The U.S. has now been militarily engaged in Afghanistan for more than 16 years, but most Americans don't know a whole lot about the people of Afghanistan. This map, created by the U.S. Army in September 2001, shows Afghanistan's assumed ethnic geography at the beginning of the war. (Over the last 16 years, though, Afghanistan has created more refugees than any country except Syria, which has undoubtedly changed the substance of this map. Afghanistan's 2013 census pointedly did not ask questions about language or ethnicity.)
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/US_Army_ethnolinguistic_map_of_Afghanistan_--_circa_2001-09.jpg

This map from the Library of Congress shows "judicially established Indian land areas" as of 1978, the year the Indian Claims Commission expired. The commission was created after WWII to thank Native Americans for their service during the war. Native peoples did not regain any lands lost over the prior three centuries, but the U.S. government did provide a monetary settlement based on this map. tile.loc.gov/image-services/iiif/service:gmd:gmd370:g3701:g3701e:ct008649/full/pct:12.5/0/default.jpg

Today is the anniversary of the armistice ending World War I. As part of the agreement ending the war, Germany lost its colonies in Africa and Micronesia and the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires were broken up. This map shows the ethno-linguistic composition of Austro-Hungary before the war began. cdn0.vox-cdn.com/assets/4620799/austria_hungary.png

Students in my "Your Future World" class discover there's more linguistic diversity within India than in all of Europe. (According to the most recent government data, India has 29 different languages with 1 million or more native speakers, 60 languages with 100,000 or more native speakers, and 122 languages with at least 10,000 native speakers.) This map captures India's major language geography.  defenceforumindia.com/forum/threads/percent-of-people-speaking-primary-languages-in-india.79131/

The Caucasus, the mountainous region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea that bridges Europe and Asia, has long been the frontier of empires, from the Assyrian to the Persian to the Mongol to the Ottoman to the Russian, with a sprinkling of indigenous kingdoms throughout. The region's complicated past has made the Caucasus one of the most linguistically diverse places on the planet, as shown on this map. 4.bp.blogspot.com/-fgHPr4ylKT8/T9D96BKdc5I/AAAAAAAAE38/lkrPRFqIuOs/s1600/CaucasusLayout_rev.png

Despite long involvement in the Middle East, Americans tend to have a weak understanding of the region's complex interplay of languages and ethnicities.  This map shows the language geography of Iran.  (The unlabeled white areas are Iran's major deserts.)  Only slightly more than half of Iranians speak Persian, the official language.

It is easy to forget that what we call another country, in English, is often not what it calls itself. This map shows the countries of Europe labeled with their names in their own languages.  scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/14199248_1223590284351384_1762268652619927771_n.jpg?oh=7666d3ca8a07d5cb0300d88d9b9f997b&oe=5845616A