July 2014 Challenge: The road of the Khans

[Francissimo]

Thank for the feedback guys. You're right about the "fake historical map", true that all those empty steppes are not a country as we intended. I will show the conquered area mainly for aesthetical reasons, to show the inexorable growth of the mongol empire during the 13th century but as you suggest i'll try to focus mainly on the city they conquered. The problem is to find good sources of information about the exact path of Gengis Khan, when did he conquered a city ect..
For the map i have used a nasa dem and apply a filter lightning effect in photoshop.
Here's is a wip with more informations about the country present around 1200. I have used the information and maps of this excellent web site: World History Maps by Thomas Lessman
### Latest WIP ###

[Naima]

Hehehe The World History Maps by Thomas Lessman maps found there are just the ones I am referring too , he is a prolific map drawer but his maps are highly imprecise in most cases and based on a wide range of different books that are also old or even biased in some cases .
I looked for example at the Han map showing the size of Han empire during the 200 AD in comparison of Roman empire , and guess what the Han was supersized including most gobi desert , southern never conquered areas and as well as north global coverage . So basically a fake map .
Wikipedia is constantly hacked by profaction and people that want to impose their biased ideas . For some reason this is especially true on political themes and historical themes regarding China vs west .

I sugest to use the Fabio page better but there are no Mongol precise maps, I would sugest you to follow the actual maps of paleoclimates from medieval times that woudl show you the areas of steppes, boreal forests ( mongols never penetrated the forests ) , Deserts ( same ) , and mountains ( same ) . the correct map woudl border all those regions , have narrow stripes of controlled areas . I would personally differentiate the map into Controlled and influenced . Like for example Mongols had direct influence over some vassals or large steppe areas but no irect control, means there was nonone there controlling while direct control on the Cities and regions they directly occupied like China .
That way a better and first time historicla map coudl be created and you could even replace the wrong ones of Wikipedia .