How OLD is this ATLAS? 

Well, it's at least 8 minutes old

The fact that this book's publishing year has so many major events happening in it makes this a fantastic historic relic, as it is basically a snapshot of history from the 1970s

I am an Afican 1978. I nailed it when you said..it was printed 3 years after Mozambique's independence. I knew it was post 1970 when I saw nearly all African countries were independent.Rhodesia is now Zimbabwe gained independence and changed the name in 1980 so this Atlas could not have ben printed after that. This was fun.

The map of only England is actually useful because it includes the metropolitan counties such as Merseyside which means it must be after 1972 but still includes counties like humberside which was abolished in 1996

Freeze-framing on the England page "where not much has changed" gave me the biggest clue of the whole video. English and Welsh county borders either side of 1974 are very different propositions, and remain somewhat malleable for the rest of the century in places.

My guess is 1978. Portugal abandoned it's colonies in 75, and you said that the flag of Mozambique was 3 years old. You also mentioned that the Iranian revolution had started, but not yet come to a close. I know it ended in 79, so it would match the previous example as well. Rhodesia granting majority rule is also something I think was in 79, but since it hasn't gone in effect yet, that yet again points to this being the year before that. Edit: _Let's fucking gooooo_

I would love if this concept became a regular series! I loved the globe video and I love this video too. It's not just a geographical curiosity; it really inspired curiosity about several major world events that I never learned about in school, or that were only briefly touched on. I have a lot to read about now.

This reminds me of a natgeo atlas from 90 or 91 my family had when I was young. It had a united Germany but an intact USSR. Wish I could have kept it just for what a neat moment of time it was. I even remember the map saying Germany wasn't reunited yet at time of print, but all the plans were in place.

You'd actually be surprised in regards to the Netherlands. The Flevoland Province wasn't even established until 1986 because they created it from nothing. Until the 50's, this was essentially ocean or sea. Additionally, there were some major dam/infrastructure projects that took place, which are typically noted on more modern maps.

the inclusion of additional "artifacts" aside from the atlas itself, in the form of the old-school newsreel/documentary clips, is a really nice touch! really adds to the sense of diving into the past. my provisional guess was 1974 before i strayed into the comments and saw the answer

There is actually one small detail I picked up on in Ireland that helped me narrow it down. The town of Craigavon in Northern Ireland wasn’t founded until 1965, the fact it was featured meant it was at *least* some time after that.

The Spanish flag that was skipped at 5:54 could actually be a helpful clue. It featured a bird on it, which was something that would have been present during the Francoist period, which I knew would have been around this time. The bird was ditched in 1981, so it told me that the atlas couldn't have been any newer than that. I'm not Spanish, but I do know my flags.

As a Greek, I knew it was 1978 the moment you mentioned the Greek flag change.Hope to see more such videos though, both this and the globe one were very interesting and entertaining

At first I thought I was being clever by looking up the population numbers of some European countries and comparing them to the stated numbers, which put me somewhere in the late 60s or early 70s. Then when you got to Iran I knew it was 1978. It's interesting that the demographic data seems to be about 5-10 years out of date, but I guess censuses don't happen every year. I also really appreciate the historical footage you used, both for context and for flavor.

I loved the news reels you included here. This video was great fun!

Much as you felt the map of England was no different to today, the county boundaries shown did a fine job of narrowing the window of time for somebody who lives here (they are the boundaries established in 1974, providing the earliest date). The rest of your clues suggest that the book dates from the late '70s - probably '78 or '79 - making it just a little younger than me. A fair amount of that information was still accurate when I was at school. ^.~ edit: oh, okay - it sounded like you were going to provide the answer in your next video. Huzzah for instant satisfaction! ^.^

Something else to look at when dating older maps are what is not there. When looking at the African maps, Eritrea was not there and Namibia was probably labeled as Southwest Africa and possibly indicated as under South African rule. Both of these countries got independence later, but they are also clues to map dating.

"Names like these almost feel like ancient history to me then real places that existed not to long ago." Having lived in a time when East Germany, Czechoslvakia and Yugoslavia were a reality during a big part of my life (and also being European), I felt similar when I discovered Ceylon and Siam in an old Atlas my parents owned. Edit: Ah, I see Ceylon is still mentioned in parenthesis at least, same for Siam.

I was born 2 years after this atlas was published. My family had a copy when I was a child and I remember flipping through the pages. This brings back memories! (I'm not certain what year our copy was printed - I suspect it was slightly later. I have a distinct memory of thinking Lybia's flag, as just a solid green sheet, was particularly odd.)

thank you again for this incredible video. Mostly THANKS for the addition of the old news report videos so helpful and a good remember of what happened

The map of England you skipped at 4:47 was actually really helpful for me guesing the date. As the English county of Rutland was missing which was absorbed into Leicester in 1974 only to reappear in 1997 due to the county borders being redrawn. My guess was '77.

In Brazil, Mato Grosso do Sul state was still a part of Mato Grosso state; Tocantins was still a part of Goiás state; and Roraima, Acre, Amapá, Rondônia, and Fernando de Noronha were still federal territories. Rio de Janeiro city was its own state called "Guanabara", separate from the rest of present day Rio de Janeiro state.

The british isles part is actually pretty useful in telling you that the map is no older than 1965 because the greater London area already existed.

At the time this was being put together I was being born and some of the content you shared is telling to me why my parents immigrated. Also NASA's Voyager had just begun. Very cool find, I remember thumbing through a similar book as a kid and loving all the flags. Time also did a similar but bigger Space hardcover that was really good and of that era.

4:45 - Regarding no differences about Denmark. The subdivisions of Denmark seems to be the former 15 "Amt"s (excluding Bornholm and Greenland.) The were established in 1970 with "Kommunalreformen" and replaced around 2004 with 5 regions instead by "Strukturreformen". So that would put it between 1970 - 2004. Anyway, I really like the video and the way you haven't revealed the answer - but show the maps in a high enough resolution making in possible to guess along! A lot of fun!

Would’ve liked to see a closer image of the map of the Netherlands, as I can see that the Flevopolder had already been fully created (which was in 1968). In 5:44 you can see all the provinces of the Netherlands being clearly outlined, all except for Flevoland, implying it might have not been integrated as a province at that point. Since it was only established as a province in 1986, it is safe to assume that the map was made in the ballpark of 1968-1986 (:

I’m not geography buff but I’ll guess sometime between the late 60s and early 70s. Can’t guess an exact year without any accuracy. The footage you used really clued me into this timeframe and the Cyprus conflict because I generally know when that happened. Love these types of videos because of the knowledge you have!

I grew up in Rhodesia, so as soon as you got on to Mozambique and Rhodesia, I knew. And that American news report, talking on the 'internal settlement' confirmed it.

As a a member of Gen X born in the 70's, this atlas has been a combination of nostalgia and interesting facts I didn't know. My best guess before the reveal is 1973.

For any Typography Students/Enthusiasts out here, the type for the "World Atlas" part is Serif Gothic. Went down a small rabbit hole to find it but seeing that R woke something up inside of me and I just had to have it.

Really great and informational video with outstanding videos for periods! Good job

Based upon Jimmy Carter speaking other details including about Panama I could only narrow the date down to '76, '77, or '78. This was fun. I always look forward to and enjoy your videos. Thank you!!

You certainly missed East Timor in Southeast Asia. Still curious to know if it was still marked as a Portuguese possession or as an Indonesian colony.

There is actually a great detail from the Indonesia territorial changes vs today at around 34:14 if you look closely to the southeast part. It shows the atlas was printed after one specific event has occurred, which is pretty significant if you ask me. Also notice the blue from the Philippines flag, and the Brunei flag is missing lol

I really like these old video clips ^^

My first guess was 1978. But all the old footage had me second guessing myself. 1972? Surely not the 1960s? Ahah. Glad I had some idea regardless of my lack of knowledge on the time period.

Glad to see cealen devolpe his content so much in the past years😊

I do graphic design. From the front page I already had a hunch--1977. What a fun journey this was!

Great episode. I had no clue without doing Google searches on the flags as you described each.

I just gotta say you singlehandedly sparked my love of Atlas's a while ago. When I watched one of your atlas videos a couple weeks ago it reminded me of an atlas I inherited from my great grandmother years ago and completely forgot about. I dug it out recently and saw it was from 1922. It's now my favorite thing to read. Its so interesting to get a small glimpse of the past to better understand the world.

Brazilian here, the map of South America gave it away for me, since it shows 2 Brazilian states that are currently 4 (Mato-Grosso and Goias were split to create Tocantins and Mato-Grosso-do-Sul), and that change happened in 1977, and by context clues from the rest of the video my thoughts were that it was prob from 1975-1979 (cause judging from on how Asia and Africa were handled it by the makers, they prob wouldnt care for these changes for at least some 2 years), couldnt pinpoint the exact year, but narrowed it down as much as i could :V also, in the South American flags you were right, 1 flag changed cause it removed a coat of arms from it, only it was Venezuela not Peru, that as far as im aware always had the coat of arms :V

I wrote a research paper for PoliSci inspired from your Biorock video. I did do further research and changed the focus to fit the rubric, but I was able to teach my professor something new. Thank you for the topic and thank you my grade.

Having been a student in elementary school in the 1970s, the style of the book looked very familiar. The geography lessons heavily featured the statistical data such as area, population, type of government, major exports, etc. Extra time was given to a few major countries, but continents like South America and Africa were dealt with more as whole (although Egypt was given a bit more time because of the pharaohs and pyramids). My guess ended up being a range, which I placed at 1975 to1979.

What a fantastic video idea! As someone who is quite knowledgeable about contemporary geography, I realized I definitely need to brush up on my history 😅

5:43 well the page of the Netherlands does give an indication. Since the south of the province Flevoland is already build, the map must be from 1968 or later

Amazing video, i love the work you do on this channel, super engaging video that lead me to getting the right answear (even if it was mostly a guess without any direct clues lol)

I was watching it and placed a guess early on. Thought I'd be wrong because I'm bad with dates but good at remembering events. So it was a pleasant surprise being spot on at the end.

For me (as a German) the amount of sovjet symbols in the flags were both fascinating to see as well as a good hint. Also the two Germanys and the united Vietnam let me think the book could have been published in 1976, so in my mind thats close :) I hope we can see more of these sort of videos, very entertaining

I like the concept of this video and would certainly like to see more like this. For me it would have been more fun, if you hadn't referenced the Year this book was printed. (I saw the different flag for greece, paused the video, googled when it was changed and then you said it was the same year the book was printed.)

The encyclopedia set my parents got when I was a kid had this exact atlas in it. The cover was different, matching the rest of the books, but I loved looking at maps and used the atlas many times trying to make maps for various civilization games. Those pages are exactly as I remember. I was leaning towards somewhere around 1985-1987

My first guess was early 70's, but I had come to settle on 1979 until your clue about the Carter administration at the end. This was a great video concept, very engaging and informative.

Since you dismissed the page on Poland as it lacked clues, I can mention it looks very divided administratively. That's because it used to have many more voivodeships. This has been changed into modern version in 1999, which isn't very useful considering the neighbouring Czechoslovakia dissolved its union in 1992, but the year of introduction was 1975, which gives a rather solid lower boundary, which could prove useful.

Very fun. Closest I got was late 70s. Shameful really, for having a bachelor’s degree in history. It has been several years since I studied, however.

I love how informative this video was about history. I was just interested in the facts to learn and not actually guess at first.

This is the content I came looking for.

I was really stubborn with myself between choosing 1979-1981. Since some of the latter clues really made me think one or the other. I did a heavily researched presentation on Jimmy Carter a few years ago and the Iran Revolution was one of the main things I talked about. A little shocked to hear it was actually 1978. I thought to revolution occurred in 1980

My first guess was thinking late '70s '80s based on the font, I guessed 1978 almost every time based on global changes, so much happened to that time frame. The big one that I remembered from research was the fall of the Saudi Arabian shaw. Born in 1990. Great video!!!

As soon as I saw the globe on the cover I had flashbacks to the 1st grade in elementary school. Wow, walking through that book, all the countries where I first learned them to be, the shape, and even the loud primary colors and the pointilistic dot matrix printing. It's gotta be 1977-78. Salesmen would come to your door to sell encyclopedias. That hardcover Time book looks like something that would have been sold door to door.

Wow! Cool. At the start of the video I guessed between 1982-1985. And to be honest, I'm pretty bad with the history of global events prior to that time. But when you showed the maps of a unified Vietnam, that gave it away for me. Because I know that Vietnam was reunified in 1975. Beyond that, I couldn't guess the approximate year of the printing of your Time Atlas. But this video was so fun to watch. I love looking at maps! ❤

4:50 - zoom in slightly south of Lough Neagh and you'll see Craigavon - a planned town starting in construction in 1965. Maybe too far back to start with but it's inclusion instead of the neighbouring Portadown or Lurgan is kinda notable. Source: I live in Craigavon (please don't make fun of me for my poor life choices 😂)

4:58 Denmark has changed since this though. The 14 administrative regions (amter) shown in this map have been combined into the current 5 regions. But since that happened in 2007, it obviously doesn't add any new clues at this stage in the investigation.

The song at the end is great

every time you said "but this change occured the same year this book was published" i was in shock cuz what kind of messy ass time would it have been to be alive during that year 😭😭

A lot of useful info in this book to help pinpoint it's print year. Vietnam has unified meaning it's at least the mid 70s, Rhodesia hasn't changed it's name yet which I believe happened around 1980, and Greece is still a Dictatorship. A lot of the news clips you showed also mentioned the Carter administration, so with all the info presented I think the book is from somewhere between 1977-1979.

Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) opened their first polar route in 1954 , from Los Angeles to Copenhagen, with stops in Edmonton (Canada) and Thule (Greenland). For a while, all the Hollywood stars who went to Europe to make biblical epics in, say, Italy, went through Copenhagen

I was 3 when that was published. I didn't know the answer from any of the flag clues. The Zimbabwe bit furthered by start of video guess which was 1982. How I came to the guess of 1982 was memories of the look of printed books from mye arly years. The typeface, the printing etc. The printing technique, including small amounts of yellow, remidned me of kids annuals (Dandy and Beano) from the early 80s. All made me realise my loack of knowledge of so much.

Fun! I started out way off (I had a copy of that atlas at one point) but narrowed down to the correct year by the time you talked about the Shah of Iran. He was on my plane (I was a Pan Am stew back then) at one point, right after he was deposed.

My guess is 1979. I think it is defnitely past 1975 (Angola gained independence and had the same flag in the atlas it uses today) but before 1980 when Zimbabwe (former Rhodesia) claimed independence. And as I thought to remember that Ayatollah Chomeini gained power in Iran in 1979, that's my final guess.

I commented on Twitter handle. It's 1972. Eritrea and Russia is not existing before 1991. The Uae existed before 1971. Laccadive renamed lakshadweep so after 1973. Means 1972.

Wow! I've never in all the years I've been alive seen a map of the world from the North Pole before.

I love your vidoes so much! Any possibilities of a biogeography series on rivers and waterfalls? It would be an amazing series!

I am now in university and these videos I watch for fun are actually helping me. Who would have know?

I would have liked to have a look at the UK map, to tell if it was before or after 1972 (based on the counties). But alas... 1978.

It was the Rhodesia and Shah of Iran stuff that nailed it down to 1978 for me, but until then I thought it was from the early 70's. Good fun.

As someone with very little knowledge on our more recent modern world history, my guess was still a nebulous early 1980s. I'm actually quite surprised I managed to get so close to the correct answer. From the initial pages of the book, I could guess it was either the 1960s or 1980s and a few of the specific events really helped to contextualize what was happening at the time and narrow it down.

1978, the best clue for me was the events in Iran. Very entertaining and interesting video!

My guess was 1975-1977, because East Timor is included in Indonesian border and the Libyan flag hasn't changed into a plain green rectangle Also, I've watched your last three videos and I'm so thankful that your audio level has been more balanced. Your speech is louder and your intro music volume isn't too high. Props to you!

Well, I am looking for Atlas Pro... Merry Christmas, kewl yule and happy frickin New Year! I expect more extraterrestrial geography in '24! 8-P

Are you gonna post on astro pro? I really love your video on stars, (its like a bed time story, the music, the stories about different cultures and the stars, its just perfect, i wish you made more)

My partner picked on up in1979. We keep our own vintage books from our vintage lives and I see it's dated January 1978.

Between the Canal Zone and Portuguese Decolonisation I could've given a good guess, though you totally gave it away by saying specific numbers of years! Also a lot of the pages showing national subdivisions like in the UK or South America can give some good hints, such as the establishment of Greater London or Margaret Thatcher's redrawing of county borders (most obviously in Humberside) which had only happened in 1974.

I remember you said at the beginning of the video that people might be able to make a good guess from the title page graphic design alone. I guessed 1980 at that point, and wasn't far off!

I managed to narrow it down to 1975-1977 mostly from knowing the approx. years of Carter's Presidency, the end of the Vietnam War, and the rise of the Ayatollah, and the video quality and fashions in some of the news clips, than from having any knowledge of the flag or country changes. lol If I'd been thinking I would've moved it up a year for publishing turnaround time and been pretty much spot-on. Fun video!

Great video

As a Indonesian, you actually skipped a important info. East Timor. East Timor was annexed during Operation Lotus aka invasion of East Timor in 1975 and formally incorporated into Indonesia in 1976. Making it the 27th province of Indonesia

Without any googling I landed on late 1970s. As soon as I googled the Canal Zone I landed on 1978. I am not very good at remembering specific years, but I can often remember the rough time periods in which things happened. So my initial limiting factor was of course Europe. Germany and the USSR's borders are an immediate hint that we're talking about the Cold War. Trying my best to look at the county borders in Norway, I guessed that the map was from the early 70s at the earliest due to it seeming like Bergen was part of Hordaland and not its own county. I couldn't really tell though. The next big hints came from the Middle East, as I know many of the conflicts mentioned happened in the 70s and 80s. While I didn't know the specific year that the Shah was deposed, I did use the old Iranian flag as my reason to go for the 70s over the 80s. Next hint was Vietnam, which locked in the late 70s for me. Then I decided to finally give in and use google, as I would do that if I was actually dating the atlas myself, and as I was watching the Canal Zone bit at the time, combining the google result with the narration told me that this atlas is from 1978. :)

1972 would be my guess. Fantastic video.

Without starting the video first, I'd guess that was from the late seventies...or just possibly the early eighties (depending on which edition/print run). To be honest, I'm pretty sure I've handled a copy when they were new...as a kid, atlases utterly fascinated me, and I'm still really into cartography. The reason I'm confident in my estimation of the age, is that I'm a nut about books, and am familiar with the general styles book covers have had over the last hundred fifty or so years...and that kind of cover wasn't really used before the seventies. ** Just realized it's hardback--definitely from an early print run, I'd say. The way these things go, after an initial hardback run, they tend to switch to paperback for later editions, mostly because anyone who wanted the hardback would've bought it when it came out. Oh, and unless that globe is over a hundred years, it's no antique...it looks like it was made no earlier than the sixties, but more likely a bit later. I remember when globes just like it were very common.

There is one clue in the Benelux map, specifically the Netherlands. Flevoland is man-made land and didn't become a separate province until 1986. Seeing Malta on the European map not labelled as a British colony would, to me, put this map between late 1964 and January 1986 just before the six minutes mark.

My initial guess was late 70s/early 80s just based on the fact that it looked like some books my geography-fanatic dad owned in his teenage years. The graphic design and type of paperboard is very of the time. From the rest of the video my guesses jumped all over the place, but knew it was before 1990 for sure. I'm good at identifying old collectibles based on art. Guess I need to try to learn from dad a bit more 😅

Really interesting to see the old topic videos you use! Where can one find these types of videos?

First I thought about the year 1964, but when the page on Iran was presented, I settled on 1978. Many other clues also pointed to the end of seventies, including the font on the cover of the atlas.

Seeing strathclyde on one of the first pages was a good clue to it being after 1975 but before 1996

As a kid I loved looking at maps and atlases. I still kinda do as a mid 40s guy, but now it's more Google Maps. Having been a grandfather for a few months, I want to buy an atlas to have laying around the house, for when the little guys are coming around and are old enough in a few years to discover the greatness of maps/atlases. I still have time to look around for a good one. Sadly, children these days have so many more things to get distracted by than atlases or graphical educational books. By the way, whenever I see a vintage map/atlas, I always look for the divided Germany (coming from the East myself).

There's actually a pretty fun couple of clues from the Great Britain page- Greater London is showing it's original external boundaries, which means it must be between 1965 and 1969, and Milton Keynes isn't there- it was founded in 1967 and had reached almost 100,000 by 1981. Interestingly enough the England/Wales/Scotland only maps are definitely showing the 1974-1993ish council areas so that's been copied over. The Scottish map in particular is completely different as the big council areas were abolished in 1998. Denmark and Finland have also had substantial administrative changes since that period. It's not going to be enough to pinpoint to the year, but the Danish map indicates it's 1970-2004, the Finnish map is 1960-1996 - you can start pulling these together and it starts bracketing it into the 70s at the earliest. The Germany map is actually less helpful- it gives a terminus post-quem of 1990 considering the divided state, but could represent any period from the 1956 abolition of the Saar until then.

As a Geography lover, history lover, and someone who also has a pretty extensive knowledge of flags, I'm going to go ahead and guess 1978. I think the only reason I could possibly be wrong is because sometimes it takes certain changes on the ground to make their way to official print. Bonus comment: those pages of the UK that you kinda just blew right past; there's actually a very interesting and VERY telling clue in there..... 🤔 I'm going with 1978.

I used to have an atlas from 1971 and it was weird bc it was the only one we had money to have at home... in the early 90s. And even then a lot had changed, like Namibia becoming a thing. Regarding the difference of population between west and East Germany, you failed to notice something even more astonishing: a significant part of the population of East Germany was people relocated from the bits that eventually went to Poland and were resettled by poles, and the bit that became Kaliningrad in Prussia. The eastern bit of Germany had very little population and most of it was Berlin and a few more cities (although I imagine the atlas counts West Berlin as part of the population of West Germany). The West has always been more industrialized and populated because of, in first place, the Rhin river, and because of the Ruhr industrial basin.

I have a book from 1654 and was at Harvard. The maps are priceless. In the centuries before aviation, these borders are very close!

re Peru flag, both are in use but depends on who flies it, the one with the coat of arms is flown by government entities and the one without the coat of arms is flown by regular people and businesses. Also there was a change in south american flags, Venezuela added one more star to their flag.

The correct year when that atlas was published is 1978 , because in 1978 Greece was adopted his new flag which is still in use and the point u said that the atlas was published in the same year gave the complete confirmation. Having such things give some extra knowledge as well as excites u to learn about the history. In Indian culture,having such a historical thing is the sign of blessings from the ancestors.