History Atlas
Claims this atlas currently marks as unsettled or as tested and found false. A debated fact is one scholars hold competing positions on; a debunked one has been checked against the record and found not to hold. Both are kept in view rather than quietly smoothed over, with the reasoning that put each one where it stands.
148 statements.
Sumer, End Year-1900
Sumer, Civilizations
Standing
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
Sunni Ali, Death Date1492-11-06
Sunni Ali, Historical Figures
Standing
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
Sunni Ali, Death PlaceNiger River, Songhai Empire (traditional account)
Sunni Ali, Historical Figures
Standing
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
Taiping Rebellion, Death Toll, Low Estimate20000000.000000
Taiping Rebellion, Events
Standing
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, Death Toll, High Estimate70000000.000000
Taiping Rebellion, Events
Standing
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, Dissolved1809
Teutonic Order, Organizations
Standing
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
The Age of Discovery, Start Year1418
The Age of Discovery, Eras
Standing
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
The Age of Discovery, End Year1620
The Age of Discovery, Eras
Standing
Concerns End Year
Currently States 1620
Different historians close the period anywhere from the early to the late seventeenth century.
Source Wikipedia
The Ancient Near East and Bronze Age World, Start Year-3200
The Ancient Near East and Bronze Age World, Eras
Standing
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, End Year-1200
The Ancient Near East and Bronze Age World, Eras
Standing
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, End Year1204
The Angevin Empire, Polities
Standing
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 Black Death, Death Toll, Low Estimate (%)30.000000
The Black Death, Events
Standing
Concerns Death Toll, Low Estimate (%)
Currently States 30.000000
Historian estimates of Black Death mortality across Europe range from roughly 30 to 60 percent of the population; this entry records the commonly cited low end of that scholarly range.
Source Wikipedia: Black Death
The Black Death, Death Toll, High Estimate (%)60.000000
The Black Death, Events
Standing
Concerns Death Toll, High Estimate (%)
Currently States 60.000000
Historian estimates of Black Death mortality across Europe range from roughly 30 to 60 percent of the population; this entry records the commonly cited high end of that scholarly range.
Source Wikipedia: Black Death
The British Empire, Start Year1583
The British Empire, Polities
Standing
Concerns Start Year
Currently States 1583
1583 (Humphrey Gilbert claim of Newfoundland) is one commonly cited starting point; historians also date the Empire from the 1600 East India Company charter or the 1707 Act of Union, since expansion was gradual and multi-stranded rather than founded at one stroke.
Source British Empire (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
The British Empire, End Year1997
The British Empire, Polities
Standing
Concerns End Year
Currently States 1997
1997, the handover of Hong Kong, is the conventional symbolic close, but decolonization was gradual from Indian and Pakistani independence in 1947 onward, and Britain still holds fourteen British Overseas Territories, so no single end date is agreed.
Source British Empire (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
The Bronze Age Collapse, Year-1150
The Bronze Age Collapse, Events
Standing
Concerns Year
Currently States -1150
Historians disagree about the relative weight of drought, invasion, earthquake and systems failure as causes, and about whether collapse is the right description for a process that unfolded over several decades rather than as a single catastrophe.
Source The Cambridge Ancient History
The Byzantine Empire, Start Year330
The Byzantine Empire, Polities
Standing
Concerns Start Year
Currently States 330
330 CE, when Constantine founded Constantinople, is a common starting point, though some historians instead date the Byzantine Empire's distinct identity to 395 CE, the permanent administrative division of the Roman Empire, or even to 476 CE, the fall of the west.
Source The Cambridge Medieval History
The Cold War, Start Year1947
The Cold War, Eras
Standing
Concerns Start Year
Currently States 1947
The Truman Doctrine, announced 12 March 1947, is the conventional marker for open confrontation, but the wartime allies' cooperation had already broken down over Eastern Europe and Iran in 1945 and 1946, and some historians date the Cold War's origins to the differing occupation policies both powers adopted immediately after Germany's surrender in 1945.
Source We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Gaddis, 1997), John Lewis Gaddis
The Cold War, End Year1991
The Cold War, Eras
Standing
Concerns End Year
Currently States 1991
The Soviet Union's formal dissolution on 26 December 1991 is the conventional end date, though the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 and the joint US-Soviet declaration that December that the Cold War was over are also widely treated as its effective close.
Source We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Gaddis, 1997), John Lewis Gaddis
The Contemporary Period, Start Year1945
The Contemporary Period, Eras
Standing
Concerns Start Year
Currently States 1945
1945 is the most common starting point, but some historians instead date the contemporary period from 1989 or 1991, the end of the Cold War, treating 1945 to 1991 as a transitional late twentieth century era in its own right.
Source The Oxford History of the Twentieth Century