History Globe Documentation Русский

Data and methodology

The globe is built from open scholarly datasets, corrected and extended by hand, and checked automatically on every build. This page explains where each layer comes from, what we changed and what we do not know.

Places of the Bible

The 1288 places and their verses come from OpenBible.info’s Bible Geocoding Data, which weighs the identifications proposed in the literature for each place. We keep its preferred identification and its estimate of how likely each candidate site is.

When places stood

A city on the map is drawn in full only in the years it stood. For 114 places of the Bible the years of founding, destruction and abandonment are recorded by hand, each with its sources (ancient authors, chronicles, inscriptions, excavation reports). A date that is disputed is left out rather than guessed.

The 531 cities of the ancient world that the Bible does not name — capitals, ports and sanctuaries such as Ugarit, Hattusa, Mari or Delphi — were chosen and dated one by one, each checked against two sources, with an identifier in Pleiades or Wikidata and a point on the ancient site rather than on the modern town.

Borders

States and their borders year by year come from Cliopatria (Seshat Global History Databank, v0.2.0), an open dataset of the world’s polities from 3400 BC onwards. It is drawn from historical atlases and is approximate, especially before the first millennium BC.

For the lands of the Bible we correct it where the sources disagree with it: 119 corrections at present, each with its reason and its sources. Judah stays on the map until 586 BC, Israel begins with David’s reign in 1010 BC rather than 1000 BC, Philistia is kept to the coastal plain of its five cities, and a dynasty ends when it loses its last seat of power. The Levant and Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Iran, the Greco-Roman world of the New Testament and the Near East to AD 1300 have been checked year by year, among them Assyria’s decline and recovery in the eighth century BC, Babylon under Merodach-baladan, Pergamon left to Rome in 133 BC, Macedonia after Pydna and Thrace annexed in AD 46. Each batch of corrections is first tested against the shapes, then checked again, independently, by a second reviewer against the sources.

A kingdom that paid tribute to an empire, or ruled as its client, is drawn in a lighter shade of the empire’s colour, with “under Assyria” or “under Rome” beneath its name: Judah under Assyria, Egypt and Babylon; Israel and Philistia under Assyria; Hasmonean and Herodian Judea under Rome (and, for three years, Parthia); and the Nabataeans and Commagene under Rome. These 35 periods were drafted from the Assyrian royal inscriptions, the Babylonian Chronicles, the Bible, Josephus and modern histories, and checked again in a separate review pass; a year known only to within a decade is marked “c.” in the data. After Samaria fell in 722 BC, the land of Israel is drawn as the Assyrian province it became.

People

The 2153 people of the Bible and their family links come from STEP Bible’s TIPNR (Tyndale House, Cambridge). We did not take the links on trust:

Events, tours and articles

The 329 events, 46 tours and 155 articles are drafted with the help of AI under the author’s direction and then checked in separate review passes against the sources: the biblical text for what it says, ancient authors, chronicles and inscriptions for dates, and the scholarly literature for sites. Every claim cites its source. Quotations come only from the Synodal translation and the King James Version. No tour has passed its first review unchanged; each was corrected and checked again. These reviews are made by AI working from the sources, not by scholars; an article a historian has read carries the historian’s name.

The distance to a stop is given in a straight line. From 312 BC, when the Roman roads begin, the way along the Itiner-e roads is given beside it: the shortest through their network, unless it is more than two and a half times the straight line; a leg sailed is not counted by road. Time on foot is reckoned at 30 km a day, the usual estimate of a day’s journey in antiquity, with no allowance for weather, rests or loads. At sea no speed is assumed: a voyage gives its days only where the text does (Acts 20:6, “in five days”), with that verse, and as roughly as the text gives them. Where the text crosses whole regions without the way (Acts 20:1–3, Ephesus through Macedonia and Greece to Philippi), the leg says so and gives no time. A leg’s relief is read from the Copernicus elevation data (through Mapterhorn) along that same road, or without one along the straight line; the caption under the profile says which.

The battles and sieges (57) are those the Bible tells, and a few outside it that decided Israel’s fate. Each stands at the place it was fought and shows on the map in its years. The Bible’s are dated as the tours date the same stories; the others carry no verse but an ancient or scholarly source. A second, independent pass checked the draft against the Synodal text and the King James Version: of 58 entries 16 were corrected, and one was dropped, as the map has no point for its site.

The Maccabean events and battles cite 1–2 Maccabees, which the Synodal Bible carries and the Protestant canon does not: every such citation is marked “deuterocanonical”, and its link opens a text that has the book.

Checks on every build

Nothing is published unless every check passes:

What is uncertain

Report an error

Every place card has a Found a mistake? link. It opens an issue in the public repository with the place already filled in; you need a GitHub account. You can also open one directly: github.com/ArVaViT/history-globe/issues.

Data as of 3 October 2026