Palimpsest: What Stood Here

Eight places, their layers, and the evidence behind every date — including where the evidence runs out.

Most archaeology apps show you a reconstruction and let you believe it.

Whether Enclosure D at Göbekli Tepe ever had a roof is disputed. Drawing it as though the question were settled is not a rendering choice; it is selling an opinion as knowledge.

Palimpsest is built so that it cannot do that.

DRAG THROUGH TIME Eight places, each with its layers. Move one finger and the layers cross-fade: Troy I to Troy VI to Roman Ilion, Stonehenge's ditch to its sarsen circle.

EVERY LAYER CARRIES ITS SOURCE A layer with no source cannot be created at all — the initialiser returns nothing. Author, year, and an identifier you can go and look up, under every claim rather than in a credits screen.

THREE LEVELS OF EVIDENCE, ON SCREEN Measured: an excavation report and a date. Reconstruction: a published interpretation. Disputed: the same evidence read more than one way. The level is drawn as a shape, not a colour, so it survives colour blindness.

NO DATE IS A POINT Uncertainty cannot be zero here; the type will not allow it. 9500 BCE ± 500 is drawn as a band beside 3200 BCE ± 100, on one axis, so which is thinly known is seen rather than read.

THE SLIDER WILL NOT LIE ABOUT TIME Equal steps are easy to navigate; proportional spacing tells the truth about the gaps. Both are defensible, so the choice is yours — and the real gap in years is written out either way.

COMPUTED IS NOT MEASURED Solstice alignments are computed from the obliquity of the ecliptic for that site and that epoch, and the screen says so in as many words. Where the published claims contradict each other — Göbekli Tepe, Nabta Playa, Çatalhöyük — no angle is stored at all, and the app tells you why instead of choosing a side.

NOTHING LEAVES YOUR DEVICE Palimpsest makes no network requests. No account, no analytics, no identifier, and not one permission is requested. This is checked on every build, in the code, rather than promised in a paragraph.

iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Six languages. Free, with no advertising.