Check out this fantastic digital map of 5,000 years of conquest in the Middle East (thanks nahkotik).

It’s amazing how broad representations of history, whether in numbers or colours, put current events into perspective.

On the other hand, they also abstract alot of the tangible realities of such history: the tears, the blood, the births, the burning; loss, exile, resettlement; learning new languages, adapting to new terrains; the modification of identity and the memorialization of the past…

I wonder what would happen if we decided to try to measure history in blood and tears: what volume would it occupy?

“The imperial history of the Middle East in 73 thousand Olympic-sized swimming pools of body fluids.”