Legend & clues 11 types

Clues on the map

Quiet findA lesser-known place worth opening.

Field noteSome site cards offer a sourced note you can open directly.

Trace a historical connection

Explore different kinds of places. The field notebook remembers your progress.

Sites visible

Charting the ancient world…

Explore the atlas

See where ancient places stood, and read what happened there.

Open a marker to find a site’s location, date, and surviving remains. The atlas brings together pyramids, temples, cities, caves, earthworks, and other places. Finished entries continue into full, sourced histories.

How the atlas is made

Three site histories to read next

See all finished histories

Aerial view of the Roman amphitheatre of El Djem surrounded by the modern Tunisian town

AmphitheatreTunisia

El Djem Amphitheatre

Third-largest Roman amphitheatre, larger than what survives of the Colosseum. Capacity 35,000, in a small town in the Tunisian interior.

Read the site history

SettlementUnited States

Hovenweep

Ancestral Puebloan towers on the Utah-Colorado border. Oriented to track solstices through tiny portholes.

Read the site history

Geoglyph / EarthworkUnited States

Poverty Point

Concentric earthen ridges in Louisiana built by hunter-gatherers. Among the largest earthworks ever made by a non-agricultural society.

Read the site history

Browse by site type

Start with the kind of place that interests you

Each link shows only that site type and its matching places.

How to use the atlas

Start with a marker. Follow whatever catches your eye.

Zoom to a region or filter by site type. Open a marker for the basic record, then continue into the full history when one is available.

Browse finished histories How an entry is researched