Atlaspi

🌍 AtlasPI

The structured historical geographic database built for AI agents.

Query any empire, kingdom, or territory from 4500 BCE to 2024 — with coordinates,

boundaries, confidence scores, and 2,000+ academic sources.

✅ Free · No API key · No registration · Apache 2.0 · CORS-enabled

curl https://atlaspi.it/v1/snapshot/year/1250

Live: atlaspi.it · API Docs · Map App · MCP Server

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Why AtlasPI exists

AI agents working with historical geography today face a fragmented landscape: raw shapefiles in Natural Earth, unstructured text in Wikipedia, scattered coordinates in Wikidata, and academic datasets locked behind incompatible formats. None of these were designed for machine consumption.

AtlasPI bridges this gap. It provides a single, structured REST API where an AI agent can ask *"What territories existed in the Balkans in 1400?"* or *"Show me the boundary changes of the Ottoman Empire"* and get back clean JSON with GeoJSON boundaries, confidence scores, academic citations, and honest metadata about what is certain and what is disputed.

Historical data is never neutral. Borders were drawn through conquest, names were imposed through colonization, populations were erased through genocide. AtlasPI does not sanitize this complexity -- it structures it, documents it, and makes it queryable.

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Screenshot

The web UI supports keyboard shortcuts, deep linking (/app?year=1000), continent filtering, time playback animation, dark/light mode, and full i18n (English/Italian). Try it live at [atlaspi.it](https://atlaspi.it/app).

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Quick Start

# Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/Soil911/AtlasPI.git cd AtlasPI

Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

Run the server (auto-seeds the database on first launch)

python run.py

The API is now live at http://localhost:10100 and the interactive docs at http://localhost:10100/docs.

Docker

docker compose up --build

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API Documentation

AtlasPI exposes 23 REST endpoints under /v1/. Full interactive documentation is available at /docs (Swagger UI) and /redoc when the server is running.

Core Endpoints

Examples

Search for empires active in 1500 CE:

curl "http://localhost:10100/v1/entity?type=empire&year=1500"

Get full details for entity #12:

curl "http://localhost:10100/v1/entities/12"

Find entities contemporary to the Roman Empire:

curl "http://localhost:10100/v1/entities/1/contemporaries"

Export all entities as GeoJSON:

curl "http://localhost:10100/v1/export/geojson" -o atlas.geojson

Find entities near Rome active in 100 CE:

curl "http://localhost:10100/v1/nearby?lat=41.9&lon=12.5&year=100&radius=500"

Snapshot of the world in 1500 CE:

curl "http://localhost:10100/v1/snapshot/1500" | jq '.summary'

Compare two entities side by side:

curl "http://localhost:10100/v1/compare/1/5"

Response Example

{

"id": 1, "name": "Imperium Romanum", "name_variants": [ {"name": "Roman Empire", "language": "en"}, {"name": "Imperio Romano", "language": "es"} ], "entity_type": "empire", "year_start": -753, "year_end": 476, "status": "confirmed", "confidence_score": 0.95, "capital": {"name": "Roma", "lat": 41.9028, "lon": 12.4964}, "territory_changes": [...], "sources": [ {"citation": "...", "source_type": "academic"} ] }

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Dataset Overview

How this data is curated — disclosure and correction (2026-07-23)

Curation of non-boundary records (entities, events, cities, rulers, routes, sites) is AI-assisted: LLM research agents propose metadata and candidate citations, an adversarial verification step rejects citations that do not exist or do not support the claim, and the maintainer supervises the pipeline. Records are not systematically reviewed by professional historians. Until the human citation audit (protocol) is published, treat citations as machine-verified, not human-audited. Earlier versions of this documentation said the dataset was "hand-curated" — that wording was inaccurate and has been retired. Full details: METHODOLOGY §2.4 · ETHICS-028 (EN).

1,006 historical entities + 643 historical events spanning 6,500 years of human civilization, backed by 5,000+ academic sources and documenting 2,000+ territory changes. Plus 1,249 archaeological sites, 105 historical rulers, 29 historical languages, 104 dynasty chains, 41 trade routes, 252 historical cities, and 55 historical periods. Events include battles, treaties, epidemics, genocides, colonial violence, massacres, deportations and natural disasters — with ETHICS-007 (no euphemisms) and ETHICS-008 (known_silence flag for erased/suppressed records).

Coverage by Region

Entity Types

15 categories: empire | kingdom | republic | confederation | city-state | dynasty | colony | disputed_territory | sultanate | khanate | principality | duchy | caliphate | federation | city

Time Coverage

• Earliest entity: 4500 BCE (ancient Mesopotamian civilizations)
• Latest entity: 2024 (modern states and disputed territories)
• Negative years represent BCE dates (e.g., -753 = 753 BCE)

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📖 Citation

If you use AtlasPI in research, teaching, or derivative datasets, please cite the project using the Zenodo concept DOI below. The concept DOI always resolves to the latest release — individual versions get their own per-release DOIs on top.

BibTeX

@software{atlaspi_2026,

author = {{AtlasPI Project}}, title = {AtlasPI: A structured historical geographic database for AI agents}, version = {6.13.0}, year = {2026}, doi = {10.5281/zenodo.19581784}, url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19581784} }

Plain-text citation

AtlasPI Project (2026). *AtlasPI: A structured historical geographic database for AI agents*, version 6.14.0. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19581784

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Ethical Framework

Historical data carries the weight of conquest, displacement, and erasure. AtlasPI is built on four principles that govern every data decision:

1. Truth Before Comfort

Historical records include conquest, genocide, forced deportation, and cultural erasure. These facts are represented with precision, never sanitized. If a territory was seized by force, the acquisition_method field says so. If a population was decimated, the data shows it with sources. If a geographic name was imposed by erasing the original, both names are present.

2. No Single Version of History

Contested borders show all known versions, with dates and sources. Place names include the original local form alongside names in other relevant languages. Academic disputes are made explicit, not resolved by fiat. The database does not arbitrate history -- it documents it.

3. Transparency of Uncertainty

Every recor