The rise and fall of civilizations over the history of humankind is a difficult thing to accurately depict in graphic form, but this BBC online presentation is a wholly engrossing way to look at the transformation and dissemination of religions and ideologies. Guided by the presence of a virtual ant that weaves its way across the introductory screen, the screen displays a metaphorical phrase from...

The Birmingham Public Library has a marvelous trove of maps in their collection and this site is the perfect place to explore almost 1,000 cartographic gems. As might be expected, the maps housed here depict various sections of Alabama, along with maps and atlases from Europe, Africa, and other regions of the world. First-time visitors might start by giving close attention to the Persia sive...

What if you could look around Asia Minor in the year 200 BCE? You might need a very good time machine, or you could just use the ChronoAtlas. The map viewer here interfaces with Google Earth to create a highly nuanced and completely fascinating interactive experience that allows users to explore various themes and data sets with the option of visitor-contribution of images of historic places and...

The Hispanic Reading Room site from the Library of Congress brings together over a dozen digital collections crafted from primary and secondary source materials related to Luso-Hispanic cultural history. The collections offered on this site include the Kraus Collection of Sir Francis Drake as well as a collection on Puerto Rico and the Dawn of the Modern Age. This last area contains a small...

Designed by librarian Matthew White, this sprawling and somewhat idiosyncratic Website offers hundreds of political, economic, demographic, religious, and historical cartographies of the countries and continents of the last century. Visitors to this site can trace the global rise and fall of various political systems through the century, examine the mapped battle histories of the Mexican...