Ethno-Cultural Map of the World in 2024 CE (v.37) - by Adûnâi

Jan 12, 2025

What is my map? While it may look frivolous, my main idea is to depict the significant civilisations of the world (à la Huntington), but in an absurdly detailed manner. Still, it is necessarily simplified - I'd wager to say, any useful model of reality ought to be simple, and, dare I say, subjective and artistic.

In this case, as you can see, I have split the world into 4 major groupings alongside the rim of Eurasia (Europe, Islam, Dharmic, Sinosphere). Each of them is in turn split into 3 more cultures: generally it has appeared that one of them is ethno-centric, one core, and one peripheral. In this case:

1) East Asia consists of Juche Korea, Sinosphere, and Colonial Sinosphere (Chinese settlers in SEA and the American-occupied Japan/RoK);

2) the West consists of the ethnoreligious core, the universalist neo-Christian liberals, and the peripheral remnants of the Roman/Russian/Iberian empires;

3) Islam is split between the nationalistic Turks, Sunni mainstream, and the Shia wild card;

4) and the Dharmic civilisation is formed by the Malay world of Nusantara, the Indic core, and the Buddhist periphery from Thailand to Buryatia.

Version 37 in this installment has focused mainly on the borders of the Sahel (notice the Dogon in south-eastern Mali), and the hill tribes of Indochina (which I have split from the Buddhist region as they are indeed considered separate by the locals - see Lao Theung or Khmer Loeu, Thai hill tribes or Vietnamese Montagnards.

The utility of this map? It allows to see clearly a few curious points - namely, how much easier it is for Israel to wage its war of existence due to the divided nature of their foes the tremendous Turkic sphere of influence (conflated historical here such as Aceh or Bosnia with modern friends of Türkiye from Qatar to Somalia), or indeed the ethnoreligious enclaves of Western Eurasia holding out in the sea of Abrahamism - from the ancient Berbers to the Komi pagans and the enigmatic Yazidis of Assyria.

And lastly, this might be the final snapshot of the Shia region as a unified culture (no spoilers for 2025!).