Context layer
Natural Earth coastline
Small-scale physical coastline, the neutral base the historical layers are drawn over.
- Canonical ID
ne-coastline- Period
- 6000 BC–2024
- Role
- context
- Status
- published
What you are looking at
Coastal outlines at 1:110 million from Natural Earth’s public-domain physical vectors. It is the default base layer of this atlas: present on arrival, and making no claim about any period.
This record is deliberately short. A context layer takes the minimal-context exemption: it owes a reader its source, its licence and any warning about how it behaves over historical material, and it does not owe the reconstruction and uncertainty sections that belong to a layer making a historical claim.
What to watch for
A coastline is not a constant. Shorelines silt, deltas advance and harbours strand, and this layer shows none of that - it is the modern coast, offered as a stable frame. Where a historical layer places a port inland of this line, the port has not moved.
Sources and licence
Natural Earth, ne_110m_coastline, public domain. Made with Natural Earth.
Citation and reuse
- Version
-
ne_110m_coastline - Licence
- Public Domain
- Attribution
- Made with Natural Earth
- Last reviewed
- 2026-08-23
Cite this dataset
Attribution must travel with any reuse. Where a layer carries a third-party licence, that licence governs the data regardless of anything on this page.
Advanced and technical
Schemas, source data, build history and raw assets. Nothing here is needed to understand what this page describes; it is here so the work can be checked and reused.