1200CE
Gathering the people of history…
The map shows the people in Wellsprings: sages of eight traditions plus selected rulers, scientists, artists and explorers. An empty region means a gap in our collection, not in history. Faded pins with a dashed ring have an estimated birth or death year.
Moments to visit
Some starting points, with a few of the people our records place in each year.
How the Time Machine knows
Who was alivecomes from the recorded birth and death years of everyone in Wellsprings, the same rule the site uses for “Who else lived then?”. Where one end is not recorded, the window is estimated: from a ruler’s reign, or about seventy years from the one date we have. Those people are marked as estimated wherever they appear. Dates marked “c.” are approximate in the sources.
Where they were is a stop on their journey whose recorded years cover the year you picked. Otherwise we show the place most associated with them and say so; it does not mean they were there that year.
Holding power means a recorded reign or term of office covers the year. Being alive is shown separately.
“Meanwhile”pairs are coincidences of time: two people alive in the same year, far apart. They are not claims that the two knew of each other. The events come from the site’s fact-checked timeline, and works from their recorded composition dates (works dated only by their author’s death are left out).
Years follow the historical calendar: 1 BCE is followed by 1 CE, with no year zero. Our coverage is uneven, strongest for the traditions Wellsprings collects. The strip under the year shows how many people we know of in each decade.
Map: coastlines, lakes and rivers from Natural Earth (public domain); modern map © OpenStreetMap contributors.