Historical Earth
globe · 2026Spin the planet, pick a year, watch the borders jump. Click a country and it tells you who was running it.
Problem
History maps are usually a PNG of 1812 or a Wikipedia infobox. I wanted the Google Earth thing, except the year is a slider.
What I built
It's a SvelteKit app on a MapLibre globe. Borders go from 1600 to now. The timeline usually steps a year at a time, then gets finer around wars so you're not skipping over 1914 in one tick. Click a country and you get flag, government, leader. I split the world into twenty region bundles so the data isn't one giant mess, and the client loads GeoJSON plus a SQLite file.
Highlights
- MapLibre 3D globe with satellite imagery
- Borders from 1600 through today
- Timeline that tightens around wars and crises
- Twenty curated region bundles, SQLite in the browser
# historical-earth - globe through time
lang = "typescript"
app = "sveltekit"
map = "maplibre gl globe"
time = "1600 → now, adaptive steps"
data = "geojson + sqlite (sql.js)"
regions = "20 curated bundles"
- SvelteKit
- TypeScript
- MapLibre
- SQLite