
Borders and populations of countries in Europe each year since 400 BC [video] - Four_Star
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY9P0QSxlnI
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BerislavLopac
My main gripe is with the concept of "country" which didn't really exist until
relatively recently.

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dragonwriter
> My main gripe is with the concept of "country" which didn't really exist
> until relatively recently.

Yes, it did. The concept of _nation-states_ as a general norm is relatively
recent, but the concept of a _country_ is ancient.

OTOH, the video covers extent of political domains, not countries; the two
being treated as near equivalents is a product of the modern nation-state
norm.

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goda90
I'd love to see this in an interactive format where you can drag the time
scale, and hover over each population to get more info.

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pm24601
I love the way the video showed the border fluctuations over time.

Any criticism of "precision" is kind of pointless - even today it is difficult
to determine population any many countries or cities. Population is too fluid.
What is important is relative size not exact mathematical precision.

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627467
I'm eagerly waiting for an equivalent timelapse of the density map. I feel we
overestimate the value of borders on these historical maps.

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AstralStorm
Yes, however we lack essential data to run density estimates until late 1800s.
Even cities didn't have accurate population counts, much less rural regions.

The census data is quite approximate.

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alex-
This also really highlights the scale of the population explosion over the
last 500-ish years!

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tyfon
I was expecting a large properly formatted data table but it was a video ;)

I guess the analyst in me wants something else than the general public.. Still
quite interesting though.

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sctb
We've updated the link from [http://thesoundingline.com/map-of-the-day-the-
population-of-...](http://thesoundingline.com/map-of-the-day-the-population-
of-every-civilization-in-europe-every-year-since-400-bc/), which points to
this.

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ekianjo
Erm. in 392 AD, more than 50M people on the map. In 484 AD, less than 35M. How
do they account for 15M who are not there anymore? Figures seem frivolous.

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lainga
"One can only assume that the older population figures should be taken as
approximations and that the exact determination of what constitutes a vassal
state is subjective in some instances."

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ekianjo
Why put exact numbers on the map then? The right thing to do would be to put
estimated ranges.

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ckarmann
But we don't have ranges. It's not like a physical measurement where we know
that the actual value falls in a certain range with a Gaussian distribution.
In history we have disparate sources, often contradicting each other when you
have more than one and historians try to figure out which is the most
reliable. So all you can say is that you have approximations. It's not
"frivolous", they are figures that are interesting for themselves because you
can still see trends (like which Empire was dominant, or how depopulation
starts to creep down in the late Roman Empire), with the caveat that the
figures are "to the best of our knowledge".

