For anyone who’s a history buff and especially interested in European history (from about AD 1000 onward), this is an absolute must-see. The shifting borders of the European countries are mesmerizing, and the music doesn’t hurt the drama either.
I kept watching Poland come and go, and waiting for the Ottoman Empire to go and for the Soviet Union to appear. But really, every bit of this is fascinating.
Update: Apparently the original YouTube video posted below [and its even more fascinating slower, longer version] has been taken down. (I’ve minimized its size, but haven’t deleted it, because sometimes these taken-down videos reappear if problems get sorted out.) But the three-minute version, complete with dramatic music, is still around for the moment. It’s at the Huffington Post: Europe History Time Lapse Map Goes Viral.
Fantastic, Phyl! I’m passing this on to other map nerds like myself.
Hiya Kate! Apparently, that video had to be taken down for some reason. But we’ve found another link where it’s still up, on the Huffington Post. I can’t embed it, so here’s the link:
Wow. Really points out, for us history buffs, that what we think happened where might have happened from from where we think of today.
The British isles didn’t change much (some and that’s pretty important to Scots and Irish), but France, Italy and, particularly, Eastern Europe changed drastically in size, prominence and location. I was also not really appreciating how much of Europe was at one time or the other Muslim controlled.
Fascinating.
I know what you mean. And I kept looking at the area that is now Germany, and for most of that history, it was just plastered with teeny tiny states. I kept thinking, “Wow, it’s amazing that all those little places somehow eventually became one country.” They stayed separate for much longer than a lot of other countries.
Another thing that stunned me was how suddenly the Russian Empire was all Mongol Horde. And then, not long after, it was Russian again. And the way Poland/Lithuania was so big for a lot of the time, but kept shrinking, dividing, uniting, and shrinking again.
By the way, I’m having to put a different link, since apparently that video has been taken down from YouTube. The three-minute version is still around (for now), though, at the Huffington Post: