Tag: Asia
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Every nuclear test, mapped
Since 1945 eight countries have set off 2,055 nuclear tests. I mapped every one: 178 in 1962 alone, most of them underground after 1963, and 84% of all the explosive yield on islands.
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Pirate hotspots, then and now
I mapped 7,511 pirate attacks from 1993 to 2020 and followed the hotspots as they moved, from the Strait of Malacca to Somalia and the Gulf of Guinea. In 2025 the busiest pirate waters were the Singapore Strait, and in 2026 Somali hijackers are back.
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How close did Ino get? Japan’s first measured map against a modern one
A retired sake brewer measured Japan on foot. I laid 28 sheets of his 1821 map on today’s coast: a typical sheet’s coast sits a median 280 m from the modern line.
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The largest city on Earth: six thousand years of the world’s biggest cities
From Uruk to Dhaka: I followed the title of the world’s largest city through 85 snapshots from 3700 BC to 2050. 30 cities have held it, Chinese capitals for most of seven centuries, London for about 99 years, and the centre of the urban world has wandered from Mesopotamia to the Atlantic and back to…
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Ancient DNA on the map: 16,496 ancient genomes, placed where and when they lived
I mapped every ancient human genome in the Allen Ancient DNA Resource, 16,496 people, by where and when they lived. 68% come from Europe; the first farmers spread out of Anatolia at about a kilometre a year; and in Britain, none of 76 men before 2500 BCE carried the Y line R1b.
