Blocs

Russian sphere has no self-sufficiency scoring yet — its regions render as "not assessed" (neutral gray), never as a low score. Europe and Latin America are both fully scored.

Europe of the Regions

Europe of the Regions is one way to resolve tensions — for example between Catalonia and Madrid — and to equalize the prominence of Europe's different members. It could emerge as an organic evolution if nation-states gradually weaken relative to Europe as a whole and to its regions and municipalities. Political boundaries are treated as malleable; practical, cultural and industrial geography comes first.

Two layers: fine-grained cultural units (identity-true, this map's atoms) grouped into coarser representation groups (40–70, sized for practical governance). Switch between them below. 239 regions, fully self-sufficiency-scored.

Cultural ⇄ Representation

Cultural units ⇄ Representation groups

Unchecked = curated cultural units (this map's atoms). Checked = ~40–70 representation groups: same fill color per grouping, unit borders faded to 20%, group name labelled at its centroid — an approximation of true border-dissolution (v0.2.2; see methodology).

Variant sets

Show variant switchers on map

Chips on the map at each set's anchor do the same thing — this is a compact mirror.

Historical climate

Little Ice Age glacier extent (~1300–1850)

Off by default. Digitized outlines of Alpine glaciers at their Little Ice Age maximum extent (Reinthaler & Paul, 2025) — a reconstruction from moraines, trimlines and historic maps, not an observed boundary. The Little Ice Age (~1300–1850) was regionally asynchronous across the Alps; the bounds shown here are contested. Rendered beneath region fills so the cultural/political map stays in front — sub-pixel at the continent-wide default view; zoom to roughly level 6 or higher (e.g. the Alps) to see the traced outlines clearly.

Show modelled reconstruction

Henz et al. (2025) 3D-modelled reconstruction (Instructed Glacier Model) — a separate, computed product, shown alongside (not merged into) the digitized extent above. Same asynchronous-timing and contested-bounds caveat applies.

Compare with today (RGI v7.0) not available

Not available: RGI v7.0 requires a NASA Earthdata Login nobody has authorized, and no modern-extent geometry has been fetched.

Data provenance

Show data build provenance

Off by default. This is working/build output, committed for transparency, not a claim about any individual region. Shows how each of the 8 non-Europe/non-Latin-America/non-Russian-sphere blocs' geometry was actually assembled: how many regions joined a whole administrative unit directly by its own code (highest positional confidence), how many were built by matching named sub-units by text and dissolving them (a coarser fit), and how many have no traced geometry at all (see the Missing regions toggle below for those). While this is on, clicking a region in one of those blocs also adds this same information to its popup.

Missing regions

Show approximate locations

Off by default. 231 of the 1,367 regions across the eight blocs added in this pass (Sub-Saharan Africa, ASEAN, Central Asia, Chinese, Muslim world, North America, Other, Desi/South Asian) have no traced boundary — most concentrated in the Chinese bloc, whose regions were authored at prefecture level while the only open boundary source publishes counties (a "matched" Nanchang measured 462 km² against the real ~7,195 km², so it was disabled rather than shipped wrong). Latin America separately has 8 of its own 174 regions with no geometry yet — not covered by this toggle. Markers below show the centre of the containing administrative unit a region's own recorded code resolves to — not the region's own centre or shape, which remains unknown. Several regions sharing one containing unit share a single marker (click it to see all of them); this is never a filled boundary, so it can never claim territory two regions would otherwise appear to share.

Ethnic classification (historical)

Show ethnic classification overlay

Off by default. Every marker on this layer is one classifier's assertion at one point in time — not an adjudicated boundary. Several classifiers may assert different, conflicting things about the same population; this layer shows the disagreement, not a resolution of it.