Legal · Last updated 11 November 2026
Licences and credits
History is built on other people's work. This page credits every piece of it the site uses, and says what you may do with ours.
The short version
- The writing, diagrams, maps and code on this site are ours, made for it.
- There are no photographs on the site yet. Every picture is drawn in code from published measurements.
- Coastlines come from Natural Earth, which is in the public domain.
- Quotations from ancient texts use published translations, credited where they appear.
- You may quote, print and share our pages for learning, with credit. For anything more, ask us.
1. What is ours
The text, the lessons, the diagrams, the map drawings, the fort plan, the stencil drawing, the timeline graphics and the software that makes them are © 2026 FALLINGHIPPO LIMITED, unless this page says otherwise. The Our Centuries name and the hand mark are ours.
You may share a link to any page, quote short extracts with credit to Our Centuries and a link, show pages to a class, and print or save a page for your own or classroom use. Anything more, such as putting our text or diagrams on another site, in a book or in a product, needs our written permission. Email hello@fallinghippo.com and say what you would like to do. We are glad to say yes to schools, teachers, libraries, museums and non-profit projects.
2. Pictures
Every picture on the site so far is drawn in code from published figures, and each caption says what it is drawn from and what is simplified. The hand stencil on the “first hands” lesson is generated in your browser and is not a copy of any real stencil.
When we add photographs, we will use only public-domain or openly licensed images, or images we have permission to use, and credit each one here and beside it.
3. Maps
| What | Source | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| World and British coastlines (1:110m and 1:50m land) | Natural Earth, naturalearthdata.com | Public domain |
| The same data, packaged for the web | world-atlas, by Mike Bostock | ISC licence |
| Wall lines, town and site positions | Drawn by us from published locations | Ours |
Coastlines are today’s, not as they were in the past.
4. Quotations and translations
| Text | Translation | Where used |
|---|---|---|
| Tab. Vindol. 291, the birthday invitation | Roman Inscriptions of Britain online, after A. K. Bowman and J. D. Thomas | Vindolanda |
We quote short extracts only, with credit, for the purposes of criticism, review and quotation under section 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and for teaching. The original tablet is in the British Museum.
5. Facts and figures
Facts are not owned by anyone, but the work of finding them is. Every fact on the site links to the paper, record or body that published it, and the full list is on the sources page.
6. Fonts
| Font | Designer | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| Cardo | David J. Perry | SIL Open Font License 1.1 |
The font is served from ourcenturies.com, packaged by Fontsource.
7. Software
| Software | Used for | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| Astro | Building the site | MIT |
| d3-geo | Drawing the maps, when the site is built | ISC |
| topojson-client | Reading the map data | ISC |
| Fontsource | Packaging the font | MIT (font under its own licence) |
No third-party code runs in your browser apart from what Astro compiles into the site’s own scripts.
8. Names and trade marks
Names of museums, universities and other organisations are used only to say where information comes from. It doesn’t mean they endorse this site.
9. How to ask us, or to tell us about a problem
To ask for permission to reuse our work, email hello@fallinghippo.com. Tell us what you want to use, where and why.
To tell us we have used something we shouldn’t, or got a credit wrong, email hello@fallinghippo.com with “Credit or copyright” in the subject, with the page and the work. We will look at it quickly and, where we are wrong, fix or remove it.
10. Changes
- 11 November 2026. First version.