Before you start
The pages are generated from open datasets and from summaries of Wikipedia articles. They are not written or reviewed by teachers or subject specialists, and they are not aligned to any curriculum or examination syllabus. Treat the atlas as one reference among several, in the same way as a printed atlas or an encyclopaedia.
The methodology page sets out how the pages are produced and where the data is approximate. It is written in plain language and can itself be given to older pupils as reading on how a reference work is compiled.
Activity 1 · Geography
Build a country profile
- Each pupil or group chooses a country and records its capital, population, area and neighbours from the country page.
- From the tables on the same page they list its three largest cities, its highest mountains and any dams or ports shown.
- They locate each on the page map and describe where the population is concentrated in relation to coasts, rivers and high ground.
- Groups working on countries in the same region compare their findings using the region page.
What it shows: Reading a set of facts about one place and relating settlement to physical geography.
Activity 2 · Geography · Data handling
Question a ranking
- Take the lists of the largest and the most populous countries and note which countries appear near the top of both, and which of only one.
- Calculate population density for ten countries by dividing population by area, and rank them again.
- Read the note above each table that states how the ranking was made, and discuss what would change if a different measure were used.
What it shows: A ranking depends on the measure chosen and on the data available. The same places come out in a different order under each.
Activity 3 · Geography · Science
Two ways to measure a dam
- Compare the list of the tallest dams with the list of the largest hydroelectric dams by generating capacity.
- Find a dam that ranks high on one list and low, or not at all, on the other, and open it to read its write-up on the page of its river, with its type, reservoir and year of completion.
- Discuss why height and generating capacity do not rise together, considering the volume of water in the river as well as the height of the wall.
What it shows: Separating two properties of the same structure, and linking an engineering figure to the river behind it.
Activity 4 · Geography
Follow a river
- Choose a major river and read its page, then trace its course on the map from source to mouth.
- List the countries it passes through and the cities that stand on or near it.
- Read the dams written up on the page of that river, with the height, reservoir and year of completion of each.
- Check the result against the river tables on the relevant country pages and note any country that is missing. The methodology page explains why this can happen.
What it shows: A river as a system that crosses borders, and a first look at how a dataset can be incomplete.
Activity 5 · History
Place an empire in time and space
- Each group chooses a polity from the catalogue and records its start and end years and its capital.
- They mark its span on a shared class timeline, so that polities which existed at the same time appear side by side.
- Using the map on the empire page and a modern map from the country pages, they name the present-day countries that lie within its territory.
- They identify the era in which the polity falls and read that era page for context.
What it shows: Chronology and overlap: several states existed at once, and their territories do not correspond to modern borders.
Activity 6 · History
The world in one year
- Open the page for a single year and list the polities recorded as existing in that year, grouped by continent.
- Compare it with the page for a year several centuries later and note which polities have appeared, ended or changed.
- Choose one region and write a short account of what changed there between the two dates, using the empire pages for detail.
What it shows: Comparing regions at the same moment, instead of following one civilisation at a time.
Activity 7 · Research skills
Check the atlas against its sources
- Choose any page with a Wikipedia summary and follow the link to the full article.
- Compare three figures on the YearMaps page, such as a population, an area or an elevation, with those in the article and, where the article cites one, with its own source.
- Where the figures differ, use the methodology page to suggest a reason: a different reference year, a different definition, or an approximation.
What it shows: No single reference is final. Pupils practise tracing a figure back to where it came from.
How to cite a YearMaps page
Pages have no named author, so the site name takes the author position. Give the page title, the site name, the full address of the page and the date on which it was read. The pages carry no publication date; the date of access serves instead. The same elements can be arranged in whichever referencing style a school uses.
YearMaps. "[Title of the page]." https://yearmaps.com/[address-of-the-page]/ (accessed [day month year]).
For example, a reference to the rivers index would give the title of that page followed by https://yearmaps.com/rivers/ and the date of access.
Where a pupil quotes or relies on the summary text of a page, the better practice is to cite the Wikipedia article it was taken from, which is linked beneath the summary. Where the point at issue is a figure, cite the dataset named on the data sources page if it can be consulted directly.
Reusing text, tables and images
Summary text derived from Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence (CC BY-SA 4.0). It may be copied into worksheets and slides provided the Wikipedia article is credited and linked, and any adapted version is shared under the same licence.
Other material comes from the sources listed on the data sources page, each under its own licence. Some of these allow any use and some limit reuse to non-commercial purposes, so the entry for the relevant source should be checked before material is republished outside the classroom.
Photographs are served from Wikimedia Commons. Each links to its file page, which gives the author and the licence that applies to that image.
Practical notes
- The maps are interactive and need a modern browser with an internet connection. The tables and text can be read without the map.
- Every page has a fixed address, so a lesson plan can link directly to the country, river or empire it uses.
- Names follow the source datasets and are mostly in English or romanised forms. The site search finds places by those names.
- Smaller towns and harbours have no page of their own. They are listed in the tables on their country page.
- Mountains, lakes, islands, deserts and other natural features are described on their country's pages, for example the highest mountains or the largest lakes of a country, each with its photograph and figures.
- Years before the common era are written as BCE throughout the site.
