The Evidence
This is a record of things that happened. Tell us if it's wrong and we'll fix it.
There is no entry on either path without a citation, and the citation is on the page, under the entry, where you can check it. Where an entry gives a number, that number was checked against the source before the sentence was written, and checked again afterwards by someone who did not write it.
The images are archival. Every one is public domain or under a free licence, and every one carries its maker, its date, its licence and the institution that holds it, on the page beside it. Nothing above the 2026 line was generated. Where no photograph could be found that we had the right to use, the space is left blank and the entry says why.
Some of the numbers in this record are genuinely contested — the population of the Americas in 1492, the death toll of the Congo Free State, how many people were enslaved in classical Athens, how many died under the Khmer Rouge. In those places you will find a range rather than a figure, and a sentence saying who disagrees and why.
A single figure would read better. It would also be a choice about which historian to believe, made without telling you it had been made. Where nobody counted at the time, the entry says nobody counted.
Everything above the 2026 line already happened, and is sourced. Everything below it has not happened. Those entries are extrapolations, each one carrying the specific fact on the record that it grew out of, so you can see what the projection rests on and decide for yourself whether it holds. We are not asking you to believe them.
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If you have evidence that something here is inaccurate, out of date, or superseded by newer scholarship, please send it. What helps most is the entry title, the sentence you are questioning, and the source you are relying on.
If you hold rights in an image and believe it has been used wrongly, write to the same address and it will be taken down while the question is settled.
Corrections that change a fact will be made, and this page will carry a note of what changed and when.
Research and text © Danielle Dodoo. Archival images are public domain or Creative Commons and are credited individually in the archive, with the licence and the holding institution for each.
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