Arash the Archer · an ancient legend

Unrolling the atlas…

Empires GlobeWho ruled where, 3400 BCE to today
—
12:00 UT

The sky

Reading the stars…

The middle is straight overhead and the rim is the horizon; north is at the top and east on the left, as when you lie on your back and look up. Positions are computed with Astronomy Engine; stars are moved along their own motion through space, so the sky of ancient dates is shown as it was, to within a fraction of a degree. Constellations: al-Sufi’s Book of the Fixed Stars (c. 964), from the Stellarium sky culture by Khalid al-Ajaji (CC BY-ND 4.0, unchanged); drawings from manuscripts of al-Sufi (public domain); modern IAU lines adapted by Olaf Frohn (d3-celestial, BSD). Stars: XHIP (Anderson & Francis 2012) and HYG v4.4 proper motions (CC BY-SA 4.0).

This day in other calendars

Nowruz

Persian (Solar Hijri): the year begins on the day of the March equinox if it comes before noon Iran time (UT+3:30), otherwise the next day; official in Iran since 1925 and counted the same way back to 622. Islamic: the arithmetical calendar; the observed calendar, which follows the new crescent, can differ by a day or two. Hebrew: the fixed rules, counted the same way before they were adopted. Chinese: the name of the year in the sixty-year cycle; the Chinese year begins in late January or February. The equinox is computed with Astronomy Engine; for dates long ago its hour is less certain, because the slowing of the Earth’s spin is known only approximately.

Explore

Guided tours, famous moments, and collections across 5,000 years.

Search

Empires and states, capitals, great works, roads, tours, or a year such as 1453 or 331 BCE.

History of this place

What remains today · a stylised model, not a survey · drag to turn, scroll to zoom

Eclipses

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About & credits

What you are looking at, and whose work made it possible.

Empires Globe shows who ruled where in any year from 3400 BCE to 2024, drawn on an old-atlas globe. Pick a date and hour to see the real sunlight and night of that moment, the Moon’s phase, the year’s solar eclipse paths and the Moon’s shadow as it crosses the empires.

Empires

Borders: Cliopatria v0.2.1, Seshat Global History Databank, licensed CC BY 4.0. Described in Scientific Data (2025), doi:10.1038/s41597-025-04516-9.

Changes made: alliance and vassalage records (Type RELATION) and union outlines (names in parentheses) are left out; colonies take the colour of the empire they were part of (MemberOf); shapes are simplified (about 2 km), slivers under about 35 km² are dropped, coordinates are rounded to 0.01°, and records are split into era files. About 200 names and years that are wrong are corrected (for example the Golden Horde after 1547, Denmark–Norway after 1814, the Kingdom of Great Britain after 1801, Bulgaria after 1908, the Taliban after 2001), records are split where a state changed its name within their years, stray records are dropped, occupation zones drawn as United States territory over Japan, Korea, Germany, Vietnam and Iraq are removed, Byzantine records end in 1453 and Latin Empire records in 1261, the Republic of China after 1949 is limited to Taiwan and nearby islands, and Chukotka east of the 180th meridian, cut off in the source, is added from Natural Earth. Each change and its reason is listed in scripts/history_fixes.py. Colours, labels and the gold highlight are added here. Names, years and Wikipedia references are as published.

Ancient borders are approximate, and historians disagree about many of them. If you find an error, tap Report an error on its card: it opens a GitHub issue with the year and place filled in. Coastlines, rivers and lakes are today’s: ancient shores (the head of the Persian Gulf, the Nile delta, the Aral Sea) differ. A territory’s Wikipedia link opens Wikipedia’s own article; nothing from Wikipedia is stored here.

Sky

Sun, Moon, eclipses and the Moon’s shadow are computed in your browser with Astronomy Engine 2.1.19 by Don Cross (MIT licence). Dates before 15 October 1582 are in the Julian calendar, later ones in the Gregorian; times are Universal Time.

Ancient eclipse paths are uncertain: the Earth’s rotation has slowed irregularly (ΔT), so a path a few thousand years old may lie hundreds of kilometres east or west of where it is drawn. The dates are reliable; the exact track is not.

Map, software and fonts

Full licence texts: THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Privacy

No cookies, analytics, trackers, CDNs or font services. Everything is served from this site; the only outside pages you can open are a Wikipedia article, when you tap its link, and GitHub, when you report an error.

Your settings and whether you have seen the quick guide are kept in your browser’s local storage, on your device only. The guide picks its sample story from your device’s time-zone setting, read in your browser and never sent anywhere. The site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages, which receives your IP address to deliver the pages, as any web host does (Cloudflare privacy policy). Full terms and disclaimer: Terms & notices.

Keys

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