[usrnm]

The map certainly is not built in a eurocentric way. It does reflect the fact that the political history of Eurasia and the Mediterranean region are much better studied and better understood, but this is hardly the fault of the creator of the map. Do you have a better political map of the Americas two thousand years ago?

[zamadatix]

There was a free alternative to this which always seemed to try more in this regard https://www.runningreality.org/#11/20/500&22.59154,-2.58791&... but I've never actually known enough to say it was actually more accurate or not. At least towards the ~1600s the Americas look a lot more like the history books I saw in school.

[kbrannigan]

The timeline spans "3000 BC" to now, but BC/CE itself is a European framework. The Han Dynasty, Maya, and Kingdom of Kush all had their own calendars and ways of marking significant time. Yet this "world" history uses Europe's reference point as universal.

So yes, the map reflects available documentation. But the very framework - organizing all human history around BC/CE - already embeds a European perspective. The bias isn't what the mapmaker included; it's that European systems became the unmarked "standard" for measuring when history happens. That's structural Eurocentrism: not intentional, but built into the tools we inherit.

[igogq425]

That's an extremely weak argument. Ultimately, it's about the numerical values. Where you set the reference point is secondary as long as you can convert. We could also set your birthday as the zero point. I'm not a Christian and I have to live with BC/CE too. I'm not saying that there is no Eurocentric perspective or that European understanding of history is not shaped by it. But we can reflect on this and correct it. Postcolonial criticism should not go so far as to see the BC/CE system as a structural mechanism of oppression. That's just ridiculous. You'd be better off dealing with concrete economic oppression instead of peddling this Foucault/Spivak/Said nonsense! Sorry for being so blunt, but it upsets me every time. I mean, what's the alternative here? Should we switch to the Mayan calendar now so that it's not so Eurocentric? That's ridiculous. A little Hegelianism (or Laoziism, for that matter) wouldn't hurt you!

[adwn]

The Gregorian calendar is the de-facto global calendar system today, even in cultures and states that are far removed from its Christian and European roots. You might as well complain about the text on the website being in English.

[prmph]

But he is not complaining that we use the Gregorian calendar. He is pointing out that is just one calendar among many, and we should be aware that it is a conscious choice the world has made to use it by convention.

[adwn]

> But he is not complaining that we use the Gregorian calendar.

Yes, he is:

>>> Yet this "world" history uses Europe's reference point [of BC/CE] as universal.

It wouldn't make sense to use any other than the Gregorian calendar for this map, and it also wouldn't make sense to mix different calendar systems.

> He is pointing out that is just one calendar among many […]

But it's not. The Gregorian calendar is the calendar in world wide use today. Giving dates in BC/CE is not an expression of Eurocentrism, it simply reflects reality.

[prmph]

You are making bad faith straw-man arguments.

> Yet this "world" history uses Europe's reference point [of BC/CE] as universal.

What in this sentence indicates he think is it wrong to use that calendar? He is saying it is NOT universal. What about that is hard to understand?

> The Gregorian calendar is the calendar in world wide use today.

Again, you are arguing with a straw-man. Please read my comment carefully again. I am not arguing this your statement.

As an analogy, the WWW is the dominant (probably virtually only) form of the internet in use today, but it is only one architecture. There were/can be others, but they failed to gain or maintain traction. A summary from Google:

> Besides Gopher, other historical internet systems and protocols existed before the World Wide Web, including Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS) and the Archie search engine. While the World Wide Web eventually surpassed them all, these systems provided different ways of discovering and navigating information online in the early 1990s.

[vman81]

I'll allow it.