Making Sense Of The World, One Map At A Time
The map above shows which surnames (last names) are most popular in each Italian region. Although, even these surnames only account for around 1% of all Italian surnames due to the huge diversity that exists.
Reddit user medhelan also points out a few other interesting things:
The map above gives a very general overview of the legal status of Jews in various major European countries around the year 1500.
Interestingly, the two European countries with the largest Jewish populations today (France: 465,000; UK: 270,000) both had Jewish bans in 1500.
The map above shows what the borders of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa might look like if they were based on the dominant Y-DNA haplogroup rather than ethnicity and/or any other political considerations.
The map above shows how big Luxembourg is compared to Singapore, Andorra, Malta, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Monaco, and the Vatican.
The map above shows the patchwork of kingdoms, principalities, bishoprics, duchies, republics, cities, sultanates, etc. in and around Europe in 1500 CE/AD.
The map above shows the incredibly strange and complex border between Belgium and the Netherlands at Baarle-Hertog (Belgium) / Baarle-Nassau (Netherlands).
The map above is an Isochrone map which shows how long it would have taken someone to travel from Rome to the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire at its peak (roughly 200 CE/AD).
Travelling within the core of the Empire could have be done in under a week, but travelling all the way to the fringes would have taken someone more than a month.
The map above shows European cities, towns and villages that have the term “saint” or “holy” in their names. The data comes from the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).
The map above shows the Jewish population of Europe in both 1933 and 2015 by country. Most countries still had much lower Jewish populations in 2015 compared to 1933.
This is largely due to the long lasting effects of The Holocaust, when over six million European Jews were systematically murdered by Hitler and the Nazis.
Emigration to both Israel and the United States after World War 2 and again after the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, also contributed somewhat to the decline.
However, not all countries saw their Jewish population decrease.
