were scattered trading cities in which fully literate societies functioned, e.g. in Central Asia and Arabia before the coming of Islam. The problem here is that they were islands of civilization surrounded by nomadic tribes who did not – as far as we can tell – live in organized states.
Some teachers (and students!) might disagree with our choice of the definition of “civilization”. There are societies who know nothing of cities, whose culture is entirely oral, and who have not organized themselves into elaborate states, but who would regard their way of life as thoroughly civilized. This is a viewpoint with which we would have no quarrel. However, a map based on such an approach would, as noted above, be far too complex to be of much use.
Having said that, there may be specific instances where you think we should not have excluded a society. If you do have comments along these lines (and indeed other suggestions which you feel may enhance the program) please write to us at feedback@timemaps.com
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