Beginner’s Guide

This is an introductory map of cross-civilizational world history, placing side by side the once-separate historical threads of Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, Persia, the Mediterranean, China, South Asia, the Islamic world, the steppe empires, and Africa, to help you see "what else was happening in the world in the same period," and that between seemingly distant civilizations there were real ties of trade, war, and thought.

A Few Things to Know First

This site’s 63 figures span some five thousand years of history (from Sargon of the third millennium BC to Shaka and Lakshmibai of the nineteenth century), a huge span of time that does not mean these civilizations "coexisted at once" — please note the specific dates on each card, to avoid misunderstandings such as "the ancient Egyptians and Kublai Khan were contemporaries."
Limited by space, the 63 figures this site chose cannot exhaust all important civilizations and figures, and the native civilizations of Africa, the Americas, and Oceania receive relatively limited treatment — a result of editorial selection, not a sign that these civilizations are unimportant.
The world map’s coordinate range covers the Horn of Africa to East Asia (Natural Earth geographical data), so Pachacuti, Montezuma II, Atahualpa, Hernán Cortés, and Francisco Pizarro (the Americas) and Shaka (southern Africa, whose latitude exceeds the map’s range) cannot be plotted on the map, but their figure cards, relationship graph, and timeline content are fully preserved.
For the records of conquerors and colonizers (such as Tamerlane’s sacking of cities and Cortés’s and Pizarro’s destruction of the American civilizations), this site states the acknowledged historical facts, without beautifying, but also without simply applying modern moral standards to judge the war atrocities widespread in the pre-modern world, leaving the specific judgment to you.

A Few Suggestions

Look at the timeline first to build a rough framework of "which age, which regions," then dig into the details card by card — reading all 63 figures at once easily confuses the dates, and understanding by era-block is more efficient.
The groupings in the relationship graph do not mean "these civilizations knew each other"; most links within a group are teacher–student, political, or family relations within the same civilization; only the few cross-group links (such as Zhang Qian and the figures along the Silk Road) represent real cross-civilizational contact, so note the explanatory text on the links themselves.
The "differing versions" column specially marks where the sources contradict each other, or where the boundary of legend and reliable history is blurred (for half-legendary figures such as the Queen of Sheba and Gilgamesh); read this content as a frank note on "how far we know this history," not as an incontrovertible conclusion.

How to Read

To know "what was happening around the world around a given year"

Look at the timeline. This site divides it, in rough chronological order, into six stages: "The Dawn of the Bronze Age," "The Empires and Thought of the Axial Age," "The Roman Peace and the Two Ends of the Silk Road," "The Middle Ages of Faith, Conquest, and Knowledge," "The Afterglow of the Old World and the Collision of the New," and "The Resisters at the Margins of Empire." Figures shown side by side within a stage often lived in close periods, and even ten thousand li apart one can feel "what humanity was busy with everywhere in the same age."

To know "how the civilizations actually connect"

Look at the relationship graph and the three trade routes on the map (the Silk Road, the route of Zheng He’s voyages, the route of Ibn Battuta’s travels); these links represent real cross-civilizational contact and the transmission of knowledge, the most direct entry into understanding that "world history did not develop in isolation" — for instance, Indian numerals passing to Europe through the Arab world, and Buddhism spreading east to China along the Silk Road, are both concrete, documentable historical processes.

To know "what this history still leaves today"

Look at the "modern echoes" column of each card, from the modern computer-science words "algebra" and "algorithm" derived from al-Khwarizmi, to the Lion Capital of Ashoka on India’s state emblem and the historical source of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church — the marks of ancient civilizations are still scattered in every corner of the modern world, often beyond intuitive expectation.

Going Deeper: General World-History Reading

Yuval Noah Harari, SapiensA popular book ordering the evolution of human civilization from a macro perspective, well suited as an introduction to building a "big history" framework, its specific historical details to be cross-checked against professional world-history texts.

William McNeill, The Rise of the WestA representative work of the early "global history" perspective, stressing the mutual influence of different civilizations rather than isolated development, an important theoretical source of this site’s "cross-civilizational link" approach.

Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European HegemonyFocusing on the Eurasian trade network under Mongol rule in the 13th–14th centuries, an important reference for understanding the cross-civilizational exchange of the Silk Road and Ibn Battuta’s travels.

Going Deeper: Regional and Period Histories

The Cambridge Ancient History seriesAn authoritative scholarly reference on ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, and the Persian Empire, detailed but quite technical, suited to readers wishing to go deep into a specific civilization.

Cho-yun Hsu, China: A New Cultural HistoryA general history from a mainly Chinese perspective that also accounts for interaction with other civilizations, suited to understanding the place of Chinese civilization in the thread of world history.

Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah (in translation)The original work of this site’s figure Ibn Khaldun himself, a rare first-hand document for understanding the historiographical thought of the pre-modern Islamic world, and one of the earliest systematic expositions of the discipline of the "philosophy of history."

A Timeline of Coordinates

The Bronze Age (c. 3000–1000 BC)

c. 2334 BC Sargon founds the Akkadian Empire
c. 1750 BC the Code of Hammurabi is promulgated
c. 1450 BC Hatshepsut reigns, the trade heyday of ancient Egypt

The Axial Age (c. 600–200 BC)

550 BC Cyrus the Great founds the Persian Empire
221 BC Qin Shi Huang unifies China
261 BC Ashoka converts to Buddhism

The Dusk of the Classical Empires (c. 1–500 AD)

30 BC The Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt falls, Cleopatra takes her own life
212 BC Archimedes perishes at Syracuse
415 AD Hypatia is murdered at Alexandria

The Medieval Crossroads (c. 600–1400 AD)

622 AD Year one of the Islamic calendar
1206 AD Genghis Khan unifies the Mongol steppe
1324 AD Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage to Mecca shakes the Mediterranean world

The Collision of Old and New Worlds (c. 1400–1600 AD)

1405–1433 AD Zheng He’s seven voyages
1521 AD Cortés takes Tenochtitlan, the Aztec Empire falls
1533 AD Pizarro executes Atahualpa, the Inca Empire collapses

The Resisters Under the Wave of Colonialism (19th century)

1816–1828 Shaka founds the Zulu Kingdom
1857 Lakshmibai dies in the Indian Rebellion