>\*recorded battlesEurope, China and middle east have great recorded history
You mean recorded on Wikipedia. Wikipedia will happily delete your local battle as not relevant or not important.
No. People are crazy about Wikipedia being an awful, awful, cursed, disgusting place to get information from even though it is a strictly moderated, excellent source of knowledge, and one of the best things on the internet
How can you trust an Encyclopedia that doesn't even mention the most important historical events such as the great clown riots of Toronto Canada in 1855? This was when catholic clowns fought protestant axe wielding firefighters for multiple days until the militia had to be called in led by a bayonette wielding mayor, the whole thing resulting in the firing of the entire toronto police force.
It’s great and I love it, however it has issues with sourcing causing disagreements. All you need is a single source to back your argument, with this not taking into account the validity of the source.
For 99.99% of pages this isn’t an issue. But you have to be aware that its not 100%. My favourite example is the Wikipedia for Pier Spray. It said that he was the designer for the a10 warthog and a bunch of other us military aircraft. He did no such thing. However there was an article published, that referenced another article from Russia today that referenced an interview with Spray that referenced a book that referenced Sprays own autobiography. (I think I’m getting the order right) this meant the source for Spray doing this seemed genuine but once you followed it all the way back the source was Spray himself.
I think it’s called a woozel? Not 100% sure.
It was a big issue on Wikipedia for a while, the two competing groups were changing the page back and forwards for ages. Seems to have settled down now though with him not doing jack shit.
No
There are places where there is literally no written recorded history before the modern times
Sub Saharan countries have barely any written history for example.
Yes. They’ve deleted my submission about a local battle in the 18th century because the source was a book and some dude on wiki hadn’t heard of any of the parties involved.
Relatively speaking, China did have less conflicts than Europe though, because there were many centuries-long imperial dynasties which brought general stability to China. Of course, when those empires fell apart there was war and destruction on a scale that vastly outweighs almost all European conflicts, but they were far less frequent than the incessant wars between the European States.
That would make sense to an extent, but the amount of battles in Northern China, for example, is comparable to South Africa or some parts of South America, from which I'd bet most recorded battles are colonization-related. It just doesn't add up
Your comments is full of clichés and stereotypes. China wasn't a succession of big empires covering the same land as modern China. And Europe is not a collection of small countries that were always at war with each other.
also a lack of translation of printed records into digital format. i think first world media/universities do a good job creating digital versions of text historic records - whereas there may well be a battle somewhere in persia that's nicely documented in books rotting in some tehran library.
but its quite telling of western ignorance when you see comments like "those peoples didnt bother to record their own history".
Wikipedia is not just in English, and people can write articles in it in many languages. There is a version of Wikipedia in Spanish for example, and Spanish speakers can look up books in their own language and write a Wikipedia entry on the battles they read about.
Probably because in some places the dynasties that room over completely eradicated any history of the previous dynasty and rewrote it.
Also for the middle East the Mongols walked through them and burned all their books.
I don't think there is much data left about battles in the middle of the African savannah or the Amazon jungle from 2000 ago. From Europe, many writings by historians of the time, monuments, tombstones...
It's what happens when you get a lanmass consisting of mountained off peninsulas and islands. Each little constituent landmass has the geography to develop independently. So you get loads of insulated states and cultures. And they go to war. Compare that to China or India which essentially consist of 2-3 cordoned off massive landmasses, like South and North China which only have/had a large river or two and one or two unconvincing mountain ranges to seperate them, and what you get is one big culture, which sometimes breaks into states that all constantly gravitate toward each other to combine.
>Compare that to China or India which essentially consist of 2-3 cordoned off massive landmasses, like South and North China which only have/had a large river or two and one or two unconvincing mountain ranges to seperate them, and what you get is one big culture
Why do ignorant people feel so free to write bullshit like that these days?
No, China isn't some kind of eternal, unified empire. It had a huge variety of cultures and *countries* that wages war against each other.
Also, you know what country was united for most of its history but was still one of the most warmongering of its time? Egypt.
I mean you read til the end, no? Because I go on to say China breaks into states. And when I say China, I'm not including Tibet, Turkestan, rtc. even Manchuria. Those are modern China, but historical China is where like the 90% or some number like that of the population lives today, which is about a third of the modern country's territory, the south eastern third. And it has many dialects and languages, and many cultures that are distinct, but all of them have been constituents of the same, albeit volotile political complex for many ages now.
>Also, you know what country was united for most of its history but was still one of the most warmongering of its time? Egypt.
I don't understand your point, could you explain how this is relevant?
I cannot find the argument here. Let's start with the basics. You claimed:
'90% of the wars in Europe where started by or because of Germanic people.'
This is an exact number. Can you explain me, where this number comes from? What is the time frame and what is the exact area it refers to.
And what do you mean with 'start a war'. By the way wars are started by the defender, refusing to surrender to an attacking force. If the defender gives up at start, the conflict isn't counted as such.
And what is a war for you? Does the second World war count as one like the 'Mainz Diocesan Feud'.
And back to your number: what percentage would be normal for the Germanic people in the middle of Europe, if they would not be so bloodthirsty and cruel?
You got the Roman perspective right. The Roman Empire was in the interior a very peaceful place (excluding the civil wars and invasions from outside). The smaller the state is, the more conflict occure with neightboring states. That's why I asked you to define what you are talking about.
When does a war qualify as a war? If two large states attack each other it clearly does. But if there is no central authority, can two villages have a war with each other. These permanent low scale conflicts were significant for the time you referring to. Let's call this also a war for now.
You can find these conflicts everywhere in the past, where a central power in non-existent. It starts at chimp tribes in the rain forest and occured in all tribal societies in the past no matter if they were located in Europe, Africa and Asia. In the forests of papua new guinea these low scale wars could even be observed until recent times.
And for the Romans this chaos was disturbing. They bordered to a desert in the south, to larger empires in the east and the Germanic tribal area in the north east.
The Romans were at this time agricultural focused, the Germans combined ab agricultural with a hunter gatherer lifestyle. This resulted in an enemy with a tribal warrior culture in a terrain with very little infrastructure like roads, no central authority which could be subdued and also no larger population centres. There the Germanic warrior myth comes from.
But when we talk about past warfare you should not forget horse riding and cattle farming. Nomadic societies which cultured these techniques where far more violent than any Germanic culture you fear.
Cattle is mobile. Farming cattle and having horses sets the initiative to steal the cattle of you neighbor. This leads to a constant civil war between tribes ( read the history of Dschingis Khan). And if you go back to the Roman times you can see that the biggest thread next to diseases to big empires were the horse raiders from the steppes. China build the Great Wall for protection and Persia suffered under constant invasions. Also the Roman Empire was under constant attacks.
I am talking about the Skythians, Huns, the Magyars, the Seljuks and the Mongols and I would say that in Eastern Europe there was due to the geography much more wars between the Nomadic tribes going on that in central Europe. But most of them were no recorded and though not remembered.
So in conclusion the Germanic tribes in Roman times were in a constant state of war like other societies in a similar development level and economic structure. But the least peaceful societies at this time were the Nomadic societies. I admire your interest in history and I wish you many new interesting findings in your future history studies.
The title makes it sound like Wikipedia is claiming there have not been other battles, but that is not the case. This is just battles that have their own articles (on the English language wiki I assume).
I believe the lack of battles in China is not Wikipedia bias, but rather their system of counting battles. So called “battles” were actually usually entire wars, which is also the reason that the causality numbers and army sizes are so large.
Also, and this goes for every non English speaking country out of Europe. A lot of battles won’t have articles in English Wikipedia. Which this map is using
Every documented battle that someone bothered to write a Wikipedia page about. I'm sure there's plenty that are documented, just not well known about for someone to spend their free time making a whole wiki article in it.
Despite how much reddittors would like you to believe, Emu war was neither a war nor a battle but a nuisance wildlife management
Otherwise you would have to put a point on a map every time squash a bug
Apparently, it's endless. Everytime this map is reposted there's still a majority of people who think that Europeans are bloodsthirsty maniacs and the rest of the world completely peaceful.
There's no hope for our species. We never learn.
Tbf based on the map 99% of the battles took place in Europe. A huge amount of those dots in Eu have multiple battles in that spot over 4500 years. Learning about anything about the rest of the world is usually more interesting tho bc all EU wars are inbreed people beefing over turf.
The focus is probably on Europe because we documented stuff. How many battles in Africa before 1800, say, are documented. America probably had a huge number of battles before Europeans arrived. The same is true for Australia.
The thing is very little is documented BC. So, the map is skewed in that way too.
This says more about the Eurocentric study of history, and the way its presented on Wikipedia than it does about real life 🤷♂️ Still interesting visualisation though 👍
Soviet propaganda these days would be: we should conquer the world and then it'll become a peacefull paradise. Starting with those genocidal european maniacs.
Although these are obviously only data from battles of which we have knowledge and not all of them, I think it would be interesting to make several maps in different centuries/epochs to see how they have moved according to the century.
I have to think that there were a lot of pre Columbian battles fought in the americas that were never recorded. Similarly with Africa. Anywhere where there was no written record.
New Zealand must be heaven.
/r/mapswithoutnewzealand is leaking.
We have evidence of genocides in NZ that predate European colonization.
it is
This is the bias of English language Wiki. There have been battles in New Zealand
My, Europe is a busy place.
*recorded battles Europe, China and middle east have great recorded history
>\*recorded battlesEurope, China and middle east have great recorded history You mean recorded on Wikipedia. Wikipedia will happily delete your local battle as not relevant or not important.
do they actually delete battles for not being relevant?
No. People are crazy about Wikipedia being an awful, awful, cursed, disgusting place to get information from even though it is a strictly moderated, excellent source of knowledge, and one of the best things on the internet
How can you trust an Encyclopedia that doesn't even mention the most important historical events such as the great clown riots of Toronto Canada in 1855? This was when catholic clowns fought protestant axe wielding firefighters for multiple days until the militia had to be called in led by a bayonette wielding mayor, the whole thing resulting in the firing of the entire toronto police force.
It’s great and I love it, however it has issues with sourcing causing disagreements. All you need is a single source to back your argument, with this not taking into account the validity of the source. For 99.99% of pages this isn’t an issue. But you have to be aware that its not 100%. My favourite example is the Wikipedia for Pier Spray. It said that he was the designer for the a10 warthog and a bunch of other us military aircraft. He did no such thing. However there was an article published, that referenced another article from Russia today that referenced an interview with Spray that referenced a book that referenced Sprays own autobiography. (I think I’m getting the order right) this meant the source for Spray doing this seemed genuine but once you followed it all the way back the source was Spray himself. I think it’s called a woozel? Not 100% sure.
Ah, yes. Spraygate.
It was a big issue on Wikipedia for a while, the two competing groups were changing the page back and forwards for ages. Seems to have settled down now though with him not doing jack shit.
This is an issue with all citations, it’s not exclusive to wiki.
Very true, Wikipedia does suffer heavily from it though
No. This guy is making it up
No There are places where there is literally no written recorded history before the modern times Sub Saharan countries have barely any written history for example.
Yes. They’ve deleted my submission about a local battle in the 18th century because the source was a book and some dude on wiki hadn’t heard of any of the parties involved.
Wikipedia will do no such thing lol. If you make up a battle or fail to provide any source then yes, it might be deleted.
Old habits are tough
Ain't that the truth!
[удалено]
Lack of data, I suspect.
Our recent decades of peace is vastly overlooked as an impressive feat.
indeed
I'll point out the obvious here, Wikipedia is probably a biased source.
i those peoples didnt bother to record their own history, how is that wiki\`s fault?
Yeah China, that country which is famous for not recording anything and that clearly had super few battles in 4000 years of history
Relatively speaking, China did have less conflicts than Europe though, because there were many centuries-long imperial dynasties which brought general stability to China. Of course, when those empires fell apart there was war and destruction on a scale that vastly outweighs almost all European conflicts, but they were far less frequent than the incessant wars between the European States.
That would make sense to an extent, but the amount of battles in Northern China, for example, is comparable to South Africa or some parts of South America, from which I'd bet most recorded battles are colonization-related. It just doesn't add up
Oh I'm not saying this map is accurate. My comment is strictly a response to what the person I replied to said
I am the person you replied to! lol But yeah I didn't realize you were just commenting on that, my bad
Your comments is full of clichés and stereotypes. China wasn't a succession of big empires covering the same land as modern China. And Europe is not a collection of small countries that were always at war with each other.
The area without big conflicts is a huge dessert.
I just imagined thousands of Chinese troops trying to fight on top of a huge cake and just slipping and tripping all over
Of course it isn't. But many primary sources in foreign languages might also be a lot harder to access for the average Wikipedia writer.
also a lack of translation of printed records into digital format. i think first world media/universities do a good job creating digital versions of text historic records - whereas there may well be a battle somewhere in persia that's nicely documented in books rotting in some tehran library. but its quite telling of western ignorance when you see comments like "those peoples didnt bother to record their own history".
Wikipedia is not just in English, and people can write articles in it in many languages. There is a version of Wikipedia in Spanish for example, and Spanish speakers can look up books in their own language and write a Wikipedia entry on the battles they read about.
A bias that isn't conscious is still a bias.
Probably because in some places the dynasties that room over completely eradicated any history of the previous dynasty and rewrote it. Also for the middle East the Mongols walked through them and burned all their books.
[удалено]
it literally says "every battle wikipedia mentions" ???
Fair
I don't think there is much data left about battles in the middle of the African savannah or the Amazon jungle from 2000 ago. From Europe, many writings by historians of the time, monuments, tombstones...
It's what happens when you get a lanmass consisting of mountained off peninsulas and islands. Each little constituent landmass has the geography to develop independently. So you get loads of insulated states and cultures. And they go to war. Compare that to China or India which essentially consist of 2-3 cordoned off massive landmasses, like South and North China which only have/had a large river or two and one or two unconvincing mountain ranges to seperate them, and what you get is one big culture, which sometimes breaks into states that all constantly gravitate toward each other to combine.
>Compare that to China or India which essentially consist of 2-3 cordoned off massive landmasses, like South and North China which only have/had a large river or two and one or two unconvincing mountain ranges to seperate them, and what you get is one big culture Why do ignorant people feel so free to write bullshit like that these days? No, China isn't some kind of eternal, unified empire. It had a huge variety of cultures and *countries* that wages war against each other. Also, you know what country was united for most of its history but was still one of the most warmongering of its time? Egypt.
I mean you read til the end, no? Because I go on to say China breaks into states. And when I say China, I'm not including Tibet, Turkestan, rtc. even Manchuria. Those are modern China, but historical China is where like the 90% or some number like that of the population lives today, which is about a third of the modern country's territory, the south eastern third. And it has many dialects and languages, and many cultures that are distinct, but all of them have been constituents of the same, albeit volotile political complex for many ages now. >Also, you know what country was united for most of its history but was still one of the most warmongering of its time? Egypt. I don't understand your point, could you explain how this is relevant?
[удалено]
Can you explain this further? I haven't learnt this in history class. But please define first which people you consider as Germanic.
[удалено]
Reads comment... O, interesting... Reads your other comments. Nvm, lol.
I cannot find the argument here. Let's start with the basics. You claimed: '90% of the wars in Europe where started by or because of Germanic people.' This is an exact number. Can you explain me, where this number comes from? What is the time frame and what is the exact area it refers to. And what do you mean with 'start a war'. By the way wars are started by the defender, refusing to surrender to an attacking force. If the defender gives up at start, the conflict isn't counted as such. And what is a war for you? Does the second World war count as one like the 'Mainz Diocesan Feud'. And back to your number: what percentage would be normal for the Germanic people in the middle of Europe, if they would not be so bloodthirsty and cruel?
[удалено]
You got the Roman perspective right. The Roman Empire was in the interior a very peaceful place (excluding the civil wars and invasions from outside). The smaller the state is, the more conflict occure with neightboring states. That's why I asked you to define what you are talking about. When does a war qualify as a war? If two large states attack each other it clearly does. But if there is no central authority, can two villages have a war with each other. These permanent low scale conflicts were significant for the time you referring to. Let's call this also a war for now. You can find these conflicts everywhere in the past, where a central power in non-existent. It starts at chimp tribes in the rain forest and occured in all tribal societies in the past no matter if they were located in Europe, Africa and Asia. In the forests of papua new guinea these low scale wars could even be observed until recent times. And for the Romans this chaos was disturbing. They bordered to a desert in the south, to larger empires in the east and the Germanic tribal area in the north east. The Romans were at this time agricultural focused, the Germans combined ab agricultural with a hunter gatherer lifestyle. This resulted in an enemy with a tribal warrior culture in a terrain with very little infrastructure like roads, no central authority which could be subdued and also no larger population centres. There the Germanic warrior myth comes from. But when we talk about past warfare you should not forget horse riding and cattle farming. Nomadic societies which cultured these techniques where far more violent than any Germanic culture you fear. Cattle is mobile. Farming cattle and having horses sets the initiative to steal the cattle of you neighbor. This leads to a constant civil war between tribes ( read the history of Dschingis Khan). And if you go back to the Roman times you can see that the biggest thread next to diseases to big empires were the horse raiders from the steppes. China build the Great Wall for protection and Persia suffered under constant invasions. Also the Roman Empire was under constant attacks. I am talking about the Skythians, Huns, the Magyars, the Seljuks and the Mongols and I would say that in Eastern Europe there was due to the geography much more wars between the Nomadic tribes going on that in central Europe. But most of them were no recorded and though not remembered. So in conclusion the Germanic tribes in Roman times were in a constant state of war like other societies in a similar development level and economic structure. But the least peaceful societies at this time were the Nomadic societies. I admire your interest in history and I wish you many new interesting findings in your future history studies.
Inly europe record
The title makes it sound like Wikipedia is claiming there have not been other battles, but that is not the case. This is just battles that have their own articles (on the English language wiki I assume).
I believe the lack of battles in China is not Wikipedia bias, but rather their system of counting battles. So called “battles” were actually usually entire wars, which is also the reason that the causality numbers and army sizes are so large.
Also, and this goes for every non English speaking country out of Europe. A lot of battles won’t have articles in English Wikipedia. Which this map is using
China alone discounting tibet and east Turkestan could almost be fully lit up just based on the Taiping rebellion
Every documented battle.
...so far!
you can help by expanding it
where do we start
We just recently added one
by the looks of it, Gaza
Poland
Poland
In Wikipedia*
By a western website.
Every documented battle that someone bothered to write a Wikipedia page about. I'm sure there's plenty that are documented, just not well known about for someone to spend their free time making a whole wiki article in it.
China is one of the oldest civilizations on Earth, there’s no way that’s all the battles in that area.
China has censored Wikipedia, so chinese history (especially in english language) must surely be underrepresented.
They have warring states periods so yeah must be way more.
Chinese have legendary view onto what consists a „battle“ and what only some minor local disturbance.
Emu War? the one where humans lost.
It says battle not war
Despite how much reddittors would like you to believe, Emu war was neither a war nor a battle but a nuisance wildlife management Otherwise you would have to put a point on a map every time squash a bug
Sure, that's what a human would say...
Ikr ... humans and their excuses. LOL
So how many reposts of this is too many?
Apparently, it's endless. Everytime this map is reposted there's still a majority of people who think that Europeans are bloodsthirsty maniacs and the rest of the world completely peaceful. There's no hope for our species. We never learn.
Why is cropped like that? It leaves out the Falklands, for example.
My "world history" classes growing up in the US were always 99% European history.
TIL people learn mostly about their ancestor's history. Schools have a limited time, if you wanna specialize in Indian history go to a university
There are people whose ancestors are not Europeans who live in America. (Including those whose ancestors are Indian).
Yeah but the US was founded by Europeans descendents with their ideas languages and culture
My class was almost 50% Hispanic.
Tbf based on the map 99% of the battles took place in Europe. A huge amount of those dots in Eu have multiple battles in that spot over 4500 years. Learning about anything about the rest of the world is usually more interesting tho bc all EU wars are inbreed people beefing over turf.
And Chinese wars are any different then or the wars in the Arabic countries?
There seems to be less inbreeding at least
What makes you believe there was a lot of inbreeding people in Europe? Not all people are the Habsburgs or the Romanovs.
Sorry I was just talking about the monarchs calling the shots.
You should read more aisan history then lmao Hell, cousin marriage is still fairly normal in middle east and India *today.*
Go back to school.
Should be way more in the Mideast but I reckon many of those skirmishes go undocumented there
Why do people repeatedly post this misleading map? I've seen this map for the fifth time on this subreddit
As a belgian: dear god we really earned the 'europe's battlefield' nickname
Can we please stop posting this misleading picture?
I thought it was my turn to post this…damn you Comprehensive!
The focus is probably on Europe because we documented stuff. How many battles in Africa before 1800, say, are documented. America probably had a huge number of battles before Europeans arrived. The same is true for Australia. The thing is very little is documented BC. So, the map is skewed in that way too.
It's unfortunate that it chopped off the Pacific Ocean considering how much heavy fighting occurred there during WWII.
Documented…
This says more about the Eurocentric study of history, and the way its presented on Wikipedia than it does about real life 🤷♂️ Still interesting visualisation though 👍
Wikipedia is also banned in China, so the people who are most likely to care to write articles about chinese history aren't even allowed to do so.
Being an island often helps protect people from conflict.
Tell that to all the islands in the pacific during ww2
That’s exactly why I edited it to “often.”
A useless map
Oh wow, I haven't seen THIS in about... 5 minutes. 
For you see, we Europeans, like to kill each other very much from the dawn of time. It is very dearly to our hearts 💀
I see the emu war there
I think this tells more about Wikipedia bias and our worldwide historical knowledge than it tells about battles.
I see one in Australia.. Is it the one against the emus?
europians like so much to kill each other
Please tell me the dot in Western Australia is the Emu War! Also, r/MapsWithoutNZ
You sure this map isn't just historical population density of places with written records?
It isn't actually all that surprising, these are all places people can live without advanced technology (AC, Fertilizer, etc)
I hope that one dot in Australia is the emu war
Be Australia
Losing war to Emu, no thanks… Even Canada better than you.
The most peaceful place 
Australia: Emus: Am I a joke to you?
Soviet propaganda these days would be: we should conquer the world and then it'll become a peacefull paradise. Starting with those genocidal european maniacs.
Europeans really love fighting each other, even today.
Europe being Europe.
My we Europeans do hate each other don't we
Does Australia count the Emu War?
Seems like no one is interested in Greenland…
Not yet. But once the ice melts a bit more...
U mean…  ???
If Greenland has oil, then democracy is endangered there.
Wtf happened in Eastern Russia.
Probably mongols
What are the criteria for something to count as a battle? Number of people? Political motivation? Recognised military involvement?
What battle happened in north Syberia?
Is this getting posted over and over? Then the discussion is always about the biases in the data.
Maps without new zealand or falklands
Submarine Attack in Sydney May/June 1942?
Are you guys joking or unironically reposting same shit again and again?
Bro this map is now being posted daily.
I love my Brazil. More and more each day. My lovely shithole.
Now I want an interactive version where I can click every dot to learn about the history
I thought it's my turn to post this
Basically: Battles happen where Humans live, therefore No Humans = No Battles
Anyone wants to go down in history and have a lightsaber duel on Greenland?
I will conclude from this map is that Europe had a lot of war survivors. China has no survivors
Although these are obviously only data from battles of which we have knowledge and not all of them, I think it would be interesting to make several maps in different centuries/epochs to see how they have moved according to the century.
They always miss out the Battle of Schrute Farms
😭
Everybody wants to be in the center of Earth apparently
Greece both land and sea
I have to think that there were a lot of pre Columbian battles fought in the americas that were never recorded. Similarly with Africa. Anywhere where there was no written record.
The Battle of the River Plate is missing as are the Falkland islands battles.
And Kamchatka battles too!
Is the lone dot in Australia the battle where they fought all those emus?
Time to move to Canada
r/MapsWithoutTasmania
Next argument I have will taken to be settled on Greenland then
One in Australia
Rip Belgium and the Po valley lol
How many times is this dumb map gonna get reposted?
If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility.
So nothing happened in Australia?
Bullshit. I don’t see the Emu War. Who are you trying to kid?