Europe Map Video Shows Changing Borders, '10 Centuries In 5 Minutes' (VIDEO)

While most European borders may seem permanent and fixed, a new video illustrates their fluidity over the last 1,000 years.

The clip, "10 Centuries In 5 Minutes," is set to contemplative music and shows the advances of invaders, the collapse of empires, and the rise of new nations.

Uploaded on October 26, the morphing political map has already amassed more than 324,750 views.

Unfortunately, it does not include dates.

WATCH: 10 Centuries In 5 Minutes

Comments

[Aarontastic]

03:37 AM on 11/21/2010

Every time I see an interesting youtube video on HP and I go to click it, it's already been taken down. Every. Single. Time.

[mudshark12]

09:36 PM on 11/20/2010

If you have the money (which I don't) go to http://www.clockwk.com/ if you are a history buff and would like to learn more about this. The map is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Centennia Software.

Quite a lot of changes as there were countless wars over territory back then up to now. I don't think it will ever settle down.

[Tribal Knowledge]

11:59 AM on 11/19/2010

Has anyone else ever played "Risk?" Because Europe is just impossible to hold onto!

[Micheal G Groshong]

04:50 PM on 11/17/2010

Obviously life in Europe was not as static during the 1000 years in question as presupposed....

[jaundicedview]

04:08 PM on 11/17/2010

there's another video that I cannot find that shows the rise and fall of empires not on a map but in the form of of circled (named) growing, fading, melding into each other, all with a running timeline. BUT I CAN"T FIND IT :^(

[jeblum519]

04:00 PM on 11/17/2010

there should be a running ticker that shows what year it is as the map changes

[Health Mapper]

03:36 PM on 11/17/2010

It's too bad all that difficult map work is just a bit of ephemeral cartographic eye-candy. The author should re-build it using GIS to ensure that it lasts.

[brotherdoc]

07:38 PM on 11/17/2010

I taught European History at the college level and back in the early, pre-Internet days of computers there was this a program with very series of maps/ Probably it was available on an old floppy, I don't remember, but it DID have dates as I recall and you could also call up descriptive text that explained what (war, treaty, etc.) happened to change the borders from year to year. I often wondered what happened to it.

[Frank Reed]

06:13 PM on 11/18/2010

Very likely, you saw an early version of our software. We're still around: www.HistoricalAtlas.com.

[TOOO]

02:31 AM on 11/17/2010

Is it me, or does it seem like the country that changed the LEAST was France?

[smp501]

12:49 AM on 11/17/2010

I wonder what its going to look like in 75 years...

[Reverend S Phipp]

10:50 PM on 11/16/2010

Interesting video, but only a feral idiot or a product of one of the US' abysmal provincial schools would think that Europe's borders "seem permanent and fixed".

[zebstar]

08:35 PM on 11/16/2010

Don't want to upset the Greeks but I didn't see Macedonia either. maybe I missed it though.

[janina]

07:34 PM on 11/16/2010

We see what we know..
I focused on Poland. It balloons at first as Polish -Lithuanian then Polish Kingdoms; it is erased from the map between 1772 -1918 (partitioned three times by its neighbors: Russian, Prussian and Austrian empires; it is resurrected as Polish Commonwealth only to be attacked in 1939 by Nazi Germany from the west and Soviet Russia from the east; rises from the ashes in 1945 but is under Soviet domination until late 1980s.

[Cooper Moore]

05:31 PM on 11/16/2010

One error: in 2006, Montenegro seceded from Serbia; this map change was not reflected in the video.

At the end of the video, Serbia and Montenegro border Albania to the north. Montenegro is on the Adriatic and sandwiched between the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast, and Albania to the southeast.

Other than that error? I

[Frank Reed]

08:31 PM on 11/16/2010

You wrote:
"One error: in 2006, Montenegro seceded from Serbia; this map change was not reflected in the video."

This video was compiled, in violation of our intellectual property (copyright), by a Russian using an old version of the "Centennia Historical Atlas". It is mangled in a variety of ways, but the explanation for the fact that independent Montenegro is not shown is quite simple: the version of "Centennia" that he used only went as far as the year 2001.

Frank Reed, Owner and Head Cartographer
Centennia Software
www.HistoricalAtlas.com

[Kodwo Brumpon]

08:05 PM on 11/17/2010

Can you please compile one for the African continent? It would be interesting.

[csalls]

01:59 PM on 11/16/2010

as a History person, excellent work Mr. Reed. It reminds me of how things change over time so that in 1 lifetime things seem to stay relatively mundane.

[StansDad]

11:57 AM on 11/16/2010

Hey everybody, in case you didn't know some guy named Frank Reed has a lot to say about his maps and his software and you should really listen to him talk about those things.