From Scientific American: Charting Culture

Humanity's Cultural History Depicted in 5-Minute Video

A new video maps births and deaths of notable people, showing the rise and fall of cultural centers in the past 2,600 years.

Aug 1, 2014 |By Alison Abbott and Nature magazine

Births and deaths show shifting cultural hubs.
Credit: Nature

All roads lead from Rome, according to a visual history of human culture built entirely from the birth and death places of notable people. The 5-minute animation provides a fresh view of the movements of humanity over the last 2,600 years.


Maximilian Schich, an art historian at the University of Texas at Dallas, and his colleagues used the Google-owned knowledge base, Freebase, to find 120,000 individuals who were notable enough in their life-times that the dates and locations of their births and deaths were recorded.

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