Laconic History of the World

…all the places along the way…concisely if somewhat short on particulars…

"Martin Elmer's "Laconic History of the World" is a typographic map of the world that reduces each country to a single word. It was produced, Martin says, "by running all the various countries' 'History of _____' Wikipedia article through a word cloud, then writing out the most common word to fit into the country's boundary. The result is thousands of years of human history oversimplified into 100-some words." Martin has also created a graphic reader's companion that explains the results."

A Laconic History of the World and comments above via Jonathon Crowe, who blogs/ has blogged non-fiction articles, maps, garter snakes, neat photos and other projects.