Ethno-Cultural Map of the World in 2022 CE (finale)

Ever since the release of v.16 on July 1st-8th, 2022, I had an illusion that I marked everything befitting my conception of the world. And yet, a month later, some more memories crept in.

On August 19th (v. 17-19), I lent my attention to the three regions: Albania, Kurdistan, and Jászság. Thus, I drew the remaining Catholic and Orthodox Christian Albanians (cf. these maps), painted the Turkish Kurds as a Muslim nation (with the exception of the vaguely Shiite Alevis), designated Iranian Azerbaijan as part of Turân (the Turks there revolted in 2020, eager for Armenian blood), and finally remembered the fellow travellers of the Cumans in Pannonia (Kunság) – the ancient Aryan Ossetians of Jászság. Some other updates include the depiction of the ancient Griko and Arbëreshë communities in Apulia and Calabria in Italy, the Arvanites in Attica, the Hungarians of the Nitra region of Slovakia, the renewed push for Syrian Hatay, and the immense Muslim immigrant polities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg (numbering in the millions, as per Grant Mufty Ravil Gainutdinov, a Turk). Other changes encompass depicting a more dire situation in France and Germany (the Lyon agglomeration, the Blue Banana of the BTC in the Ruhr, Frankfurt and Württemberg), the Basque language in the northern Navarra region, and the notorious Russian minority areas in Livonia and Esthonia. In light of these changes, I chose to mark Mitrovica as Serb as the only way to depict North Kosovo on this map (over which a war may or may not break out soon™). Regarding the Syrian Civil War – I changed Idlib Governorate to Islamic to demonstrate Al-Nusra Front’s presence there, and took a plunge to paint as Turkish the Governorate of Aleppo – slightly anachronistic at this point, but it can’t help acknowledging that the Turks did ruin that entire part of the Arab Republic.

The v.20 of 2022-08-27 was chiefly induced by my rediscovery of another Kurdish religion – Yarsanism, which I duly marked in the Persian province of Kermanshah. Then I found out that while the Assyrian population of Urmia might have been expelled over the River Styx by big Turkish men (along with the hated Armenians), Mahabad is considered a capital of sorts of Iranian Kurdistan. Another addition was the depiction of the Azerbaijani minorities – the Avars, Lezgins, Tats and the Ingiloy Georgians in the north-west, and the Iranian Talysh in the south. The latter even briefly had a secessionist republic in 1993, although it might have been an arbitrary political intrigue. I long poured over the readily-available sources such as these 2009 census figures, and based on this obscure research document, decided to include Yardımlı in the Talysh region. I refreshed my knowledge of the Baloch terrorists in Iran – no matter how awkward it looks. And finally, to crown the inflation of my standards over time, I caved in to mark the ancient Turkish population of Chaharmahal – even though the more prominent Qashqai Turks of Fars remain outside.

And so it is. I would better publish it as soon as possible, lest it grow outdated, with the imminent Second Armenian Genocide and all. (Indeed, I depicted Artsakh as ancient Aryan to underline its desperate situation contrasting with the resignation of mainland Armenia).

It’s curious how both Irân and Türkiye hold a knife to one another’s throat.

Addendum as of 2022-08-29: as may be expected of my continuously relaxing the already-lax rules, I have returned to the region of Indochina (now apparently a racist geographical name for the peninsula) with the intention of visualising the ancient Chinese immigrant communities. Thus, I marked the Thai Chinese (“14% of the population”) in Bangkok and Samut Sakhon (“Chinese River” originally), the largely-genocided Indonesian Chinese in hiding of the Riau Islands, the Malay Chinese of Labuan and Brunei-Muara (the Wikipedia article of the latter is faulty, confuses the country percentages with the districts’ ones), and in the end returned to the Philippines, where the Sino-Fililipinos don’t feature compact areas of settlement either, but whose penetration of that society seems immense.

Regarding the Sino-Burmese – I was quite befuddled upon learning that the Chinese have been successfully colonising the Mandalay region of that country. Depicting them as part of the Westernised Sinosphere does muddle the definition of the region – which combines the hungry ghost of the Empire of Japan, the overseas Chinese, and now this… overland community.

P.S. The Kouloughli Turks of Tlemcen. The Zanj of Basra.

P.P.S. The Yazidis of Armavir.

A revision of 2022-09-07: the Hòa Hảo cult of An Giang, the Javanese Muslim settlers in Irian Jaya, and the residual highlander Negritos of the Philippines (namely, the Igorot of Luzon and the Lumad of Mindanao).

The one-past-midnight change: Westernised Sinosphere > Colonial Sinosphere. An ambiguous term that may indicate both the American power in Japan and the Chinese colonisation of the South Seas. The antonym: the sovereign Sinosphere of the Communists.

The v.24 of 2022-09-13: the Turks of Tuva & Bayan-Ölgii.

The v.25 of 2022-09-23: paradoxically, it was my simplified religious map that took me back to the question of Cuba, and the next day, I finally remembered the conundrum of the Sikhs in Punjab. The real answer to Cuba has always been their racial inferiority – this is where I disagree with Chechar about any kind of a correct ideology for the whole of Latin America. The Sikhs, however, pose a challenge to my categories, as they are, like the Yarsanis, a young cult. This led me to experiment with adding a completely new region, specifically tailored to the non-European residue ethnicities, from the Berbers to the Cao Đài (attempt – here, the colour used: either #c0a182 or #ccac8c), but in the end, it didn’t feel right to have a culture composed of unrelated nationalities – yes, even in such a schizo creation of mine, I tend to view both the Poles and the Yazidis as some kind of a united front against the universalist ideologies of Christianity and Islam.

In the end, I resisted touching the Marxist Cubans, the miscegenated Malagasy or the outright Christianised Austronesians in Taiwan, but did proceed with the following:
1) Niger state of Nigeria > Muslim;
2) Oromia state of Ethiopia > Negro;
3) Punjab state of India > vaguely nationalist Aryan;
4) Arakan state of Burma > Buddhist (the Rohingya have been cleansed);
5) Hong Kong > Christian hybrids (the Year Book sourced in this article puts the number of Christians there at ca. 27% – much higher than the ✡︎CIA’s estimate of 12%);
6) the Ryukyuans > shamanistic;
7) the Ainus of Hokkaido > shamanistic;
8) Singapore > hybridised mutts;
9) Sinosphere’s colour: ffff33 > f4ed5a.

The v.26 of 2022-09-27: I changed the border width for subdivisions setting from medium to thick, thus removing those ugly residual lines in the supposedly-borderless variation, alongside making the Maldives prominently visible. Additionally, the colour for the shamanistic region has been updated from #cab2d6 to #d5aee9. The remaining uncoloured regions, too, have been marked – namely, the 77.6% “White” city of Nelson in New Zealand. And finally, I got the bright idea to create a line of maps with only one of the cultures highlighted in each – akin to the faction selection screens in the aptly-named Total War series of computer games – what is the planet but the killing fields for an immense Battle Royale of titans?

The v.27 of 2022-10-16: a more precise mapping of the Russians in neo-Nazi Latvia (sources: 1, 2), the Alevis of Tokat (sources: 1, 2), the ISIS martyrs of the Euphrates valley in Syria, and doing justice to the Jews of the Middle East – the Kurds.

The v.30 of 2022-10-25: a major breakthrough, and a proper finale!

Ethno-Cultural Map of the World in 2022 CE