Diversity Maximized World Map | Atlas Altera

[Telamon Tabulicus]

$77 a month is certainly a good start, especially for a digital project. Then again, from what I saw in the images you are one of the greatest map makers I have ever seen.

If I was allowed to use my money on "internet sites" then I would donate to your Patreon. My parents do think of books as "appropriate expenditures" so I will certainly buy it if you come out with a physical atlas or publish the manuscript.

If you are looking for a place to publish the manuscript, I would suggest getting into contact with the (only) true AH publisher, Sea Lion Press (https://www.sealionpress.co.uk). It was founded by several AH.com users and accepts submissions.

Show your parents this footnotes document, which is just for the spreadsheet component of my project (the factbook). It's 11 pages of marginalia and further readings/citations for just explaining and discussing concepts and terms used in the spreadsheet. There's obviously a stigma associated with the kind of work I'm trying to accomplish here, but I don't see the message(s) I'm trying to get across nor the content I'm putting out there too different from what educators on YouTube are doing these days.

 

[Telamon Tabulicus]

Michif. Lucky Metis people. I grew up near there, and my heart lies elsewhere near there. You couldn't research everyplace for a map like this, but you did it really cleverly. What part of the map are you most proud of, and how did you research it?

Nice! I'm a Canadian from the Pacific Northwest, so I put considerable effort over there and in the California of this world. I came across a Wiki article on the Ainu's itaomachip ship, which was transoceanic, and knowing all about the anthropological stuff of the PNW cultures and their incredible oceangoing, cargo-efficient dugout canoes from my exposure to the museums and books available here...well, ideas just started exploding. I use the Ainu, who straddle between the North Pacific/Okhotsk hunter-gatherer cultures and sedentary Jomon agriculturalists, to bring the PNW (Wakasan here) in contact with not only Northeast Asia (Shukushin) but also the rest of East Asia, so that this North Pacific region is like seafaring equivalent of the Mongol-Tungusic frontier of China. The motifs in their clothes, the copper daggers of the Tlingit and Haida and the swords of the Ainu, all of it just blended so well together.

I'm also pretty proud of my alt-geo inland sea of Australia, which I use in combination of a more extensive Chola trading network from the 9th to 13th century to bring a base Indic cultural package to Papua, Melanesia, and Australia. The closet thing in OTL for you to use to visualize this would be Ternate and the Moluccas, which are peoples who speak Papuan languages (aerial grouping, not linguistically-linked), and who not only adopted the Indic-influenced Indo-Malay culture, but also Islam.

 

[Neoteros]

This is amazing.

Where can I get a wall poster of the world map?

 

[Telamon Tabulicus]

This is amazing.

Where can I get a wall poster of the world map?

I've been looking into getting a shop feature on the website. For now, I'm sending people maps in the mail in tubes and asking for them to send me money through PayPal. Since the map is either 44'' x 59'' (I have a chorographical map at 39'' by 59''), the price of shipping is a big one. For now, I can only do North America. Shipping to anywhere in the US, ironically, is about $10 cheaper (30-40...) than to the rest of Canada, where I'm from. You can email me if you want one!

 

[Neoteros]

I've been looking into getting a shop feature on the website. For now, I'm sending people maps in the mail in tubes and asking for them to send me money through PayPal. Since the map is either 44'' x 59'' (I have a chorographical map at 39'' by 59''), the price of shipping is a big one. For now, I can only do North America. Shipping to anywhere in the US, ironically, is about $10 cheaper (30-40...) than to the rest of Canada, where I'm from. You can email me if you want one!

It'll be for another day, then - but I think you'll be able to make enough money to expand your range pretty soon, anyway.

I've noticed something, though - some regions of the world are not under any nation at all, with forts and the like being the only listed signs of human presence. Since Chernobyl's one of them, are they regions where, for some reason or another, human beings can't set foot? If it's radiation in Chernobyl, Amazonia and the Congo might've been left alone due to their environmental importance, with only pre-state native peoples being allowed. Kind of like how India treats the Sentinelese, but on a global scale.

Am I right, or...

I'm also curious about the Italian states, since Trent seems to be the capital of a Rhaeto-Romance state, while the Istriot language (very minor in OTL) basically replaced Venetian.

And the alternate Ryukyu island chain that looks suspiciously like Hatsunia - I wonder what other references are there.

 

[Telamon Tabulicus]

I've noticed something, though - some regions of the world are not under any nation at all, with forts and the like being the only listed signs of human presence. Since Chernobyl's one of them, are they regions where, for some reason or another, human beings can't set foot? If it's radiation in Chernobyl, Amazonia and the Congo might've been left alone due to their environmental importance, with only pre-state native peoples being allowed. Kind of like how India treats the Sentinelese, but on a global scale.

This is a reference to League of Nations mandates and certain temporary UN territorialities in the mid 20th century, but here, the Society of Nations is a US-backed LoN analogue that came out of WW1 like the UN came out of WW2, and WW2 was fought like the Korean War between a SoN coalition and the Axis. I believe I expand a bit more about this point in the Reddit comment thread. Anyway, in the interwar period, apart from Chernobyl, those territories you mentioned are kind of big debacles (Amazon rubber boom atrocities and Belgian congo), so there's a plausible way of the SoN stepping in in a pragmatic sort of way and taking the territories out of the nation-state system and keeping them as reserve-type lands, kind of like how, say, Virunga and many African countries' park systems in OTL are supported by international efforts, and how FUNAI treats the pockets of protected areas in the Amazon. I admit, my imagination was captured when I saw videos of FUNAI in the rainforest, especially those accidental contact videos with uncontacted tribes. In my backstory, there are kind of long patrol (Redwall reference btw) rangers that work in these kinds of territories.

Another reason I had these territories was because I just couldn't plausibly invent ways to map the diversity of languages and cultures onto the nation-state model. I know it sounds funny, because this is all ASB anyway, but I'm working with degrees of possibility here... Nomadic hunter-gatherers, "pygmy" peoples, uncontacted tribes...plus dozens of small language families and isolates.

I'm also curious about the Italian states, since Trent seems to be the capital of a Rhaeto-Romance state, while the Istriot language (very minor in OTL) basically replaced Venetian.

And the alternate Ryukyu island chain that looks suspiciously like Hatsunia - I wonder what other references are there.

I just googled "Hatsunia." It does have a resemblance to what I have going on here, but I think the coincidence may be from basing the alternate geography on real submerged landmasses and ocean ridges! A clear AH reference is the trope of Deseret, though here I have them as a means of, first of all, giving their unique-looking script to the Arizonan pueblo culture, and second, be leveraged by a non-settler focused British continental policy of containing US expansion. Another reference that you might appreciate was carried over from my more immature stage of working on this project, and that is Galatia, which puts on the map the only conlang in this world. All the other languages are real and in existence or in the process of being revived or hypothetical creoles (when I'm trying to grab to efficient represent too many unique languages in a region; mainly the Caledonia here, along with the dominions of California). There are tons more... This map is one giant easter egg hunt. You'll just have to start digging the etymology or wait as I publish the content!

It'll be for another day, then - but I think you'll be able to make enough money to expand your range pretty soon, anyway.

Thanks! But I can tell you now there's no profit to be had from this haha. People have been telling me to try to monetize it, which I am trying to in a way, but this is 10 years of a side project that can't be compensated that way. I'm sure all the other AH timeline writers feel the same way.

Oh, one more note on getting physical prints. I'm not trying to blatantly self promote, but there are ways for you to get print-ready high-resolution graphics of this project (including the full chorographical one) through my Patreon. So you could print it yourself and do away with the shipping issue.

 

[Telamon Tabulicus]

I thought I should just post my latest content in this thread:

Rising from azure coasts to the sheltering plateaus and ridges of the Atlas Mountains, the lands of Atlasia have long been seen as the counterpoints to European countries across the Mediterranean Sea. Atlasia is located right at the edge of the African continent, on the precipice of the great waste of the Sahara. Even native Atlasians regarded their lands as the frontier until the use of camels, introduced from the east, became regular. And yet, ever since the time of Hannibal, Atlasia has also been a cultural core in its own right, forming the main settled areas of the region of Libya. Though distinct in culture and, for the majority of history, religion, the nations that formed here were locked in a waxing and waning cycle linked directly to their counterparts in Europea up until the modern period. In times of great power imbalance, ambitious rulers on either side set their eyes upon the other and launched earthshaking conquests. In other periods of history, when peace could find its way to settle in this part of the world and maritime trade pursued, the constant harrying of sea traffic and the pillaging of coastal villages was still an everyday reality. In the rare instances that this cycle was interrupted, the great forces of lasting change came not from the north, but instead, came far from the east—Asea.

For the full content: https://www.atlasaltera.com/post/atlasia

 

[ML8991]

How have I just found this.

Bravo, absolutely Bravo.
This quality, time and effort that has gone into this work is so apparent, you have done an absolute amazing job with the work and cartography.

Definitely bookmarking your page, and I look forward to seeing what you have in store for us next.
One thing that I would like to see, if you are able, would be to see how the world has looked in the past, as in who colonised where (I saw references e.g. to an Anglo-Norman-Breton rule e.g. for a period of time, as well as a great Anglo India Company),
A visual of this would be just the cherry on top of one of the best cakes I have ever seen.

You deserve all the praise you are getting and going to get.
Keep on going you fantastic human,
Lots of love, and massive appreciation
ML8991

Edit: small change/suggestion, perhaps still have some monarchs in your world, saw e.g. that the British Isles is wholly republican-> could still have a confederate monarchy perhaps instead, or an elected system, a bit like OTL Malaysia

 

[Telamon Tabulicus]

Bravo, absolutely Bravo.
This quality, time and effort that has gone into this work is so apparent, you have done an absolute amazing job with the work and cartography.

Definitely bookmarking your page, and I look forward to seeing what you have in store for us next.
One thing that I would like to see, if you are able, would be to see how the world has looked in the past, as in who colonised where (I saw references e.g. to an Anglo-Norman-Breton rule e.g. for a period of time, as well as a great Anglo India Company),
A visual of this would be just the cherry on top of one of the best cakes I have ever seen.

You deserve all the praise you are getting and going to get.
Keep on going you fantastic human,
Lots of love, and massive appreciation
ML8991

Edit: small change/suggestion, perhaps still have some monarchs in your world, saw e.g. that the British Isles is wholly republican-> could still have a confederate monarchy perhaps instead, or an elected system, a bit like OTL Malaysia

Thanks for your kind words!

I would love to get to the historical maps. I'm hoping that once I get my work flow rolling (I'm trying to catch up with publishing some content and... this is a gamble, get YouTube videos out there). I have a language family world map in plans, and I'm currently making a Greater and Core Sinosphere map with Hanzi/Hanja/Kanji country names plus their more poetic abbreviations, and transliterations and translations.

And actually, that sort of arrangement that you describe in Britain is what I have going here. They share the same monarchy, as Canada and Australia does... So the whole dominion to fully independent countries thing happens. And yeah, definitely will be putting lots of attention to the lore surrounding this timeline's East India Company. One thing you might find interesting right now is that Kampani (OTL Singlish with more Sanskrit) evolves due to the reliance and integration of the British company staff with pundits, local rulers and bureaucrats, and chettiars and old trade guilds. The language is sort of like a creole analogue to Mandarin. It is also the language with no homeland, and is used instead as a lingua franca.

 

[ML8991]

Thanks for your kind words!

I would love to get to the historical maps. I'm hoping that once I get my work flow rolling (I'm trying to catch up with publishing some content and... this is a gamble, get YouTube videos out there). I have a language family world map in plans, and I'm currently making a Greater and Core Sinosphere map with Hanzi/Hanja/Kanji country names plus their more poetic abbreviations, and transliterations and translations.

And actually, that sort of arrangement that you describe in Britain is what I have going here. They share the same monarchy, as Canada and Australia does... So the whole dominion to fully independent countries thing happens. And yeah, definitely will be putting lots of attention to the lore surrounding this timeline's East India Company. One thing you might find interesting right now is that Kampani (OTL Singlish with more Sanskrit) evolves due to the reliance and integration of the British company staff with pundits, local rulers and bureaucrats, and chettiars and old trade guilds. The language is sort of like a creole analogue to Mandarin. It is also the language with no homeland, and is used instead as a lingua franca.

Sounds super, I hope the YouTube side takes off, ik I've subbed already .

Best of luck with publishing also . Language families in what sense, as in how they inter-relate (so smatterings of colonial influence around?), Just asking for clarity, given the mapping already aligns closely to language families.

Sinospheric maps sound really cool, I saw you really put a lot of work there, so will be interesting to see more on that part of the world .

Is it just the area covered by home isles, (OTL) Australia, and (OTL) Canada under the British crown/monarch, or do the Antilles/Belize also join in (and any others that might surprise ?) And to check, is it still hereditary in England then, the crown, or (due to the mixed peerages, like Prince of Kent I saw you mention) is a different system in play?

Love the tidbit on the EIC, and looking forward to what you share more on in the future.

Final Q for now, unless more come up, is what made you choose certain prior historical landmasses, and not all (e.g. no doggerland)? A friend of mine was curious.

Keep it up, and looking forward to what you bring,
From ML8991

Edit: in keeping with the language families theme, may I suggest moving Aragon a bit further south, to reach Valencia (as Catalan and Valencian are closer than Valencian and Castillian), if there's a in-world historical reasoning, would be great to see that appended to the history of the region

 

[Telamon Tabulicus]

Language families in what sense, as in how they inter-relate (so smatterings of colonial influence around?), Just asking for clarity, given the mapping already aligns closely to language families.

Is it just the area covered by home isles, (OTL) Australia, and (OTL) Canada under the British crown/monarch, or do the Antilles/Belize also join in (and any others that might surprise ?) And to check, is it still hereditary in England then, the crown, or (due to the mixed peerages, like Prince of Kent I saw you mention) is a different system in play?

Final Q for now, unless more come up, is what made you choose certain prior historical landmasses, and not all (e.g. no doggerland)? A friend of mine was curious.

Edit: in keeping with the language families theme, may I suggest moving Aragon a bit further south, to reach Valencia (as Catalan and Valencian are closer than Valencian and Castillian), if there's a in-world historical reasoning, would be great to see that appended to the history of the region

Thanks for more questions!

Language families would group the many different countries together as the states here each are a lect/language, not families. There are some cool maps out there of language families, the most well done ones being Finno-Ugric and Indo-European, though Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan (missing the Himalayan branches) families are also well represented in maps. I want to do this in a full scale. Not sure if I will be able to represent pockets of minority languages though, as I alread have more than 900 languages and over 160 families to represent by colour...I have an excel spreadsheet with unique colours assigned to each family.

I don't think the British Crown will be that much different, though as decolonization will be more radical for the non-settler states, they will not retain the monarchy.

The landmasses and inland seas that I chose are based off of coastlines I've seen of submerged continental beds and coastlines after increases in sea levels. I tried to use as little of these interventions as possible, and whenever I did, it was to help put a barrier or safeguard a certain language that I just couldn't make fit in the real geographies I was working with. For example, I had to hem in Russia from the Finno-Ugric heartland, and make a split with its easy easier, and I had to plant the Newfie people in Australia after putting Vinland in their area... I had contemplated doing some kind of Doggerland archipelago for the Frisians, but I felt my current intervention was sufficient.

I really wanted to put Valencia with Aragon, and the borders would look quite beautiful too...if aesthetics mattered, but I didn't want to prevent the possibility of Spain going into its Italian intrigues in the early modern period, so I needed it to have a key Mediterranean port.

 

[ML8991]

Well, you taught me something new, didn't know of lects in language, intriguing there .
Best of luck though yeh with that excel work, Extra THICC 2.0 might help if you need to draw inspiration from a place if still struggling colour wise .

Interesting on the crown, but yeh, given the fragmentary nature of the world outside settler colonies, I can see that. Would they stay part of the Commonwealth of Nations however, or does each area/subcontinent/continent more keep towards a more local outlook?
Thanks for the clarification on the landmasses, adds a bit of depth to the world, and explains its look .

A fair challenge and answer on Valencia, did speak to a Spanish friend and they did say the people more prefer to speak Castellano in the modern day, despite the local governments effort, so it makes some sense IOTL also. Though one could argue that in place of Valencia, Alicante rises up to take what was Valencia's place as Spain's Med. port (Was Spain as a name chosen more because it covers more than just the area of the Crown of Castile?, also, is Galician not divergent enough from Portuguese to be classed as a lect then? Intriguing (perhaps could make that an example of cultural tension in your world, that the Galicians want autonomy/independence?)

All the best, and on to what you bring next ,
from ML8991

 

[Telamon Tabulicus]

Interesting on the crown, but yeh, given the fragmentary nature of the world outside settler colonies, I can see that. Would they stay part of the Commonwealth of Nations however, or does each area/subcontinent/continent more keep towards a more local outlook?

A fair challenge and answer on Valencia, did speak to a Spanish friend and they did say the people more prefer to speak Castellano in the modern day, despite the local governments effort, so it makes some sense IOTL also. Though one could argue that in place of Valencia, Alicante rises up to take what was Valencia's place as Spain's Med. port (Was Spain as a name chosen more because it covers more than just the area of the Crown of Castile?, also, is Galician not divergent enough from Portuguese to be classed as a lect then? Intriguing (perhaps could make that an example of cultural tension in your world, that the Galicians want autonomy/independence?)

Yeah, the Commonwealth doesn't extend past settler states except for cases where a former colony is not able to pivot to any regional association, so there are a bunch of city states like Gibraltar, Perim, Bombay, Singapore etc. in this position. The main non-settler former colonies (other than the East India Company's, which had a different relationship with the crown), are mostly in West Africa, and these one states take on a kind of East Asian Tigers development model under American influence when Britain's influence shrinks up during WW2.

And here, Spain is just the country's name because the state retained it after Navarre and Aragon seceded in the Carlist Wars. Kind of like the ROC still calling itself China when it's no longer got any holdings on the mainland. State myths don't always coincide with the nation. Also, even if it were to call itself Castile, I'm sure it would stick on as an English exonym, just as in OTL there is an India without the Indus or a Mauritania south of ancient Mauritania... Country names are hardly ever decided purely by the locals.

Good question about Galicia. I had wanted to make that part distinct, but it just didn't seem to look right, and the two do form a dialect continuum. I traded Algarve for Galicia here, so Andalusia would have a greater gravitational pull on Spain even in later history. And yes, local linguistic tensions still persist depending on the state-chosen narrative and model of rule/power distribution. So in unitary nation states, like France, local languages are treated the same as in OTL (only recently are there efforts to teach Bretagne, again for example, but state-driven revival attempts are kind of too little too late). But in other liberal approaches, minority languages can cling on.

 

[Telamon Tabulicus]

Here's another graphic I did, this time a regional map. The full size can be viewed here.

Jutting out as a peninsula in the northwest portion of the continent of Borealea, Europea itself consists of a series of minor and major peninsulas, the abundance of coastline allowing for much of the region to be tempered by maritime winds and currents. Europea is a region of historically warring states, shifting borders, and innovative systems of governance. In ancient history, the region's cultural landscape was constantly reshaped by great migrations of peoples, sometimes resulting in abrupt demographic changes, though more often than not resulting in the emergence of new cultures through cultural assimilation.

In search of better access to eastern spices, kingdoms in Europea launched the world into the Age of Exploration when the Iberian monarchs embraced the technology of oceangoing vessels from Libya and set sail for the far side of the world. Their unexpected discoveries led to the conquering, colonizing, and settling of distant lands, ultimately reshaping the world in drastic ways.

Read about the other regions on the website www.atlasaltera.com.

 

[Telamon Tabulicus]

Gomeria, Esmiria, Senegalia, Taregia, and Getulia.

Spanning beyond the Atlas Mountains into the great waste of the Sahara, the lands of Mazicia have long been regarded as the limits of the known earth. Contrary to popular belief, it is the Sahara, and not the continent-dividing Mediterranean Sea, that formed in antiquity the greatest barrier between peoples in this part of the world. Like black holes are for astronomers today, few from the outside knew how far its towering dunes extended, what lurked beneath the sands, and what lay in waiting on the other side. And yet, the peoples of Mazicia are widely documented in history. The great renaissance man of Punice, Ibn Khaldun, wrote of them extensively, as did the Romans and Carthaginians, but almost all accounts were written from hearsay—travelers' tales, merchants' bluffs, soldiers' accounts, stories given by expedition survivors. One thing, however, is for certain: like the remote atolls and islands of Polynesea, every oasis in the Sahara has been found to have been continuously inhabited or frequented as a watering station since time immemorial, making this part of the world one of the first places to see permanent human settlement at a dense scale. With the introduction of the camel from Arabia via Atlasia, the dunes and plains of the Sahara became just another sea for merchants to regularly ply, and contact with Nigeria, on the other side, became regularized, so much so that the mystical and exotic geographies of Timbuktu and the Niger River—once regarded by Europeans in the same way as Marco Polo's Xanadu and the Ho River—seemed as familiar as the sun-drenched lands of Aramia and the Holy Land.

Read the full map plate on the website www.atlasaltera.com.
And I'm on YouTube now, with audio/podcast versions on Spotify and Anchor, for all those who want more background explanations. Give it a go and subscribe, please!

 

[Telamon Tabulicus]

Here's a spinoff theme for the project!
Click on the image or here the higher quality version on Deviantart. You can also view the original Reddit post here.


From the Centre to the Margins - The Extents of the Sinosphere:
Mammoth-riding Yukaghirs, Hmongic nations, Langfang and other konsi republics in Nusantara, transoceanic contact by the Ainu in their itaomachips, Nisean horses preserved and traded in the Tea Horse Road, Phags-pa-writing and katana-carrying PNW Indigenous nations, Japonic-Austronesic cultural infusion in Okinawa, Ming Restoration, Rangaku policies and more organic modernization in the Far East...

Support this kind of content:
To access in-depth lore and footnotes (explanatory etymologies for the Sinic meanings for each country and its nation-signifier), or to download a high resolution print-quality version join the Patreon! Your funds will go to supporting me as well as other collaborators of the project. It took many long nights to produce something this in-depth and thought out, so really do consider showing us your support if you can.

More content:
I'm doing backstage-style discussions for this project with my friend, which you can watch on YouTube and or listen on Anchor/Spotify. Also, check out my YouTube for more backroom explanations and in-depth discussions

 

[Telamon Tabulicus]

 

[spoonzandforkz]

Here's a spinoff theme for the project!
Click on the image or here the higher quality version on Deviantart. You can also view the original Reddit post here.
View attachment 638801

From the Centre to the Margins - The Extents of the Sinosphere:
Mammoth-riding Yukaghirs, Hmongic nations, Langfang and other konsi republics in Nusantara, transoceanic contact by the Ainu in their itaomachips, Nisean horses preserved and traded in the Tea Horse Road, Phags-pa-writing and katana-carrying PNW Indigenous nations, Japonic-Austronesic cultural infusion in Okinawa, Ming Restoration, Rangaku policies and more organic modernization in the Far East...

Support this kind of content:
To access in-depth lore and footnotes (explanatory etymologies for the Sinic meanings for each country and its nation-signifier), or to download a high resolution print-quality version join the Patreon! Your funds will go to supporting me as well as other collaborators of the project. It took many long nights to produce something this in-depth and thought out, so really do consider showing us your support if you can.

More content:
I'm doing backstage-style discussions for this project with my friend, which you can watch on YouTube and or listen on Anchor/Spotify. Also, check out my YouTube for more backroom explanations and in-depth discussions

Amazing work!

Have you already posted this on the Map Thread? That's the page most people use to post or look at maps. Might be a good way to show your project and get more people interested in it.

 

[Telamon Tabulicus]

Amazing work!

Have you already posted this on the Map Thread? That's the page most people use to post or look at maps. Might be a good way to show your project and get more people interested in it.

Thanks! And I'll act on that suggestion too. I was a little unclear where my project should go on this forum since it's ASB and doesn't fit in the pre-1900 and post-1900 marks...

 

[Telamon Tabulicus]

Treblesia, Saconia, Phasania, and Marmoria.

Here's a cute little excerpt:
Much of early economic activity on the peninsula instead centred around the gathering the seeds and stalks of an endemic Ferula plant, Sicatian silfer, known as silphium in antiquity, and a close relative to the more pungent Chorsanian silfer, Ferula foetida, known in Asea as asa chitt by Jews or anqowzeh by Zarathustrans and in Indea as hing. Such was the reliance upon this cash crop that it is believed to be at the centre of one of the first recorded incidents of Flemish Disease, as exports of Sicatian silfer suddenly plummeted, coinciding with a sharp decline in the local economy and population of the Pentapoli Coast.

Read the full map plate on the website www.atlasaltera.com.
And I'm on YouTube now, with audio/podcast versions on Spotify and Anchor, for all those who want more background explanations. Give it a go and subscribe, please!

P.S. yes, I know, Syrtis Major has moved west...