Last week, I wrote about new research spearheaded by Yale University that, for the first time ever, mapped urban settlements from 3700 B.C. to 2000 A.D. Now, Max Galka at Metrocosm has created a fun video using that digitized and geocoded dataset.
In the Yale-led paper, published in Scientific Data, the authors wrote about the significance of their work:
Whether it is for timely response to catastrophes, the delivery of disaster relief, assessing human impacts on the environment, or estimating populations vulnerable to hazards, it is essential to know where people and cities are geographically distributed. Additionally, the ability to geolocate the size and location of human populations over time helps us understand the evolving characteristics of the human species, especially human interactions with the environment.
Galka’s visualization, which is inspired by this world population history map by Population Connection, makes the rise and spread of cities over time abundantly clear.
In the video, as a timeline glides across 6,000 years, cities pop up on Galka’s world map at the points when their populations were first documented in historical and archeological records. (This is not necessarily the same year in which these cities were “born.”) The later a city was written into history, the warmer its color on Galka’s map. At the bottom of the map, Galka also includes helpful context about that point in history.
[For more of this story, written by Tanvi Misra, go to http://www.citylab.com/housing...ka-metrocosm/487142/]
Comments (0)