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Old World reference map, 3000 BC

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Thomas Lessman-style reference map of the world in 3000 BC, derived from a bunch of historical atlases and Wikipedia on archaeology (so it's not authoritative, but feel free to use as a resource for timelines, stories, Conan the Barbarian or Earthdawn or Year One-style adventures). Go back far enough, and these groups start breaking up too (though there's always dominant strains that still persist as haplogroups, especially in the mitochondria). Eurafrica is full of peoples slopping back and forth, mingling and changing around in little wavelets ("a Ship of Theseus," Wikipedia called it).

Red = my fictive Atlantean "Empire" (really a Carthage-style field of commercial and cultural power centered on that extra Canarian island): it blows up 2896 BC, takes over the Atlas from the old port of Fla on Lake Tritonis/Chott el Djerid (shown here) in the 25th c. and collapses again 1177 BC after leading the Sea Peoples against Egypt and Hittites: the Ionians under Odysseus and Orestes lead the Dorians and Achaeans against them. This, plus Santorini, is assiduously recorded by the Egyptian priests and related to their eager friend Plato, who added Helike.
Blue = Indo-European invasion and/or takeover of local elites.

Since it's been 5,000 years, I had to adjust the coastlines--Venice, the Persian Gulf, the Nile, Niger, Rhine, Volga, Oxus, Mekong, and Ganges Deltas, the Sarasvati River, the Yellow Sea, the Sea of Mannar off Sri Lanka, and the giant seas, including Lake Anyclus.

Both Vasconic Iberians and Seine-Oise-Marne and Windmill Hill pre-Celts build megaliths (and eventually drink out of bell beakers).


Germany has the Funnelbeaker Culture being taken over by Indo-European Celto-Germans from the east, with the Michelsberg-Wartberg and Horgen Cultures still remaining further to the south.

Italy has the Vasconic Ozieri and Saflieni and the Tyrsenian Gaudo and pre-Apennine Cultures, and the IE Remedello Culture.

Eastern Europe has the pre-Germanic Baden Culture mixing with the IE Vučedol in the Pannonian Basin, Coțofeni Culture around the Danube, the IE Usatovo Culture moving into that, and the IE Globular Amphora Culture taking over the pre-Germans.

The Indo-European core is the Yamna Culture, facing the Adyghe Maykop Culture to the south, the Finno-Ugrian Kama Culture to the north, and throwing off the probably-Tocharian Afanasevo Culture way east into the lower Altays. The pre-Sami Pitted-Ware Culture and the pre-Baltic Narva and Neman Cultures are at the margins of the Finno-Ugrian Pit/Comb folks.

The Middle Eastern area is packed with linguistically isolated civilized or semi-urban groups whose filtrations are quite well-recorded: Minoans, Telchine Cycladeans, Pelasgians, proto-Thessalians, Hattians, Cypriots,  Kura-Araxes, Hurrians, Subartu, Sumerians, Gutians, proto-Elamites, and the Semitic Amorites and Akkadians.

The Berbers are related to the red-haired Libyans, who are being driven out of sorta-Nilo-Saharan, sorta-Afro-Asiatic Egypt by Narmer. The rest of Africa is divided between Niger-Congolese West Africa, the Pygmies, and Khoisan around Lake Victoria and southern Africa.

South Asia's got the Uralic Kelteminar, Bactro-Margianan Jeitun, maybe-Dravidian Mergarhi Cultures, the maybe-Dravidian Indus Valley and Ahar-Banas Cultures and the Tamils, and the isolated Veddas.

East Asia is on more familiar ground: Bodish Tibet, early Altayans and Tungus, the Korean Hongshan, and Sinitic Longshan, Dawenkou, Liangzhu, Qujialing, and Majiayao Cultures, and the Austronesian Dabenkeng and the Austro-Asiatic Đa Bút Cultures. I gave 'em the Bengal Delta in the west since they're still spread as far as Orissa 5,000 years later.

My new reconstruction of languages here!
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Are the expanded Caspian and Aral OTL or part of you're TL