How much has the world changed in a hundred years? A lot, and a pair of maps -- a century apart -- have emerged to illustrate what has and hasn't changed in the art of travel in that span of time.

In November 2014, Intelligent Life Magazine published a telling isochronic map of the planet from 1914, which revealed how long it took to get from London to any other point in the world back then.

The image was part of the book "An Atlas of Economic Geography", published by John G. Bartholomew who was "the scion of an Edinburgh mapmaking family and cartographer royal to King George V". It was a tool for promising traveler, trader and any other work that required going on the road. The comprehensive book contained information about climate, topography, products, languages and even diseases - everything one would need in exploration for pleasure or profession in 1914.

The isochronic map included in the map is especially interesting as it showed how much time it took to travel a hundred years ago. And now, Rome2rio (via Gizmodo) provided a point of comparison by unveiling an isochronic map for 2016.

From the range alone, it's clear the world is far more accessible these days than it was in the past. In the 1914 map, the travel time ranged from within five days at the fastest to over 40 days. In the map of present day, the spectrum starts at within half a day to over one and a half days.

According to the report from Intelligent Life Magazine, five days will take London travelers in 1914 as far as Azores in the west or Perm in the east. Today, that's not considered a short journey for a distance relatively near. Gizmodo pointed out that going to Seattle or Vancouver used to take over ten days, but now the journey can be completed in under 12 hours. The coldest city in the planet Yakutsk took 40 days to reach in the past, but now travel time is only three quarters of a day.

Obviously, the extreme change is primarily due to transportation methods. Whereas travelers used to rely on railways to get around, now air travel lets people access any destination in the world at a fraction of the time.

The maps put into perspective how fortunate travel enthusiasts are to be living at a time that exploration of far-flung places is quick and painless. Where are you planning to go this 2016?