Living Worlds
A Florentine workshop opening onto the street, apprentices grinding pigments, the cathedral dome beyond.

Age · 1490–1560

Five cities at once

Workshops, libraries, gardens, roads and coffee.

Observed

Evidence

Places, dates and measured rates, from sources.

Inferred

Parameters

The rates and structures fitted to that evidence.

Simulated

Behaviour

Lives stepped month by month under those rates.

Generated

Outcome

Each life's story, told as a composite, never a real person.

Meanwhile

5 worlds, side by side.

Each keeps its own time. None is ranked above another.

A Florentine workshop opening onto the street, apprentices grinding pigments, the cathedral dome beyond. Florence, about 1490The WorkshopEvery master was once an apprentice. Scholars copying manuscripts in the shaded courtyard of an earth-built house, the earthen mosque beyond and a salt caravan resting at the gate. Timbuktu, about 1500City of BooksEvery book is copied twice. Chinampa gardens of maize and marigolds between canals with dugout canoes, the great pyramid and volcanoes in the morning haze. Tenochtitlan, about 1500City on the LakeThe garden feeds the city. An Inca stone road climbing a dry valley to a rope bridge, a relay hut and a llama caravan. The Andes, about 1500RelayEvery message is carried by the next runner. An Istanbul coffeehouse about 1555, men of many communities on low benches, the Süleymaniye under construction on the hill. Istanbul, about 1555The First CoffeehouseA cup of coffee is a reason to stay.
A double-hulled voyaging canoe with pandanus sails on the open Pacific at dusk.

Which world will you live in?

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