Re: Have You Seen A Better Map Than This?

I downloaded a series of century maps starting in 0 AD a few years ago when I was teaching history. Maps like this show quite clearly that the story of humanity has been a struggle for the right to self determination. Century after century, generation after generation, the fight for freedom, for the right to live your life the way you choose, has been one of the defining factors of human civilization on earth.

A few things that jumped out at me while watching this video:

1) France’s borders rarely change
2) The Mongol hoards occupied much of what we now call Russia
3)Poland appearing around 1000 AD, vanishing for several hundred years and then coming back significantly smaller…
4) The Ottoman Empire holding Greece hostage for 500 years

In the maps I examined a few years ago, it was clear that the 1300′s was a time when Europe had a similar number of countries as we do now… The problem is, freedom for those people didn’t last very long. Let’s hope this time will be different.