Credits & Licenses
The Wheeler Atlas is an educational map of the world across human history. It is built from openly licensed and public-domain sources, plus original research and editing. This page lists every outside source, the license it comes under, and which parts of the site it affects.
Historical borders — GPL-3.0
The historical borders for every year before 2026 are adapted from historical-basemaps by André Ourednik and contributors, licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. This atlas started from the upstream snapshot of 15 September 2026 (commit da7a4b7).
Modifications. The source polygons were rasterized onto this atlas's coastline and projection, then extensively corrected and extended: realms were split, merged, added and re-dated, and gaps were filled. Changes were made in 2026 and last revised in October 2026.
Source code and data. The modified border data (eras/, data/eras.json) and the religion, culture and development layers (rel/, cul/, dev/ and their data files) are distributed under GPL-3.0. Their complete corresponding source, including the original files and the scripts that build and edit them, is available at https://github.com/thewheeleratlas/website. You may copy, modify and redistribute that data under the terms of the GPL. There is no warranty: borders before the modern era are approximate and often disputed.
Base map — public domain
| Source | Used for | License |
|---|---|---|
| Natural Earth (1:10m and 1:50m) | Coastlines, land, lakes, rivers, glaciers, modern countries and provinces, 2026 borders, populated places | Public domain |
| NOAA ETOPO global relief (10 arc-minute) | Elevation, hillshading, ocean depth and continental shelf | Public domain (U.S. Government work) |
| NASA Earth Observatory, Blue Marble Next Generation | Terrain colouring | Public domain; image credit NASA |
| Beck, H.E., et al. (2023), High-resolution (1 km) Köppen-Geiger maps for 1901–2099, Scientific Data 10:724 (via the 0.1° copies in koppenmap) | Climate map mode, 1901–2020 (reprojected and simplified; earlier periods are reconstructions derived from it) | CC BY 4.0 |
| flag-icons by Panayiotis Lipiridis and contributors | Modern national flags on realm cards (historical flags are drawn for this atlas) | MIT |
| Maddison Project Database 2020 (Bolt and van Zanden, 2020), via Our World in Data | Income per person behind the Development score on realm cards, from 1815 (modern-country figures combined over each realm, population-weighted) | CC BY 4.0 |
| Shaded relief by Tom Patterson, shadedrelief.com | Terrain texture | Public domain |
The Blue Marble and shaded-relief images were obtained through the matplotlib basemap-data package. Its MIT notice is reproduced in licenses/basemap-data-MIT.txt.
Map prints and other merchandise
The era posters, classroom posters and 1914 desk mat in the Atlas Shop are drawn from this atlas, so their borders come from the GPL-3.0 border data above (historical-basemaps by André Ourednik and contributors, as modified for this atlas). Their complete corresponding source, the border data and the scripts that draw it, is available at https://github.com/thewheeleratlas/website. For at least three years after we last sell a print, we will also send a copy of that source to anyone who asks at [email protected], for no more than the cost of providing it. The terrain imagery on the prints is public domain (NASA Blue Marble, shadedrelief.com, Natural Earth).
Lettering on the prints and other products uses Cinzel, Spectral and EB Garamond. All three are under the SIL Open Font License, which allows their use in commercial printed products. Products are made, sold and shipped through Fourthwall, Inc.; product photos are mockups made with Fourthwall’s tools.
Trademarks
“The Wheeler Atlas”™ and the Compass Helm logo™ are trademarks of The Wheeler Atlas, LLC. The W-arrow device in the logo comes from the Wheeler Yacht Company and is used under license. The open licenses on this page cover data, code and fonts only; they do not cover these marks. Other names, such as adidas on our polo, are trademarks of their owners and are used only to describe products.
Historical figures and references
Historical city populations are estimates compiled from Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth (1987); George Modelski, World Cities: −3000 to 2000 (2003); and Paul Bairoch, Cities and Economic Development (1988). The atlas interpolates between their figures. Modern populations come from Natural Earth.
Corrections made in 2026 to individual eras (for example 1200, 1450, 1750, 1900, 1914 and 1945) draw on standard scholarly works, among them Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History; Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453; John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire, and Stewart Gordon, The Marathas, 1600–1818 (both New Cambridge History of India); Fred Anderson, Crucible of War; and James A. Millward, Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang. Corrected areas are drawn on modern province outlines from Natural Earth. Each correction is recorded, with its source, in the atlas's data repository.
The deep-time view (human species ranges, archaeological sites, sea level and ice sheets) is an original summary informed by published paleoanthropology and paleoclimate research. Ranges and dates are simplified and often debated.
The battles layer (about 150 major battles, from Megiddo to 2003) is an original compilation for this atlas, drawn from standard reference works and Wikipedia. Each marker appears on the era map that covers its date; locations are approximate.
The natural-disasters layer (about 70 eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, droughts, storms, wildfires and one meteor impact, from about 6200 BCE to 2023) is an original compilation on the same basis. Death tolls are estimates and are often disputed.
The wonders layer (about 75 great structures, from Göbekli Tepe to the Burj Khalifa) is an original compilation on the same basis. Each structure appears at full size on the era map that covers its completion date, and as a smaller icon on later maps while it still stands. Construction dates are conventional and often approximate.
The climate map mode uses the Köppen-Geiger classification. Maps for 1901–2020 are observed data from Beck et al. (2023). Before 1900 the 1901–1930 map stands in for pre-industrial climate. The Green Sahara (African Humid Period), cold-stadial and ice-age maps are broad-brush reconstructions made for this atlas by shifting climate types from that map (northward rains in the Sahara and Arabia; cooling steps near the ice sheets and drier tropics in cold periods; ice sheets and sea level from the deep-time view). They show the direction and rough scale of change, not exact boundaries.
The roads and railways layers (about 50 major roads, from the Persian Royal Road and the Via Appia to modern motorways, and about 60 railways, from the Stockton and Darlington to Chinese high-speed lines) are an original compilation from standard reference works and Wikipedia. Each line appears from the year it was finished; routes are simplified through the main towns and are approximate.
The religion, culture and development layers are released under GPL-3.0 with the border data, together with the scripts that build them (same repository). The religion, culture, trade-route and urban-development layers are original work for this atlas, informed by standard historical atlases and scholarship. They simplify complex realities and should be read as broad-brush summaries, not precise boundaries. Where the population is unknown, too mixed or too disputed to name one group, or the land was uninhabited, the map shows n/a rather than guess; each such area is listed in the n/a register in the data repository.
Links marked “Wikipedia” open the relevant article on Wikipedia. No Wikipedia text is reproduced on this site.
Typefaces — SIL Open Font License
Cinzel (The Cinzel Project Authors), Spectral (The Spectral Project Authors) and IBM Plex Mono (IBM Corp.) are licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. They are hosted on this site; no font requests go to third parties.
This site
The border, religion, culture and development data, and the scripts that build them, are GPL-3.0. The atlas application code, page text, logo and shop art are © 2026 The Wheeler Atlas, LLC. All rights reserved. See LICENSE.md for a file-by-file summary.
The Wheeler Atlas is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any game publisher, mapping company or data provider named on this page.
Corrections
Spotted an error in a border, date or label? Write to [email protected]. Corrections to the border data can also be proposed on GitHub.