A History of Nations

Every nation that ever was,
5,000 years on one globe

Watch the world's countries, empires, colonies and territories rise, fall, split and merge — from the earliest records (3000 BC) to today — on an interactive 3D globe with a timeline you can scrub through history.

Runs in your browser · No sign-in · No tracking · Free

What you can do

A living atlas of political history — scrub the timeline and the borders, the count and the list all change with the year.

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Globe & timeline

Spin a 3D globe and scrub 42 eras from 3000 BC to today — borders rise, fall, split and merge as you travel. Press play to watch history unfold.

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Leap to famous eras

One tap jumps you to the Bronze Age, Rome at its peak, the Age of Discovery, the colonial Empires or the World Wars.

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Today's borders overlaid

A faint present-day border layer sits beneath each era, so you can instantly see where on Earth an ancient realm actually was.

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Every nation, every year

A live count and searchable list of who was on the map that year. Click any polity for its lifespan and a link to its full history.

My nations

Tag the places you've been or want to go on today's map and keep track of your travels.

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Private by design

No sign-in, no accounts, no analytics, no trackers. Everything runs locally in your browser.

Built on real historical data

Modern borders are precise; historical polities are mapped from a scholarly database and are inherently approximate — the deeper the past, the more estimated they are.

13,765mapped polities
42eras · 3000 BC→today
241nations & territories today