The introductions of the country, dependency and region entries are in the native languages and in English. The other introductions are in English.
Oceans
Atlas of the Oceans Oceans (from Ὠκεανός Okeanos in Greek) are saline waters that cover almost three quarters (70.8%) of the surface of the Earth. The area of the oceans is 361 million km², and nearly half of the world's marine waters are over 3,000 meters (9,800 ft) deep. Though historically – and somewhat arbitrarily – divided into several "separate" oceans, these oceans are in fact one global, interconnected body of salt water, often called the World Ocean. The major divisions are defined in part by the continents and a variety of archipelagos, and are labeled the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and the Arctic Ocean. Smaller bodies of water within the oceans are called seas, gulfs, straits and other names. The scientific study of the oceans is oceanography.
The WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Atlas of the World is an organized and commented collection of geographical, political and historical maps available at Wikimedia Commons. The main page is therefore the portal to maps and cartography on Wikimedia. That page contains links to entries by country, continent and by topic as well as general notes and references.
Every entry has an introduction section in English. If other languages are native and/or official in an entity, introductions in other languages are added in separate sections. The text of the introduction(s) is based on the content of the Wikipedia encyclopedia. For sources of the introduction see therefore the Wikipedia entries linked to. The same goes for the texts in the history sections.
Historical maps are included in the continent, country and dependency entries.
The status of various entities is disputed. See the content for the entities concerned.
The maps of former countries that are more or less continued by a present-day country or had a territory included in only one or two countries are included in the atlas of the present-day country. For example the Ottoman Empire can be found in the Atlas of Turkey.
