The Cultural Tutor Profile picture
Jul 6, 2022 14 tweets 4 min read Read on X
If you study these 13 maps for just a couple of minutes each, you'll understand history much better.

Starting with... the migrations of prehistoric humanity. Image
Ancient Mesopotamia

The cradle of human civilisation. Writing, the wheel, and cities are just a few of the inventions we owe to the people of Sumer, Assyria, and Akkad. Image
The Bronze Age Collapse

A pivotal and mysterious moment in history, when much of the known world order imploded. Image
Ancient Greece

It wasn't a country - it was a collection of culturally aligned (but highly differing!) city-states with varying political structures. Image
The Conquests of Alexander the Great

From Macedonia to the Indus River Valley, history's greatest conqueror left a blazing trail across the known world. Image
Where were the books of the Bible written?

In many different places, centuries apart. This gives you some idea of the true scale of the Bible. Image
The Provinces of the Roman Empire

If you know the ancient names by which modern places were known, it will make reading Roman history much more enjoyable and understandable. Image
Ancient Rome itself. Image
Ancient India

A sorely unappreciated historical era. Image
The Crusades

You've heard about them, but now you can see where they came from, where they went, and how they got there. Image
The expansion of the Ottoman Empire

The growth of one of the first truly pluralistic empires, spanning three continents and lasting for over six centuries. Image
Pre-Colonial Africa

A vitally important map which isn't studied enough. Image
Europe on the eve of the First World War

Before the Old World tore itself to pieces. Nothing would ever be the same again. Image
These maps are far from a definitive list.

Rather, they're aimed at providing some general context of time and place.

Once you've got a basic framework of date and location in mind, history starts to make much more sense.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with The Cultural Tutor

The Cultural Tutor Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @culturaltutor

Feb 19
This unusual house in Turin was built 123 years ago.

It's the perfect example of a kind of architecture unique to Italy, known as the "Liberty Style".

How to make ordinary buildings more interesting? The Liberty Style has an answer... Image
During the 1890s there was an artistic and architectural revolution in Europe: Art Nouveau.

It means "New Art" in French, and that's exactly what it was — a whole new approach to design, whether of buildings, furniture, clothes, sculpture, or crockery. Image
There were many genres of Art Nouveau, but what they had in common was a commitment to traditional craftsmanship, the embrace of new materials like iron, and a turn toward flowing designs inspired by nature.

Like the Hôtel Tassel in Brussels, designed by Victor Horta, from 1893: Image
Read 24 tweets
Feb 13
This painting is nearly 100 years old.

It's by Grant Wood (most famous for American Gothic) and it's called The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.

Why does it look like that? Because Grant Wood had one of the most unusual styles in art history... Image
Grant Wood was born in 1891 in rural Iowa; ten years later the family moved to Cedar Rapids.

He worked at a metal shop, studied at arts and crafts schools in Minneapolis and Chicago, and then became a public school art teacher back in Cedar Rapids.

Humble beginnings. Image
In the 1920s, while working as a teacher, Wood made several trips to Europe, including a year studying at the Académie Julian in Paris.

There, like so many artists of his generation, he adopted a generic and basically unremarkable Impressionist style: Image
Read 25 tweets
Feb 9
This is Mount Nemrut in Turkey, one of the strangest ancient ruins in the world.

It's a colossal, 2,000 year old burial mound on top of a mountain, surrounded by huge stone heads.

Who built it? A king who wanted to become a god... Image
First, where is Mount Nemrut?

It's in the Taurus Mountains, a range in south-eastern Turkey. And, rising to more than 2,000 metres, it's one of the tallest mountains in the region. Image
It was part of the ancient Kingdom of Commagene, a small state that fought both with and against the Roman Republic, and eventually became part of the Roman Empire.

The tomb-temple at Mount Nemrut was built in 62 BC, when Commagene was an independent kingdom. Image
Read 24 tweets
Feb 5
A brief history of landscape art: Image
In Medieval Europe landscape painting wasn't a genre of its own, and it hardly featured in art at all.

Notice how the background of this 11th century mural indicates the landscape merely by the generic sketch of a castle and an isolated, highly stylised tree: Image
This changed in the 14th century with Giotto, a revolutionary painter from Florence.

He introduced proper landscapes into his paintings: rocks, trees, flowers, and skies.

But Giotto's version of nature remains highly stylised; this is not a "realistic" landscape. Image
Read 25 tweets
Feb 3
In the year 1712 something incredibly strange happened in Sweden.

For the first and only time in history, February had 30 days.

Here's the story of what happened — and why... Image
The story begins in 753 BC, when Rome was founded by the mythical Romulus.

Now, Romulus was credited with creating the first Roman calendar.

It had ten months, each of 30 or 31 days, beginning in March and ending in December. Image
What about the time between December and March?

Early Rome was fundamentally agricultural. With less work to do in Winter it was simply a long, dark, and undated stretch of time.

But as Roman society grew more sophisticated this situation became obviously troublesome. Image
Read 24 tweets
Jan 28
This is the American Radiator Building, a 101 year old black and gold skyscraper that's half Gothic, half Art Deco.

It's famous, but not as famous as it should be — so here's a brief history of one of the world's coolest skyscrapers... Image
In 1923 the American Radiator Company wanted to build a new office in New York.

This was the Golden Age of Skyscrapers: the Woolworth Building was ten years old, and the Empire State and Chrysler were less than a decade away.

So it was going to be a skyscraper... but what sort? Image
Enter Raymond Hood, an architect who had just won the competition to design Chicago's Tribune Tower.

Even though it hadn't yet been completed, his Neo-Gothic design was so well-received that the American Radiator Company wanted him to design their new skyscraper. Image
Read 25 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(