ethnicities of the world

// first published on 29/8/14

In the wake of recent conflicts around the world (ie. the middle east and eastern ukraine) the question of ethnicity has suddenly become prevalent again. Historical conflicts and (especially european) colonization efforts have caused arbitrarily drawn borders in some countries which do not reflect the regional ethnicities. In search for a map which lists all the ethnicities I stumbled upon Ethnicities of the World, however that map only displays the regions without any labels (you need to click each region individually). Luckily a commonly used dataset is freely available (which can be downloaded here) that contains all the required information for the creation of such a map. Clicking the map loads the full version (~ 5MB) - note that the coloring is far from perfect at this point, with some neighboring ethnicities occasionally sharing the same color.

The used R Code is available here. Thanks also go to MrFlick.