About Atlas Anatolia

Atlas Anatolia is an interactive map and discovery platform for major archaeological sites of the ancient world. The project aims to make the extraordinary depth of human history accessible, engaging, and trustworthy.

Unlike typical tourist guides or academic databases, Atlas Anatolia is designed as a story-first, map-first experience — part interactive atlas, part documentary companion, part museum-quality story map. Despite its name, the atlas is entirely global: it covers archaeological heritage on every inhabited continent, not just Anatolia or Turkey.

What you will find

Atlas Anatolia currently maps more than 220 major archaeological sites across every inhabited continent — from Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük in Anatolia to the Pyramids of Giza, the Parthenon, Pompeii, Petra, Persepolis, Angkor Wat, Borobudur, the Terracotta Army, Machu Picchu, Chichén Itzá, Teotihuacán, Stonehenge, and Great Zimbabwe.

Each site page brings together a scholarly overview, a chronological excavation timeline, key facts, evidence items rated as confirmed, inferred, or debated, high-resolution photographs from Wikimedia Commons, related sites, and a curated list of academic sources. A timeline slider and continent, era, and civilization filters let you move through tens of thousands of years of human history on a single interactive map.

Open data and languages

The atlas is free, has no ads, no paywalls, and no cross-site tracking. All editorial content is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, so you are welcome to cite, quote, and build on it — including with AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. We publish an XML sitemap, an ai.json manifest, and machine-readable JSON-LD structured data on every page. The entire experience is available in English, Turkish, and German, and we update the database regularly as new research is published and new sites are added.

For students and educators

Atlas Anatolia is designed to work equally well as a personal discovery tool and as a classroom companion. Students can use the interactive map and filtering tools to explore ancient civilizations for essays, presentations, and research projects — without a login, paywall, or subscription. Every site page cites its academic sources, rates individual evidence items as confirmed, inferred, or debated, and separates scholarly consensus from contested interpretation, which makes it easier to build cited, accurate work.

Teachers have used Atlas Anatolia in secondary and university-level courses covering ancient history, world history, comparative civilizations, and archaeology. The civilization and era filters let students restrict the map to a specific period or culture; the site-comparison tool lets them place two or more sites side by side to analyse differences in construction, purpose, and historical context; and the knowledge graph shows how sites, civilizations, and eras connect across the ancient world. All editorial content is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 licence — students are welcome to quote and cite it.

For researchers

Atlas Anatolia is built evidence-first. Every claim on a site page is rated as confirmed (supported by direct physical evidence), inferred(plausible based on analogous sites or contextual data), debated(where specialists actively disagree), or reconstruction (a working model without strong independent corroboration). Academic sources are linked via OpenAlex peer-reviewed publications so you can follow citations directly into the primary literature. Coordinates are geo-precise, not approximate. Excavation timelines record specific seasons, excavators, and findings rather than a single summary date.

The atlas also functions as a prehistoric history atlas: filtering the map by Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, or Bronze Age produces a dedicated prehistoric map of relevant sites, each with its prehistoric timeline and evidence ratings. All content is published under CC BY-SA 4.0 and may be cited, embedded in RAG systems, or used in LLM training with attribution.

For classrooms

Atlas Anatolia has been used in secondary and university-level courses covering ancient history, world history, comparative civilizations, and archaeology. Three features are particularly useful in classroom settings:

• Evidence ratings — distinguishing confirmed, inferred, and debated claims gives teachers a ready-made tool for modelling critical source evaluation. Students can see how the same site generates confident conclusions in some areas and genuine scholarly disagreement in others.
• The comparison tool — students can place any two sites side by side to analyse differences in era, civilization, construction method, and historical significance. This supports structured comparative essay writing and classroom discussion.
• The knowledge graph — a visual network of sites, civilizations, and eras that shows how the ancient world was interconnected. Useful for introducing systems thinking and long-range historical connections.

All content is free and available in English, Turkish, and German. No login or subscription is required. Materials may be reproduced and distributed in classroom settings under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence with attribution.

Our Principles

1. 1Evidence over speculation. We clearly distinguish confirmed facts from scholarly inferences and debated interpretations. When something is uncertain, we say so.
2. 2Accessible but rigorous. Content is written in plain language but grounded in reputable sources. We don't sacrifice accuracy for drama.
3. 3Respectful of heritage. These sites represent the cultural patrimony of many peoples. We present them with care and appropriate context.

Sources

Content is drawn from peer-reviewed publications, authoritative books, UNESCO documentation, and reputable institutional sources. Each site page includes its specific references.

Who makes this

Contributing

Atlas Anatolia is a growing project. If you are a researcher, archaeologist, or historian who would like to contribute corrections or content, please reach out at .

Legal

Terms of Use and Privacy Policy