Euratlas

Euratlas is a Switzerland-based software company dedicated to elaborate digital history maps of Europe.[1] Founded in 2001, Euratlas has created a collection of history maps of Europe from year 1 AD to year 2000 AD that present the evolution of every country from the Roman Empire [2] to present times. The evolution includes sovereign states and their administrative sub-divisions, but also unorganized peoples[3] and dependent territories. The maps show European country borders at regular intervals of 100 years, but not year by year.[4] This leaves out many important turning points in history.

Euratlas is considered a digital humanities company, and a scholar research software[5] used in the field of Historic Cartography.[6] It is broadly known among American and European universities, who mainly use Euratlas as a research tool and as a digital library Atlas.[7][8]

The Sequential Mapping Policy

This concept was first designed by the German scholar Christian Kruse (1753-1827). Kruse, well aware that historical accounts are often biased for geographical, philosophical or political reasons, created a set of sequential maps in order to give a global vision of the successive political situations. Nowadays, the majority of atlases don't use this approach, but are event-based, like the well-known Penguin Atlas of History. The sequential approach intends to make the sequence of maps more neutral and suitable for students, historians and professionals of several fields. Although, this approach has been discussed[9] as it leaves out many important history events that are not reflected on any of the maps because of the century interval.

The Geo-referenced Historical Data

Initially, the European maps by century were developed as vector maps.[10] From 2006 on, they have been converted to a Geographic Information System (GIS) database,[11] enabling geo-referenced data capabilities. The map information is distributed in several layers: Physical (Geography information layer); Political information layer (Supranational entities, Sovereign States, Administrative divisions, Dependent States and Autonomous peoples); and special layers for Cities and Uncertain Borders. The software database also contains much non-geographical information about political relationships between the various kinds of territories.

Map projection

Euratlas History Maps uses a Mercator projection, with the center in Europe. The maps include North-African coast and the Near-East, offering a complete view of the Mediterranean basin. Also the European Russia plains are shown, but not Scandinavia, specially Finland which is cropped off the map view.

See also

History of Cartography

List of National Border Changes since World War I

List of National Border Changes from 1815 to 1914

List of Online Map Services

Timeline of World Map Changes

History of Europe

References
  1. Polo, Juan Diego. "Euratlas, mapas históricos de Europa en formato digital". WWWhat's new? - Aplicaciones, marketing y noticias en la web. Retrieved 2017-01-21.
  2. Jones, Charles (2010-12-21). "AWOL - The Ancient World Online: EurAtlas". AWOL - The Ancient World Online. Retrieved 2017-01-21.
  3. "Stanford University EarthWorks. Autonomous Peoples, Europe, Year 100". earthworks.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2017-01-21.
  4. Euratlas. "Euratlas Web FAQ". www.euratlas.net. Retrieved 2017-01-21.
  5. "University of Virginia Library Research | Data Services + Sciences". data.library.virginia.edu. Retrieved 2017-01-21.
  6. "- Portal de Educación de la Junta de Castilla y León - Euratlas". www.educa.jcyl.es (in Spanish). Retrieved 2017-01-21.
  7. Gibbs, Patrick (2011-09-01). "Nüssli Marc-Antoine & Nüssli Christos . Euratlas Periodis Expert: periodical historical atlas of Europe 1–2000 (digital cartography program). Program on CD". Antiquity. 85 (329): 1101–1102. doi:10.1017/S0003598X0006868X. ISSN 0003-598X.
  8. "The AU Library Knowledgebase (Washington). Does the library have access to ..." answers.library.american.edu. Retrieved 2017-01-21.
  9. COURTOIS, Christophe. "Euratlas". www.coindeweb.net (in French). Retrieved 2017-01-21.
  10. "Duke University Libraries | Euratlas Historical Vector Data". library.duke.edu. Retrieved 2017-01-21.
  11. Euratlas. "And the GIS Data? Marc-Antonie Nüssli". www.euratlas.net. Retrieved 2017-01-21.
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