Sources
Where every line on the map comes from.
How the map is drawn
Official maps show the world as governments agree it should be. Atlynx shows it as it is: who controls the land today, recognised or not. That includes occupations international law deems illegal — drawing them is not endorsing them.
Fronts that move are redrawn by hand, one region at a time. The date each region was last redrawn is on Updates.
2026
Base maps
The dark background is from CARTO (opens in a new tab), built on OpenStreetMap (opens in a new tab) data. Satellite imagery is from Esri (opens in a new tab) (with Maxar and Earthstar Geographics). The Earth at Night and Blue Marble styles come from NASA EOSDIS GIBS (opens in a new tab). The de jure view (officially recognised borders) uses the UN ClearMap (opens in a new tab).
Country borders
The outlines of every country start from public-domain US Department of State data. They have been heavily altered by hand in QGIS to show the de facto world, so they do not represent the US view of the world in any way.
Conflict zones and de facto borders
Most front lines and faction-held areas (Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Somalia, Libya, Myanmar, the Sahel, the Central African Republic and others) are drawn by hand for Atlynx, from close reading of the news, OSINT accounts and cross-checked reports. The Russia–Ukraine front was first derived from DeepStateMap.live (opens in a new tab), a Ukrainian OSINT project, used with attribution under its license (opens in a new tab), and has since been redrawn by hand.
Shipping lanes
The shipping density on the trade view comes from EMODnet — Human Activities (opens in a new tab) (the European Marine Observation and Data Network), built from AIS ship-tracking data provided by CLS (Collecte Localisation Satellites) (opens in a new tab) and ORBCOMM.
Military bases
Bases abroad are compiled from public sources: news reporting, think-tank publications (SIPRI, IISS and others), official government statements and OSINT research. The aggregation is Atlynx’s own; it is synthesis, not original data collection.
Fleet positions
Each fleet panel names its own sources (news reports, USNI News, official announcements). Positions are approximate and updated periodically.
Flags
Country flags come from the MIT-licensed country-flag-icons (opens in a new tab) library. Flags for factions, alliances and organisations are custom SVGs assembled from public sources.
218 B.C.
Every state, border and territory is drawn by hand for Atlynx, mostly from the ancient sources themselves. The places and cities come from Pleiades (opens in a new tab), the gazetteer of ancient places, used under its CC BY (opens in a new tab) license.
431 B.C.
Every state, border, territory and sub-region is drawn by hand from scratch for Atlynx, mostly from the ancient sources themselves. A write-up of the scholarly sources and choices behind these borders will follow here.
Mythos
The Mythos era reconstructs Homer’s world, following Victor Bérard: the kingdoms of the Achaeans, the monster-haunted isles, and the voyages of Odysseus and Telemachus. Nothing here can be up to date: every placement is an interpretive choice, and each one is documented. The lands and borders are drawn by hand for Atlynx, mostly from the ancient sources themselves.
Charting the Odyssey explains why Aeolia is Stromboli, why Circe’s island is Monte Circeo cut loose from the mainland, and why Ogygia is an island at the Pillars of Heracles: every landfall, with its degree of certainty.
Built with
The map runs on MapLibre GL (opens in a new tab) and deck.gl (opens in a new tab), with PMTiles (opens in a new tab) for the vector data and Next.js (opens in a new tab) for the site. The typeface is Geist (opens in a new tab) by Vercel.