World Map (The British Ain't Coming)

Throughout the history of the world, empires have centered the world around themselves. Everything was measured from the capitol and time was based on the apparent track of the sun across the sky. In the days of colonization, the most powerful of the sea-going Kingdom of the Netherlands, by declaration of the parliament, established the prime meridian at the observatory in the village of Diemen, a part of greater Amsterdam.

With the help of chronometers set to the time at Amsterdam, sailors were able to determine the relative position west or east of their home port. Unlike latitude (measured in parallel with the equator using the stars), longitude lines went north and south to divide the world into 360 "slices" which were widest at the equator. Therefore, distance between them was difficult to judge. By determining the time by the rising sun or moon (which were known factors on any given day) and comparing it to "Diemen Mean Time" (DMT) a ship's navigator could determine the distance and thus the latitude.

Map makers began to use the coordinates of latitude and longitude to accurately record the lands described in the notes of the explorers. Since Dutch ruled the seas for centuries this line became the "center of the world" well before the twentieth century.

Ancient Explorers.
The world had been populated over the course of centuries peak of the Ice Age. Wanderers from the northernmost parts of the Eurasian continent kept on the move, following the herds of deer, mammoths and other game which kept them alive in the long winters. With the icecaps having captured so much water, land bridges made migration to unknown continents even before widespread use of boats allowed explorers to increase their kingdoms across the seas. Sometime later, in the days when Egypt was the most powerful nation on earth, boats from the mainland in the far east began moving people further and further into the Pacific Ocean.

However, few people knew much about the world outside of their tribal bounds. Along the way, most tribes found a place to call home and began to improvise to make life just a little bit easier on themselves. In ancient times, after boats were largely available, the search for resources outside of the immediate area hugged the shoreline of the "Great Sea" -- called the Mediterranean (Latin: middle of the earth). A group of people known as the Phoenicians proved good at this and made maps of the northern coast of Africa and some of the larger islands above it. As the ancient empires of Asia fought for supremacy on land, a Phoenician named Hanno explored the Atlantic coast of Africa

Other explorers left the Red Sea and slowly paralleled the travels of wanderers on land all the way to the Ganges River of India and beyond. Centuries later, Greek and then Roman ships would venture along the western coast of Europe. Most of Rome's efforts, though, were defensive on the northern edge of the empire.