History of the World: Every Year

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Music: Top Gun Maverick soundtrack mixed by https://www.youtube.com/@UChy2dmk9HDDJO36M79D36iA

You can zoom to any area of the video. Have the video quality to the maximum and activate subtitles to get the year.

Sorry the video got banned in Russia.

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I first had the idea to make a world history map during the Covid back in 2020. Lockdown meant that I had plenty of time at home. And after doing the history of Europe video, it made a lot of sense that I would simply extend the scale and make it worldwide.

I started the work, but was soon overwhelmed by the magnitude of the video. YouTube has always been a side activity that I did on my free time. But mapping every border from 2500 BC to now was a different beast. It meant making 4500 maps. Worlwdide. And accurate. I began and stopped the project several times. It felt like an impossible task.

Time went by. Pandemic ended and with it the free time that I had. I moved on in life, got married, became a father. Life was (and still is) amazing. YouTube started to fade away in my head.

From time to time, I was thinking about it with the feeling of unfinished business.
The problem had always been the scale of the project. I needed more time and I needed to draw maps faster. So I decided to try new mapping technique to make it more time-efficient. And I came up with several changes.

First, I created a database of existing maps for every year and every region. The most accurate yearly maps were actually right here, on YouTube. Mappers like Emperor Tigerstar, Ollie Bye and many others have done a tremendous job over the years. Together, they basically mapped the whole world history. What they have done is more valuable than many history books. Shoutout to both of them, I could not have done anything without their videos.
https://www.youtube.com/@UCUXqYwTCR6R3Wr-FkLTD4AQ
https://www.youtube.com/@UC6gNjP1W4FXWExT5QpYkmhQ
So I downloaded and cut the videos in individual yearly frames. I used Emperor Tigerstar's videos for North, South America, and Oceania. I used Ollie Bye's for Africa, Middle East, and Asia. And for Europe, I used my own video. All of those maps were combined into a single one that I traced for every year. This map was my starting point. I then spent more than a year to research and correct everything.

Second, I automatized a lot of my actions. In the first version of the video, I had one color for every country. I realized that it was unreadable, and needed to correct them all. So I created a Java script that would change the colors for all maps.
Another problem was that country labels were not well centered on country shapes. For that, I created a java script that move around labels on the canvas.
And finally, I used plenty of Power Automate. In 2024, my computer literally spent days working by itself. It saved me a lot of time.

Third, I made the map backwards. I started with the year 2025 and went back in time. I began with a perfect and very detailed map of 2025 that included rivers, and administrative regions inside countries. Then I just derived past borders from it.

Fourth, I simplified the maps. I believe that a lot of animated maps are too detailed. Animated maps are supposed to be readable and entertaining. So I removed all secondary colors that indicate vassal states and colonies to keep it to the essential. I removed unneeded complexity like all the Rus principalities or the Anatolian Beyliks.
Simplification was always the key word for me. Every country label needed to be visible from a smartphone. I made hard decision here: removing the Americas and Southern Africa until 1450 for the sake of visibility. In the Americas before 1450, the known history is centered on a small region going from central America to Peru. Had I shown the Americas, it would have been impossible to see the rest of the map clearly.

Fifth, I decomposed the map into 6 independent regional maps : North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania. And I linked them with tiny bits of Panama, Suez and the Ural moutains. Making 6 different maps was a lot less overwhelming than making 1 global map. This is because every map is based on the previous map. So when you make a mistake, you may notice it years or even decades later. Working with smaller maps makes it easier to spot mistakes.

The last thing that I needed was a long period where I would only focus on the project. This came during the summer of 2024 when I got a 3 months break between jobs. I fully dedicated to the project, and was amazed with the work I could get done with the new techniques. This summer, I made about 80% of video. I knew this project would come to life one day. I continued in 2024 and 2025. Reviewed, corrected, simplified a lot of things.

And in January 2026, here we are. This is the end of the journey.

I'm very proud to present you: History of the World: Every Year