Take a look at this GIF charting the rise and fall of (mostly) European empires from 1492 ... most remarkable thing in the map is the ebb and flow in the territory controlled by the big European ...

Look at any map of Europe from the Middle Ages or the early modern era, before the Industrial Revolution, and you will be overwhelmed by its dizzying incoherence—all of those empires ...

and arguably culminates in the European Union of today. The map also inspired a cartographic genre, spawning versions that depict countries as animals and plants. Popular in the late 16th and 17th ...