Please read the basics of this database before using it, and please read the details before writing me asking me to update it. But please do notify me of anything you're sure I should update.
This page introduces and, more importantly, lists entries in the database (each entry taking the form of a Web page and/or plain text version) for regions and for super-regions. You should really read the section on regions first, however, if you haven't used this database before.
This is a database about the ancient history of individual regions, where 'ancient' means the period from shortly before the beginning of written records up to AD 700. It's meant to provide up-to-date ways to get basic information or to dive into the field.
The heart of this database is the set of pages concerning "regions", a term which, in this database and those connected to it, means only those areas which are listed below. (For example, I consider "Scotland", here with different borders from those of the real Scotland, a "region", but I consider Argyll an "area" or "sub-region".)
Each region's page has a standard format, explained in detail in (you guessed it) the details, and is done as thoroughly as I can manage. For basic information each page has a section on "periodisation and terms" and a set of "introductory" references. For research purposes, each page has a section on "sources" and a set of "research" references. All references are annotated (to varying degrees), and the HTML versions of the pages are hyperlinked (there are also plain text versions).
The pages on regions include sections on "sub-regions" where I think this approach is warranted; such sections, unlike those listed above, have no systematic organisation, but are written on a case by case basis. There are regions listed below for which there is next to no useful literature on the region as a whole, but plenty of literature on the sub-regional basis. For examples already written, see "Atlantic Iberia" and "Mediterranean Spain"; that approach is likely to be repeated as I move on, but is unlikely to be the only approach I need to take for dealing with such regions.
At some point, I hope to have an image map on this page to make picking the region you want easier. Unfortunately, it's not ready yet.
The regions are numbered, in the lists below, in sequence by the longitude of their easternmost points, from west to east. (This somewhat backwards sequence results from the fact that I originally intended to move east to west but had to give that approach up for lack of the necessary research skills at the time.)
I'm unlikely to do any more regions before mid-2002, and also unlikely to finish updating these before then.
Regions on which I've not yet begun work are much more likely than others to see changes in their borders; I may even add additional entire regions, or merge some. Please see the discussion of this matter in the details before writing to me to recommend such changes. My apologies for the obscurity of some regions' names; when I can make an image map which would clarify them available, I will.
The headings of the following table are obviously not accurate in detail, but as a general rule, I do intend to do the regions in the following order: "Latin", "Greek", "Sanskrit", "Chinese", and "Persian". Where any region in the following table is linked, the link leads to much less detailed guidance to the region's ancient history in a page within "Half of Asia, for a Thousand Years". Note that the page those links lead to is over 200K in size. Those regions, whether or not they're in the "Persian" column, will be the last to be done in this database's more systematic fashion. I strongly recommend that you read the page linked to above (which is "Half of Asia"'s starting page) before attempting to use the links below, and that, if you use the links below, you make a point of reading further than the first paragraph you find (in all cases, the link points to the first relevant paragraph only; for many regions, especially in Central Asia, there are other relevant paragraphs further on).
| The "Latin Far West" | The "Greek West" | The "Persian Center" | The "Sanskrit East" | The "Chinese Far East" |
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The further east you go, the less certain it is that I'll actually follow this structure. I already know, thanks to my work on "Half of Asia, for a Thousand Years", that the setup for the so-called "Sanskrit East" is severely flawed, and also that I'll have to include at least one region in Siberia, which I hadn't planned to do. But for the time being, the above lists at least give a general idea of my intended scope and approach.
The further east you go, also, the more likely it is that I'll be unable to find significant references in any language I can read. (For example, I've read in a reliable source that there's copious work on regional history of China in Chinese, but I haven't heard of any of this work being done in, or translated into, Western languages. Something similar but less severe applies in Central Asia and Siberia, where the relevant language is Russian and there often are translations, but these are usually decades old.) I haven't yet figured out what to do about this. My hope, of course, is that as I make progress on the database I'll inspire such fervent admiration for my work that people will volunteer to do comparable work on regions I can't readily tackle; but we'll see.
"Super-regions" are covered by pages quite different from the regional pages. For one thing, they don't have a standard format. For another, I'm defining super-regions as I see the need, rather than attempting to make a systematic list. And for a third, I'm making no effort at all to be thorough in the super-region pages. Rather, super-region entries are normally intended only as boxes to hold references that it would be fatuous to omit, but that do not belong under any single region. Eventually, there will be super-regions of such ridiculous size as "the Classical world" (and, for that matter, "the Muslim world"), but for now, I'm only feeling the need to deal with more normally sized ones. Similarly, I'll probably end up listing as super-regions various peoples (there is already a tentative link to the Celts), but I'm deeply uncomfortable with the fact that the overwhelming majority of works on ancient history are constructed around either government or ethnicity - a fact that seems to allow an amazing amount of information to be ignored - and not yet sure how much I'll want to accommodate this tendency here.
Created November 8, 2001. Last modified December 22, 2001. Next due for update whenever I next do something that needs linking to here.
URL: <http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/regions/index.html>
Copyright 2001 Joe Bernstein. Electronic transfer permitted.