Ordered inside 214 complete dossier journeys.
THE JOURNEY ATLAS
TIMELINE ATLAS ↗MAP THE ROUTE / KEEP THE LIMIT
PLACE → PERIOD → TRANSFORMATIONWORDS HAVE
ADDRESSES.
Trace where a word’s reviewed history passed through—and see every broad, global, or uncertain stage that cannot honestly be reduced to one point.
A ROUTE IS A MODEL.
NOT A GPS TRACE.
Regional pins locate reviewed cultural stages. Approximate pins locate broad reconstructed or contact regions. Global stages stay unpinned. Every route preserves its full editorial sequence; only directly cited, explicitly bounded stages also enter the cross-word Timeline Atlas.
231 coordinate pairs exist; global placements are suppressed.
Broad, global, uncertain, or not honestly reducible to one point.
1324 claim-level citations; every remaining stage is a frontier task.
Source-backed stages now join the cross-word Timeline Atlas.
Historic labels remain readable without being parsed into false years.
001 ROUTES / 5 MATCHING STAGES
FILTER THE ROUTE ARCHIVE
WHERE DID THE WORD GO?
Filters select complete word journeys when any stage matches. The map and route card then preserve the surrounding stages, so a search result never becomes a historically amputated dot.
012 PLOTTED STAGES
THE REVIEWED GEOGRAPHIC LAYER
TEA ON THE MAP
REGIONAL PLACEMENTAPPROXIMATE / RECONSTRUCTED REGIONGLOBAL OR UNLOCATED — NO SINGLE PIN
This is not a GPS trace. Lines appear only when adjacent stages in one selected route both have defensible points. A global stage is not pinned even when a legacy coordinate names the route’s point of departure. Missing locations break the line.
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ROUTE-BY-ROUTE SEQUENCE TIMELINES
1 MATCHING WORD JOURNEYS
036
REVIEWED WORD JOURNEY
tea
OPEN DOSSIER ↗5STAGES2HONEST PINS3NO SINGLE PIN
- 01Old Chinese reconstructionNO SINGLE PIN
Chinese linguistic horizon
Baxter and Sagart reconstruct *lˤra for 茶; a reconstruction is not a pinpointed archaeological location.
1 DIRECT CITATIONS ↗ - 02Southern Min contact eraapproximate placement
Xiamen, Fujian
The te-type form associated with Amoy/Xiamen enters the Dutch maritime network.
1 DIRECT CITATIONS ↗ - 0317th centuryNO SINGLE PIN
Dutch maritime network
Dutch thee spreads through European commerce and later colonial routes.
1 DIRECT CITATIONS ↗ - 041655 onwardregional placement
England
The English tea form is lexicographically reported by 1655.
1 DIRECT CITATIONS ↗ - 05Modern eraNO SINGLE PIN
Global te-type distribution
WALS classifies 84 of its 230-language sample as deriving from Min Nan te-type forms.
1 DIRECT CITATIONS ↗
03
WHAT THIS MAP CAN AND CANNOT CLAIM
GEOGRAPHIC HONESTY IS PART OF THE DATA.
A defensible cultural or linguistic region can be plotted, but the point summarizes an area rather than an exact address.
A reconstructed homeland or contact zone is placed only as a broad visual orientation and uses a distinct dashed marker.
A distributed network, era, or world language has no honest single coordinate. It remains in the sequence and off the map.
Directly cited stages may carry exact, range, century, circa, open, or before bounds. Unbounded prose stays unparsed.
959 stages have claim-level citations and 578 have defensible numeric bounds. Every uncited or unbounded stage remains visible unfinished work.