This is what the world looks like now:

Guess what the 7 colors might represent?

Throughout history, however, we have dealt with a world that is much less distributed and much more concentrated in terms of technology, educated population, and the like. In that sense, the world is much different now than it was as littles as 100 years ago.

However, it can be argued that economic trade has been one of the principle ways, throughout history, that different cultures interact. The world as seen in this 19th century map below shows this trade. What do the black lines respresent and is their density significant?



At the height of colonization and empire building the world looked like this:



What do the countries in white represent?

And so is a brief history of the world.

This empire building and colonization can also be well portrayed through visualization: