# Ultimate History Map

> Explore history through maps, timelines, and connected knowledge.

## Overview

**Ultimate History Map** is an interactive history platform designed to make historical knowledge easier to explore, understand, and connect through maps, timelines, and structured wiki content.

The project helps users learn history in a more visual and intuitive way. Instead of reading isolated articles or looking at static maps, users can explore historical information directly on a map, move through time, and connect people, places, countries, wars, and events within the same experience.

Ultimate History Map is built around one core idea: history should not only be read — it should be seen, explored, and understood in context.

## Why Ultimate History Map?

History is one of the most important subjects for understanding the world, but it is often difficult to approach.

Many historical resources already exist, but they are usually separated across books, articles, maps, timelines, videos, and databases. This makes it hard for learners to understand how historical events relate to real places, time periods, people, countries, and surrounding events.

Some historical map platforms allow users to view countries across time, but they often focus mainly on borders. That is useful, but not enough for learning history deeply. History is not only about borders. It is also about people, wars, cities, cultures, migrations, political changes, ideas, and the connections between them.

Ultimate History Map aims to solve these problems by bringing historical maps, wiki-style information, timelines, and structured historical data into one connected platform.

## The Solution

Ultimate History Map provides a central place where users can explore historical information visually.

The platform allows users to:

* view historical maps by time period,
* explore countries, people, wars, places, and events on the map,
* search for historical information quickly,
* read wiki-style content connected directly to map objects,
* move from a wiki article back to the related location or event on the map,
* understand historical context through surrounding events and related entities,
* and access data that can be contributed, reviewed, and improved over time.

The goal is not only to display historical data, but to make that data easier to understand.

## Core Experience

The main user experience is centered around the map.

A user can choose a point in time and see what the world looked like at that moment. Countries, territories, places, events, people, and conflicts can appear based on the selected time period.

When the user selects something on the map, the platform shows related wiki content. When the user reads a wiki page and follows related links, the map can automatically focus on the relevant place, entity, or event.

This creates a two-way connection between map and knowledge:

* the map helps users discover historical information,
* and the wiki helps users understand what they are seeing on the map.

For example, a user may search for a historical figure such as Quang Trung, view related places and events on the map, read connected wiki content, and continue exploring surrounding events from the same historical context.

## User Roles

Ultimate History Map is designed for multiple types of users.

### Learners and Explorers

General users who want to learn history in a more visual and accessible way. They can search, explore, read, and understand historical events through the map and wiki system.

### Teachers, Researchers, and Historians

Users with historical knowledge who can create or manage historical content, contribute map data, and help improve the quality of the platform.

### Contributors

Community members who can help add new information, improve existing content, and participate in building a larger historical knowledge base.

### Historians and Reviewers

Trusted reviewers who help verify submitted content before it becomes official data on the platform.

### Admins

Platform managers who handle users, roles, projects, submissions, and overall system moderation.

## Key Features

Ultimate History Map already includes the core features required for a functional historical map platform.

### Interactive Historical Map

The map can display default map layers, custom drawings, icons, and historical layers based on time and location.

### Time and Area Filtering

Map data and related information can be filtered by selected time and map bounds, allowing users to explore only the content relevant to a specific period and area.

### Wiki System

Historical content can be written, viewed, and connected to map objects. This allows the platform to work not only as a map, but also as a structured historical knowledge base.

### Visual Editor

The editor allows contributors to add and manage historical information directly on the map. This makes data creation more intuitive than editing raw coordinates or disconnected documents.

### Version Control

Historical data can be versioned, allowing changes to be tracked and managed over time.

### Team and Project Management

The platform supports project-based management, including contributors, team workflows, and progress tracking.

### Review and Approval Workflow

Submitted data can be reviewed before becoming official, helping maintain quality and reliability.

### Role-based Management

The system supports different roles such as admin and historian, allowing responsibilities to be separated clearly.

## What Makes It Different?

Ultimate History Map is not just a historical map and not just a wiki.

Most historical maps focus mainly on showing borders at different points in time. Ultimate History Map aims to go further by connecting multiple types of historical data in one place.

It can represent:

* countries and territories,
* people,
* places,
* wars,
* battles,
* historical events,
* routes,
* and related wiki knowledge.

Another important difference is the interaction between the map and wiki content. Instead of using external wiki links that are disconnected from the map, Ultimate History Map is designed so that map objects and wiki content can reference each other directly.

This makes the learning experience more connected. Users can move from a map object to an explanation, then from that explanation to another related object on the map.

The platform is also designed with future event replay features in mind, especially battle replay and event replay. These features aim to help users understand historical processes as sequences, not just static descriptions.

## Example Use Cases

Ultimate History Map can be used in many learning and research scenarios.

For example, users can:

* learn about a historical figure such as Quang Trung,
* see what was happening around the world in the year 1900,
* observe country borders during a specific period,
* select a war and understand how it progressed,
* explore related places, people, and events from a wiki page,
* follow a historical route such as migration, attack, or expansion,
* or compare different historical periods through the map.

These use cases are designed to make history easier to understand for both casual learners and serious researchers.

## Current Status

Ultimate History Map has completed its basic core platform and is already usable.

The current system includes:

* interactive map visualization,
* default map layers,
* custom drawings and icons,
* time-based and area-based filtering,
* wiki functionality,
* editor tools,
* version control,
* team control,
* content submission and approval,
* admin management features,
* and role-based workflows for admins and historians.

Advanced learning and replay features are still under development, but the foundation of the platform is already in place.

## Future Extensions

Ultimate History Map is designed to grow beyond a map viewer.

Planned and possible future extensions include:

* multilingual support,
* structured history courses,
* exams and quizzes,
* video-based learning content,
* battle replay,
* event replay,
* improved community contribution workflows,
* and AI agents that can help users ask questions, understand context, and interact with the map more easily.

These extensions aim to turn the platform into a broader historical learning ecosystem.

## Technology

The README focuses mainly on the product idea and user value, but the platform is supported by a modern web and geospatial stack.

* **Go** is used for the backend because of its performance, simplicity, and reliability for building scalable services.
* **Next.js** is used for the frontend because it provides a modern web experience and supports SEO-friendly pages.
* **PostgreSQL** and **PostGIS** are used for structured data, geospatial storage, and efficient map-based queries.

The technology is chosen to support long-term scalability, reliable data management, and interactive map-based experiences.

## Mission

Ultimate History Map is built with the goal of creating community value.

History should not only exist as disconnected text, static maps, or scattered documents. It should be connected through time, place, people, events, and context.

Ultimate History Map aims to make history more visual, accessible, trustworthy, and meaningful for everyone.
