Animated history of the Iranian Empire

What part of the world is Iran? What has been Iran?

Currently the official language of more than 110 million people is Pesian, which is the official language of three countries. iranian culture is spread among many people of middle east, even though they don't speak Persian.

To show some little piece of history, I've made this flash animation, which shows some of the borders of Iran in its long 5000 year history. It starts with Elamites, continues with Medians, Achaemenids, Parthians, Sassanids, a period of Islamic Caliphate (though in this period Iran was part of the bigger Islamic Empire), Safavids and finally the current Iran.

Although far from complete, this short history review shows the reason of the widespread Persian culture in the whole middle east.

(As a side note, this is my very first 'flash' animation ever, so apologize me if it looks amateur. I've done it with a demo version of SwishMax, which is an awesome flash authoring package. I strongly recommend buying this software, which I also intend to do. For you college students, there is also a special discount of 80%, which is exactly the reason it became so appealing to me!)

I plan to make this flash animation much more complete in the future, perhaps with maps of other major empires. But until then, I'm happy with this one!

Note: Click on the photos to enlarge them.

If you feel interested in any of them and want to get the original file, please don't hesitate to email me!