Choose a continent, then guess its highlighted countries.
Choose your adventure
About Karshvar
I built Karshvar to make discovering the world easier for people who
love reading history. My biggest difficulty was always geography:
from Anatolia to the Caucasus, from the Iranian plateau to
Byzantium, I kept losing track of where important events happened.
So I started studying geography, and this game grew out of that
learning. It is both a way to test myself and a step toward the
offline companion I wanted for exploring the world. I plan to add
more historical features over time.
Karshvar takes its name from an ancient Iranian word related to
today’s Persian word for country. In Avestan cosmology, the world
was described as seven regions.
Göbekli Tepe · Çatalhöyük · Hattusha · Troy · Ephesus
1
Göbekli Tepe
These Neolithic enclosures take the story far earlier than classical
cities. The T-shaped pillars are the first things to notice,
followed by their animal carvings. They offer a glimpse of communal
and ritual life long before the familiar empires of Anatolia.
This Neolithic settlement is compelling because it brings attention
back to ordinary life. Closely packed houses help explain an early
way of living together. Read the buildings as a neighbourhood rather
than expecting temples and palaces.
The Hittite capital spreads across a landscape of temples, royal
buildings and fortifications. Its gateways make the city’s defensive
role tangible. Pay particular attention to the carved gate figures
and the relationship between walls and terrain.
Troy is more than the setting of a famous story. Successive
settlements accumulated here over many centuries. The rewarding part
is learning to distinguish those layers, while remembering that
archaeology and the literary world of the Iliad are different kinds
of evidence.
Ephesus makes the scale of an ancient city easier to imagine.
Monumental public buildings and streets reveal how urban life was
organised. The Library of Celsus is a natural focal point, but leave
time to notice the spaces connecting the major landmarks.
