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"there was no history in Africa and N and S America"

By most definitions of history that is a true statement.

Wonderful and rich civilizations may have filled those blanks areas, but if there were no written accounts that survive to the modern day (or at the very least oral traditions that were eventually written down), they are by definition "pre-historic". The study of those peoples is left to the realm of archaeology and anthropology, not history. We know even less about those pre-historic civilizations that built using materials that do not stand the test of time (wood, thatch, mud, etc).



> but if there were no written accounts that survive to the modern day

There were plenty of written histories outside Europe at 1AD. E.g. the Mayan civilisation [0]. Their counting system has been traced back to 1000BC.

> The study of those peoples is left to the realm of archaeology and anthropology, not history

There is still no excuse for pretty much the whole of America being blank until about the 15th Century.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_civilization#Writing_and_...


No disagreement, but from what I can tell the map does indeed show Mesoamerican civilizations for which we have written records.


It’s not blank. Zoom in to see the labels for different cultures on the map. There just aren’t any defined borders.


That’s part of what I find so fascinating about this map. It’s amazing to see how little we know about the world as it was even 2000 years ago.


But we do know, it's just not shown on this page! E.g. the Mayan and Aztec civilisations. There is a massive amount of history than can be traced to the physical structures they built.

One cannot seriously claim that there was no History in Britain until the Romans arrived (or that nothing was / is known about it), which is what this map suggests. The ancient Greek Pytheas [0] visited Britain in approx 330 BC.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pytheas


The map clearly shows Mayan and Teotihuacanan civilizations in pre-colonial eras. Is the map perfect? Of course not, but I'm confused by your insistence that it's ignoring Mayan and Aztec civilizations when it plainly shows them and their predecessors.


It shows labels in the regions, just not borders. I’m assuming this is because the exact borders are unknown. Try zooming in more to see the labels.




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