An atlas of how nations came to be.
Turn the globe. Choose a country. Trace the long path — empires, ruptures and revolutions — that made it a nation. Every claim sourced.
The archive
4,471 sourced events.
184 nations. One record.
Terralore publishes a nation’s history only once each claim can be traced to a reliable source — encyclopedias, national archives and museums, intergovernmental bodies, academic work. Where a fact is contested, the archive shows the competing positions; where the record is silent, it says so. From the Laetoli footprints, 3.6 million years ago, to this year.
Begin with a nation
All 184 nations →🇪🇬Africa
Egypt
Five millennia of civilisation along the Nile, from the first pharaohs to the modern Arab republic.
6 eras · 27 sourced events
🇨🇳Asia
China
Four thousand years of civilization, from oracle-bone kings to the world's second-largest economy.
6 eras · 29 sourced events
🇫🇷Europe
France
From the forests of Gaul to the Fifth Republic
5 eras · 19 sourced events
🇲🇽North America
Mexico
From the Olmec mother-culture and the lake-city of the Mexica to a republic forged in conquest, reform, and revolution.
6 eras · 20 sourced events
🇧🇷South America
Brazil
From the thousand nations of the forest and coast to a Portuguese colony built on sugar, gold, and the largest slave economy of the Americas, and on to an empire, a republic, and a modern democracy.
6 eras · 28 sourced events
🇦🇺Oceania
Australia
From the world's oldest continuous cultures and a British penal colony to a federated, multicultural democracy.
6 eras · 21 sourced events
Or with a moment in time
The full chronology →Every chronicle is written nation by nation. The chronology is the other axis — what was happening everywhere at once.
Deep prehistory
the first footprints
15 events · 12 nations
The 4th millennium BCE
writing, cities, kings
11 events · 8 nations
The 5th century BCE
the classical world
12 events · 10 nations
The 7th century
faiths on the move
54 events · 39 nations
The 15th century
the world connects
149 events · 94 nations
The 18th century
the age of revolutions
200 events · 113 nations
The 1940s
the world at war
215 events · 105 nations
The 1960s
independence sweeps the map
212 events · 104 nations