Mapping the crisis of the third century

Chapter Summary

This chapter concerns not only how to understand the nature of the crisis as a complex set of related events, but also how to explain the complexities of the crisis to others, especially to students. It presents the chart which represents the crisis legend of the third century. Mapping History project, supported by grants from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and various private donors in the United States, provides a set of interactive and animated maps on a variety of historical problems. This project offers a system to illustrate those historical problems that lend themselves to this kind of cartographic representation. Though funding was originally provided to make available material for instructional purposes, there is no reason why the same structure cannot be employed to illustrate the scholarly data on other historical problems.

Keywords: crisis legend; historical problems; Mapping History project; third century