About Terra Scripta

What this site is

Terra Scripta puts world literature, philosophy, history, art and cultural heritage on a single map, year by year, from the earliest surviving texts to 1945. Move the timeline and you can see what was being written, thought and built in different parts of the world at the same time, and which states and peoples held each place.

It is a free educational project for curious readers of every age. Each article starts with a short, simple introduction and goes further down into intermediate and advanced detail, so a school student and a university reader can both find a place to start.

What you will find here that a general encyclopedia does not offer: every article sits on a historical map at its own year, next to what was being written, built and fought over elsewhere in the world at the same time; selected war articles include step-by-step campaign maps; and each article is written in layers, from an introduction for children to advanced scholarship.

The site is available in English, Korean, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German and Russian.

Who makes it

Terra Scripta is made by one person in South Korea, an independent maker who loves maps and history. The same person runs the YouTube channels @terrascripta (Korean) and @terrascripta-en (English), where articles become map-based videos, such as the series on the Imjin War of 1592–1598.

Each article shows when it was first published and when it was last updated. Questions, suggestions and corrections are welcome through the contact page.

Where the map and data come from

The map is drawn by the site itself, without an outside map service. Coastlines, rivers and lakes come from Natural Earth (public domain).

Historical borders combine two open datasets: yearly polity outlines from Cliopatria / Seshat Global History Databank (CC BY 4.0) and date-level borders from OpenHistoricalMap contributors (CC0). Borders before the modern era are approximate, and areas where a culture or people lived without a clear state are shown as hatched ranges rather than hard lines.

People, works, battles and places on the map are drawn from Wikidata (CC0) and the UNESCO World Heritage List. Coordinates always come from these sources; they are never guessed. Short descriptions shown on the map for these entries are excerpts from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and link to their source article.

Images come from Wikimedia Commons and are used only when they are in the public domain or under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA licences. The author and licence are shown with each image.

How the articles are written

The longer articles in the Library are written with the help of AI from published, openly available sources such as encyclopedias, museum and library pages, and scholarly references. Every article lists the sources it relies on, and statements are kept to what those sources support.

Translations into the other eight languages are also AI-assisted, using the established names for people, places and works in each language. Articles are revised when new research appears or when readers point out a mistake on the report and discussion board or by email.

No human expert reviews the articles before they are published. Before a language version becomes eligible for search engines and ads, a second AI model checks it against stronger sources; public drafts may still be awaiting that review. Articles that pass are labelled. The editorial policy explains how articles are written, checked, sourced and corrected.

Corrections

History is contested and data can be wrong. If you find a mistake in a date, a border, a name or a translation, please tell us through the contact page. Corrections are checked against sources and applied as quickly as possible.

Advertising

Terra Scripta is free to use and is supported by advertising from Google AdSense on reviewed article pages and course pages. Ads are never placed on the map itself. The privacy policy explains how analytics and advertising cookies are used.