Disputed Statements

Spanish Flu, Events

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll, High Estimate

Currently States 50000000.000000

Mainstream estimates range from 17 to 50 million; some estimates go as high as 100 million. Scholarship on the exact toll continues to be revised.

Source Spanish Flu (Wikipedia) tier 2

Sumer, Civilizations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States -4500

The date for Sumer's earliest urban settlements, particularly Uruk, is debated. Some scholars place the beginnings of Sumerian urban culture as early as 4500 BCE, others closer to 3800 BCE.

Source The Cambridge Ancient History

Sumer, Civilizations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns End Year

Currently States -1900

Sumer as a distinct political culture ends with its absorption into Babylonia, roughly 1900 BCE, after the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2004 BCE. The precise point at which Sumerian ceased to be a spoken rather than only a literary and religious language is separately debated.

Source The Cambridge Ancient History

Sun Tzu, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Birth Year

Currently States -544

Traditional Chinese historians, following the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian, dated Sun Tzu lifetime to 544 to 496 BC; his historicity and these dates have been questioned by scholars since the Song dynasty (from the 12th century), when Ye Shi noted Sun Tzu goes unmentioned in the Zuo Zhuan.

Source Wikipedia: Sun Tzu tier 2

Sun Tzu, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Year

Currently States -496

Traditional Chinese historians, following the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian, dated Sun Tzu lifetime to 544 to 496 BC; his historicity and these dates have been questioned by scholars since the Song dynasty (from the 12th century), when Ye Shi noted Sun Tzu goes unmentioned in the Zuo Zhuan.

Source Wikipedia: Sun Tzu tier 2

Sunni Ali, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Date

Currently States 1492-11-06

The date and manner of his death, said to be by drowning while crossing the Niger River, are described in sources as a matter of conjecture.

Source Wikipedia: Sonni Ali tier 2

Sunni Ali, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Place

Currently States Niger River, Songhai Empire (traditional account)

Traditional accounts hold that he drowned crossing the Niger River near the Songhai heartland; this is not certain.

Source Wikipedia: Sonni Ali tier 2

Suryavarman II, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Birth Year

Currently States 1094

Sources give 1094 or 1098; this record uses the earlier candidate year. No confident birthplace is stated in the source; left unfilled.

Source Wikipedia: Suryavarman II tier 2

Suryavarman II, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Year

Currently States 1150

Inscriptional evidence suggests he died around 1150, possibly during a military campaign against Champa; other accounts place his death in Angkor since his inscriptional record stops that year.

Source Wikipedia: Suryavarman II tier 2

Suryavarman II, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Place

Currently States Angkor, Khmer Empire

Some accounts place his death in Angkor since his inscriptional record stops there; others suggest he died during a military campaign against Champa. This record uses the more commonly cited location.

Source Wikipedia: Suryavarman II tier 2

Taiping Rebellion, Events

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll, Low Estimate

Currently States 20000000.000000

The conservative demographic range most general histories use, drawn from population data recorded before and after the fourteen year war; historian Stephen Platt reports this range, 20 to 30 million dead, as the figure most consistently cited, attributing the bulk of the toll to famine, disease and displacement rather than to combat deaths alone. This entry records 20 million as its lower bound.

Source Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War, Stephen R. Platt

Taiping Rebellion, Events

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll, High Estimate

Currently States 70000000.000000

Demographic historian Cao Shuji's 2001 reconstruction of Qing-era population records put the total toll as high as 70 million; Stephen Platt reports this figure alongside the standard 20 to 30 million range while noting how uncertain any single total is once Qing record-keeping collapsed across the war zones. Both bounds draw criticism, the low end for undercounting indirect famine and disease deaths in areas that stopped keeping records, the high end for extrapolating too far from incomplete regional data; this entry records 70 million as the documented upper bound rather than a preferred figure.

Source Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War, Stephen R. Platt

Teutonic Order, Organizations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Dissolved

Currently States 1809

1809 is the year Napoleon secularized the Teutonic Order's remaining German territorial state, ending it as a political and military power. This is not the end of the Teutonic Order itself: the religious order survived the loss of its state and continues today as a Roman Catholic institute based in Vienna, now devoted chiefly to charitable and hospital work rather than knighthood or territorial rule. The dissolved-year recorded here describes the STATE, not the still-living religious order.

Source Wikipedia: Teutonic Order tier 2

The Age of Discovery, Eras

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 1418

Conventionally opened with the start of Portuguese maritime exploration in the early fifteenth century; the exact opening year varies by source.

Source Wikipedia tier 2

The Age of Discovery, Eras

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns End Year

Currently States 1620

Different historians close the period anywhere from the early to the late seventeenth century.

Source Wikipedia tier 2

The Age of New Imperialism, Eras

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 1875

Source gives only decade level precision, the 1870s, for the start of the scramble for Africa and the wider new imperialism period. 1875 is used as a representative year within that decade, not an exact founding date, the same representative year convention already used elsewhere in this atlas for century level Gupta Golden Age dates.

Source Scramble for Africa - Wikipedia

The Ancient Near East and Bronze Age World, Eras

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States -3200

Marked conventionally by the earliest Sumerian cuneiform writing, around 3200 BCE, the same regional boundary that closes prehistory. Historians disagree on whether the boundary belongs at the invention of writing or at the emergence of the first true cities somewhat earlier.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica

The Ancient Near East and Bronze Age World, Eras

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns End Year

Currently States -1200

The Bronze Age Collapse unfolded over decades rather than a single year, roughly 1200 to 1150 BCE, and its causes, including drought, invasion by the so called Sea Peoples, internal revolt and the breakdown of trade networks, remain actively debated among historians and archaeologists.

Source The Cambridge Ancient History

The Angevin Empire, Polities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns End Year

Currently States 1204

The loss of Normandy, Anjou, Maine and Touraine to Philip II of France in 1204 is the year most historians treat as the empire's practical end, since it broke the personal union of England with its continental heartland. Aquitaine itself remained an English holding long afterward, and some historians instead close the Angevin period at John's 1216 death or at the final loss of Poitou in 1224.

Source John, King of England (Britannica)

The Benin Golden Age, Eras

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns End Year

Currently States 1606

Marks the end of Oba Ehengbuda's reign. The Kingdom of Benin Wikipedia article identifies him as the last of Benin's warrior kings, after whose reign the empire gradually shrank, but the golden age itself has no single agreed end year, some historians extend it later toward the 1897 British punitive expedition instead.

Source Ehengbuda, Wikipedia