I stumbled upon a map of Europe in the middle of 17th century while reading about Jan Hus and John Wycliffe and was surprised to learn how foreign it was to me.

I’m a big fan of Google Earth (and Maps), but the thing that I don’t like is that I can only look at most recent information Google has. Normally this is what I want, but not always. I like the fact that photos of Cerknica lake were taken during one of seasonal droughts, since it makes it easy to find streams and sinks that are gone when lake is full of water. But what will happen if new photos will be taken when lake is full?

Information I can access now will be gone and I’ll only be able to wait for a better luck in the future. Google (and other map providers) have provided good tools for moving around three dimensions, but I’d like to be able to move in fourth as well.

Wouldn’t it be nice, if you could see how a place is changing through time or how did states change through centuries?

The problem is not so much technical as it is of information gathering. Obviously it’s getting harder (even impossible) to get reliable data as you go further back in history, but that’s hardly a reason not to try at all. If you’d be interested in working on map of Europe of last couple of millennia, please let me know.

Update : Wikipedia’s atlas .