Ancient places
Real evidence
Bigger questions

The Beginning

Tracing the world before Abraham through text, archaeology, and the earth itself.

—Catalogued places —Ancient sources —Passages held
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Artist’s impression — illustrative only

Loading ancient places…
Secure identification
Probable identification
Possible / disputed
Colour indicates identification status.
12,000 BC
Early settlements8,000 BC
Agriculture4,000 BC
Early cities1 AD
Later antiquity
2,900 BCFull timeline →
Explore sitesFollow the evidence Ancient textsRead the sources ArtifactsObjects & origins The timelinePut it in context Questions & answersAsk, discuss, learn Open questionsWhat comes next?

Modern geography · ancient coastlines may differ. Terrain: Natural Earth / US National Park Service, via Esri.

Inside the library Our holdings, methods & commitments
This is not an argument. It is a library with a memory of where every statement came from. Each claim in it can be walked back: to the witness it rests on, the line of that witness, the edition behind the line, and the rights under which we hold that edition. When a chain breaks, the break is displayed rather than hidden.

What we currently hold

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Counts are read live from the database on every page load. Nothing here is a marketing figure; a zero is displayed as a zero.

The one rule everything else follows

The database was not designed to prove a theory.

It was built to hold evidence in categories that cannot be quietly merged, so that a reader can see what kind of thing each statement is:

  • Never erase disagreement. Where sources conflict, both remain, labelled.
  • Never silently merge identities. Two names that might be the same person are two records until a human says otherwise.
  • Never turn tradition into archaeology. A text naming a city does not excavate it.
  • Never turn correlation into proof. Two things dated alike are two things dated alike.
  • Never turn a period label into a measurement. "Uruk period" is a classification, not a date.

Where to go

Library
The Evidence Explorer. Browse witnesses, read passages, and walk any statement back to its source line.
Map
Only fully provenanced identifications are pinned. Places that cannot be placed are listed with the reason, not omitted.
Timeline
Chronology models kept strictly separate. A tablet's manufacture date is never shown as the date of the event written on it.
Sources
Every work carried, with its rights status, its editions, and how many of its witnesses we actually hold.
Artefacts
Object-level evidence, and the archaeology volumes we hold. Currently states its own emptiness plainly.
About
The method: evidence classes, confidence bands, and the rules that constrain what this platform is allowed to say.

What this platform refuses to do

Unknown location
Does not get an invented pin.
Unknown date
Does not get an invented point on the timeline.
Missing manuscript
Is not called "absence" — it is called not held.
Restored text
Is not presented as preserved text.
Translation wording
Is not presented as the ancient word.
Unheld publication
Is not displayed as held evidence.

A recent example, recorded in full

A date of "c. 2900 BC" for a flood deposit at Shuruppak appeared in this project's own early design material. When the archaeological evidence chain was finally built and run, it returned zero radiocarbon samples, zero stratigraphic contexts and zero datable events for that site — and no source anywhere in the database supported the number.

The number had been written from general knowledge during interface design. It is now recorded as UNSOURCED — not refuted, and not confirmed. The correction is kept visible on the About page rather than quietly deleted, because the mistake is part of the record too.