URHAFAH: Universal Historical Atlas For AlternateHistorians

Hello folx an idea recently came up to my mind after seeing @Drex´s post on the QBaAM Improvement thread (https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-q-bam-improvement-and-core-thread.220951/page-154): Why not make a standardized atlas of the world, to include the political, cultural and lingusitic setup?
(Yes, I was inspired by Chronas.org, but looking at the irregularities I doubt it be a best resource).

FAQ:
Why? Because we can . I mean information is out there, the map is user-friendly and would be a time-saving resource for AH.comers so that they dont need to look up stuff. Also, Mappers are gonna like it.

There are inaccuracies...Agreed. No one is perfect. If you feel like something needs to be tackled, it's best to be constructive, to propose a solution to issues that nerve you.


Can I contribute? Of course you can, if you feel like you are decently knowledgeable of the area, you are welcome to use the colour schemes and fill provinces in!

Can I post Alternate Historical outcoms over here? Yes, you can, but YOU MUST PUT A BOLD CAPITAL DISCLAIMER THAT IT IS ATL. Of course, you may post alternate outcomes .

What is the methodology? Each province is to be coloured by the colour which represents the characterics of the majority or plurality of the population there. Yes you have heard. In case you are sympathetic to some kind of a minority there, and you wish to map them, well there certainly was at least one time period where they dominated the area, why not map it back then
What are our resources?
1. Map:
upload_2019-8-31_9-18-43.png

upload_2019-8-31_9-18-56.png
By @Drex,with minor changes
2. Political: I would suggest a standadized scheme, preferably THICC by @Crazy Boris
3. Religions: TURCS by me (https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-universal-religious-colour-scheme-turcs-without-caicos.433178/page-4)
4. Cultural: Using THICC, the second-to-he right variation of each colour. Valid categories would include Aragonese, Catalan, Galician etc.
Link: https://www.deviantart.com/crazy-boris/art/THICC-Core-version-2-0-784503321
5. Linguistic: To show language families and branches. Basically to group related cultures. valid categories to include West Slavic, North Germanic etc. Colour scheme based upon this: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/linguistic-map-thread.245969/page-14



Please try to be as constructive as possible.



 
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As someone who lives in Wales, it's all one culture.
I do understand what you are saying. The trick is, it may be confusing (understand I am strongly against it ) having one culture spanning two linguistic groups.
Therefore, we can choose from a few bad options:
  • Have all of Wales coloured as Welsh(Cymry) and Celtic. (Counterfactual)
  • Have two cultures (Welsh and Marcher Welsh) corresponding to the linguistic divide
  • Use the current version.
Note: Ireland is shown with three cultures: Gaelic, Anglophone Irish (used The Pale colour for this) and Ulster (to show Protestant loyalists)
 
You seem to be working under assumptions that cultures need to be monolingual and that cultural identity is a binary quality (so a person can only belong to one culture witch can be clearly separated from other cultures).
I, with my admittedly limited and amateur knowledge, find these assumptions to be not really supported by modern anthropology.
 
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You seem to be working under an assumptions that cultures need to be monolingual and that cultural identity is a binary quality (so a person can only belong to one culture witch can be clearly separated from other cultures).
I, with my admittedly limited and amateur knowledge, find these assumptions to be not really supported by modern anthropology.
My paradigm (perhaps due to my Central European background) is that the category of "nation" represents a group of people sharing a general view of common identity, based mainly on common language, but also other characteristics such as religion, history or even phenotype.
Due to the word nationality meaning mainly citizenship in the Anglophone world, I chose not to use this category; in the Central European context however nationality (or ethnicity) indeed is mostly a binary category - at censuses each resident indeed selects only one ethnicity, similar to the selection of only one religious affiliation.
Of course one can share two identities: belonging perhaps to the larger Polish nation on one hand and belonging to the smaller Gorali or Masurian ethnographic group.
 
My paradigm (perhaps due to my Central European background) is that the category of "nation" represents a group of people sharing a general view of common identity, based mainly on common language, but also other characteristics such as religion, history or even phenotype.
Due to the word nationality meaning mainly citizenship in the Anglophone world, I chose not to use this category; in the Central European context however nationality (or ethnicity) indeed is mostly a binary category - at censuses each resident indeed selects only one ethnicity, similar to the selection of only one religious affiliation.
Of course one can share two identities: belonging perhaps to the larger Polish nation on one hand and belonging to the smaller Gorali or Masurian ethnographic group.
I'm from Central Europe as well (from Poland to be more precise and as far as I know last time one could declare at least two ethnicity in the census) and the things that you describe are pretty much a post-19th c. or even post-WW2 state of things even in this part of the world and shouldn't be seen as normative for the rest of the planet (or even other parts of Europe). Besides the fact that the the census is usually designed like that is mostly due to political/ideological reasons and/or matter of convenience.
 
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I'm from Central Europe as well (from Poland to be more precise and as far as I know last time one could declare at least two ethnicity in the census) and the things that you describe are pretty much a post-19th c. or even post-WW2 state of things even in this part of the world and shouldn't be seen as normative for the rest of the planet (or even other parts of Europe). Besides the fact that the the census is usually designed like that is mostly due to political/ideological reasons and/or matter of convenience.
Getting back to the original issue: do people from Cardiff and Swansea have more in common with people from Gwynnedd or Bristol?
 
So let's solve the issue by filling all of Wales Welsh and Celtic on the linguistic map.
I live in Wales. A lot of Welsh people strongly identify as Welsh, even if they don't speak much of the language.

This assertion that they're "Marcher Welsh" or that they're English, is incredibly offensive.
 
All of the counties across the U.S. and equivalents in Australia and Canada. The independent cities in Ethiopia.
Agreed. Although adding the former would, well make the whole map rather unclickable and over-confusing. After all, we could have used the base map if that were the case.
I do agree however that US borders are not perfect; a midlevel between counties and states would be great.
For Ethiopia, maybe the borders are not perfect. Perhaps the cities could be detatched. Are they however that different from the surrounding regions?
Is it worth adding difficult-to-colour enclaves?

My suggestions to @Drex would be :
  1. Somehow modify the province setup of Egypt to allow for a nice border of the Roman province
  2. Maybe Sudan borders could be modified as well... /away with modern straight lines, perhapz more the CK2 setup in Makuria and Nobatia/
  3. Syria: to detatch northern Hasakeh province (Kurdish-majority region) from the Deir ezZor and ash Shadadi parts.
 
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