p/timemap
Interactive Map of History
Petr Pridal

TimeMap — Interactive Map of History: millions of people, events, maps

Featured
25
Countries of the past, rulers and kings, battles, famous people of the era - all after you pick a place on a map, set a year on a time slider. Explore over 500k maps down to streets, 3D & Augmented Reality. The "Google Maps of History" in your pocket.
Replies
Best
Petr Pridal
Maker
📌
This project has been for a long time my personal dream... 🤩 the most comprehensive Interactive Map of World History on ProductHunt! This interactive tool transforms how people access and engage with history, allowing them to check facts while watching the news, talking to friends, preparing school homework, or visiting a historical site with family. With TimeMap.org, you can pick a place on a map, set a year on a time slider, and travel back in time. Learn about the names of countries of the past, rulers and kings, battles, millions of people - famous artists and musicians, mathematicians, and more and explore relation as never before. Just adjust the selected period on timeline and pan map! The prototype was introduced to the world at the Stanford University together with David Rumsey in his map center - on a dedicated event https://events.stanford.edu/even... back in May. Video recording available! Now we are finally ready to launch it to a larger audience... Don't forget to 🔃 repost and 👍 like to spread the word! Visit https://timemap.org/ to access this free, mobile-optimized resource, complementing the OldMapsOnline.org portal allowing discovery of over half of a million high resolution maps from two dozen libraries and famous archives all over the world. I am super excited to hear what you think of this web service, and what you would like to improve to make it perfect! Thank you for your comments and feedback.
Mike Acler
@klokan Congratulations on the launch! It looks impressive, and I believe it’s a must-see for every history enthusiast or map aficionado. How is the data sourced? Is it entirely community-driven, or do you have an editorial process in place?
Petr Pridal
@agilek Thank you a lot, Mike! The historical data is a result of hard work of our team of historians from the Academy of Sciences and Universitas Carolina in Prague on top of thousands of volunteers from Wikidata and Wikipedia projects - with applied AI/LLM pre-processing. The "Feedback" button on the side of TimeMap allows anyone to contribute with insights and ideas for improvement - and the team continues to fine-tune the content and do the quality control reviews. More collaborative online tools for direct editing are on our roadmap. The millions of high-resolution scanned maps are the result of the community effort as well - and anyone can help in 5 minutes of his time - to find the correct location of a scanned map in a form of an online game at: 👉 https://community.oldmapsonline....
Petr Pridal
@ealtugk thank you
Robert Magrino
@klokan --- Amazing that you were able to synchronize the map coordinates so they overlay. A little hard to use on an iPhone, can’t wait to start exploring on my PC. Now that I have had a chance to use this on my PC, the only improvement I would like to see is a way to sort maps from oldest to newest, or have maps grouped into categories, so you can see all of the different types. Do you plan to have aerial photos to the collection (maybe I haven't found them yet). Excellent!
Steph Andrusjak
Funnily enough, I've been interested in the geography of the UK throughout the centuries recently so pleasant to see something like this pop up which reveals all. It's great seeing how the boundaries have changed over the years. Fantastic creation!
Tom Armitage
TimeMap is an incredible resource for researching and teaching both history and geography. I'm really happy to support this, it is something that everyone can benefit from. Seeing historical figures in context with contemporary wars and boundary changes is absolutely fascinating!
Tony M
TimeMap illustrates how alive history is today. History establishes the world we live in: our norms, idioms, institutions, protocols and more. I love the Ruler tab which helps personify all of the regions. Use the Ruler tab during major events like WW2 to see all of the characters involved. To be truly empathetic you need to be humble enough to forego your own bias and judgement of history. TimeMap helps you alleviate your rigid mindset about borders, nations, cultures, ethnicities, languages -- all baggage we inherit by studying and consuming media. Great work team this proves there is still magic available on the Web.
LESLEY LIU
It's a brilliant idea! The entire history of humanity is condensed onto this map,making it incredibly intuitive and vivid. Truly hope more people can join the community and add more maps to it!
Jaroslav Polacek
TimeMap.org is a great tool that brings history to life. Its interactive maps and timelines make exploring the past easy and exciting. I can highly recommend it as a fantastic resource for visualizing how our world has evolved over time 👏
Ufuk
I like how much looking into the borders of countries expanding and regressing each year makes far easier to connect the historical events we hear all the time around. This is the missing tool for students to make an easier entry to learn history. I liked it so much I've signed up to PH today after they sent me an email. Congrats and don't close it please.
Eric R. Burgess
Omg this is a dream app for me. Can't wait to explore...
Ben Griese
Oh...this is dangerous...I could literally spend hours pouring over all this history 🤤
Petr Pridal
@ben_griese thanks. If it runs this way with TimeMap it means a success for the UX of the app... BTW more content is inddeed planned (events, places, wars, ...) so stay tuned. Thanks a lot for the promo on newsletter ...
🔨 Travis Page 🔨
Saw this on HN today. This is my favorite product on PH since 2023.
Nilay Jayswal
Came back on PH after a year and saw the most amazing product ever! Congrats on the launch!
Ash G
Congrats on the launch! This is such a unique way to explore history. Awesome work!
Axel Borry
So cool product. Thanks for this
Mark Townsend
Wow! Endless rabbit holes to get lost in here :)
Marian Petruk
I liked the tool from the first interaction with it! Great work! All the best!
Yannis Raftopoulos
If you love history, geography, or just the charm of old maps, then Old Maps Online is your treasure. I recently came across it, and it is like traveling in a time machine through cartography. You can search for maps based on your location or time period, and the results are beautifully curated from libraries and collections around the world. The interface is pretty straightforward-no flashy distractions, just pure focus on the maps. It has this feeling of being way more nostalgic, which is perfect with the kind of content that they're offering.
Feliciana
This is a really cool tool! I’ve been having a lot of fun exploring different time periods and seeing how history unfolded on the map, and I love how it gives a whole new perspective on things.
Chris Mottes
Very cool for a history nerd like me!
John McFarland
Fun!