423 – Flow-Charting the Ring Trilogy

 

Designed by J.R.R. Tolkien’s son Christopher and included in most editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the map of Middle-Earth is one of the best-known examples of fantasy cartography. The iconic map shows the fictional continent in which the action of the three books takes place, from Forodwaith in the north to Haradwaith in the south, and the Gulf of Lune in the west to the Sea of Rhûn in the east (was Middle-Earth deliberately framed to rhyme?)

Equally delightful, if not as yet as iconic, is this flow chart of Lord of the Rings. It charts the itinerary of the story’s main characters, individually and in group, showing when they meet, separate and rejoin each other. The progression is from left to right, not only in tune with the traditional (Western) reading direction but also mirroring the trajectory in the story itself, which starts in the Shire on Middle-Earth’s western edge and leads to Mordor in the east.

The geographic parallel only partly holds up: at the very end of the story, after they have returned to the Shire, some members of the Fellowship board ships to the west, but their trajectories trail off the map on its top right (i.e. northeastern) corner.

The map is however an excellent tool to identify the different strands of the story as it progresses. The main thread, in yellow, follows the Ring itself: first with Bilbo as Ringbearer and then Frodo, who carries it to Mordor to be destroyed. The trajectories are also colour-coded to identify the different races: green for Hobbits, grey for Wizards, light-brown for Men, dark-brown for Dwarves, light-blue for Elves, dark-blue for Ents. Sauron, the Evil One, is a dark red. Black is for the Orcs, Uruk-Hai and his other minions.

Battles, events and important episodes are indicated by a light grey background; the attack at Weathertop, the Council of Elrond, the Breaking of the Fellowship, the Battle at Helm’s Deep, etc.

This map is one of several movie narrative charts designed by and shown at xkcd, the marvellous webcomic of sarcasm, math, and language (the other charts being of the original Star Wars trilogy, Jurassic Park, Twelve Angry Men and Primer). The excellent work of xkcd often has a cartographic slant (as shown earlier on this blog at #118 and #331). This Lord of the Rings flow chart is reminiscent of the Minard map (#229). Other Tolkien-related maps are to be found at  #121 and #204.

Many thanks to all those who sent in this map.

PS – please note, as several commenters have pointed out, that this map is based on the cinematographic work, which is not a literal retelling of the literary original.

422 – Cartozoological Specimens

Cartozoology, the discipline dedicated to the discovery and study of animals outlined paradigmatically by street layouts as they appear on maps, took almost three decades to mature from idea to reality. It was conceived in 1974 on a plane between Oslo and Reykjavik; but the Norwegian Cartozoological Society was founded only in 2003. It seems to have produced only a handful of specimens and now appears to be dormant.

But what beauty, grace and humour those few specimens exhibit!

Patient zero of cartozoology was the Ur-Fish, a sea-dweller whose rudimentary shape was summarily extracted from Oslo’s grid of city streets. Later examples show more elegance and sophistication. A personal favourite is the West Side Riesenterrier (Canis diplomaticus), discovered between Oslo’s Slotsparken and Frognerparken in January 2003 by Roger Pihl, Secretary-General of the NCS.

Another nice one is the Ring-Nosed Dala Horse (Equus vallis circumnasata), discovered in March of 2003 by Eilert Sundt, another NCS Secretary-General.

Maybe it’s time to wake the NCS from its slumber, and expand the scope of cartozoology beyond its initial (and only) hunting grounds in Scandinavia. Here is the original NGS website in Norwegian (English version here). Strange Maps also welcomes new examples of cartozoology, and will showcase the best examples if and when enough fitting specimens are sent in.

Cartozoology was brought to our attention by musubana in the comments section of the recent entry on the Afro-Latinosaurus Rex (#420).

421- Faith, Science and the Flood

Faith and reason, usually jostling for primacy over one another, unite on this map to describe [t]he Earth-sphere after the Deluge in its broken state, shown with Mountains and valleys, great Sea-Bosom and Islands and Shallows of the same. The map was produced for Willem and Jan Goeree’s (1) immensely popular book Introductions to Biblical Knowledge (2), and apparently is based on a similar hemisphere map illustrating Thomas Burnet’s Sacred History of the World (3).

Burnet’s is an interesting book, the first British attempt to marry rational and biblical explanations for the genesis of the world. It typifies a wider attempt to unantagonise the progress of science with the doctrines of faith, by looking for natural rather than supernatural mechanisms behind divine intervention (4).

The problem, in this case at least, is that Burnet did so merely by faith in science, unburdened by any actual scientific facts. Burnet speculated that Noah’s Flood was only possible by the emergence of water from the earth’s hollow interior (a very popular and persistent misconception, see #85).

Burnet was quite selective in which pseudoscientific theories he found acceptable. When Isaac Newton suggested to him that the days might have been longer during Creation Week (supposedly to explain for the loads of work God got done), Burnet objected: the Supreme Being would not bend Nature’s laws.

As per Burnet’s example, this hemispherical presentation by the Goerees of the post-Flood continents shows, in a lighter blue, plenty of areas throughout the oceans which used to be dry land before the Deluge. The (non-existent) polar lands, Europe and Africa are linked by the light-blue areas, which also extend in all directions from Africa, and generally connect all now separate land masses to each other (did Burnet and the Goerees perhaps think this might explain why men and beasts live in places like America and Australia, isolated by vast expanses of water from the rest of the world?)

The Goeree map is also an interesting snapshot of Europe’s geographic knowledge in the late 17th century, which with all its misconceptions was approaching something resembling our present vision of the continents, having moved away from the purely symbolic tryptich maps (more on those at #87). Notable errors include the Arctic lands (see also #116), California as an island (see also #71), the sea where Alaska should be, the attachment of Greenland to what seems to be a Canadian mainland, of Australia to New Guinea.

Many thanks to peacay over at the ever excellent BibliOdyssey for sending in this map. Image found here on Old World Auctions, where a copy of the map recently sold for $375.

———–

(1) A Dutch father-and-son publishing team. Interestingly, their family name is that of a former island in the Dutch river delta (possibly their family’s ancestral home); the name of which was transplanted by Dutch seafarers to the island of Goree, just off the Senegalese coast, which has become a symbol of the transatlantic slave trade.

(3) In the original Dutch: Voor-Bereidselen Tot de Bybelsche Wysheid (1690).

(3) In the original Latin: Telluris Theoria Sacra (1681). First English edition in 1684.

(4) In the same vein, Burnet would later postulate that the Fall of Man might not have been an actual historical event, but rather a symbolic one.

420 – The Afro-Latinosaurus Rex

Is there a name for the obscure, but strangely alluring hobby of spotting animal shapes in geographic features*? Previously discussed examples on this blog of the as yet unnamed pastime are the Animals on the Underground (#119) and the Ontario Elephant (#340). Here is one that I would like to call the Afro-Latinosaurus Rex.

It is no coincidence that the continents of Africa and South America resemble two interlocking pieces of a puzzle (Brazil’s northeastern hump and Africa’s Gulf of Guinea are a particularly good fit). Some 170 million years ago, before continental drift pushed them apart, South America and Africa were united in an ancient supercontinent called Gondwanaland.

This sequence of maps reverses the drift that continues to widen the Atlantic Ocean, and returns to the age of the dinosaurs in another way. By overlapping South America and Africa, it creates a siamese continent, but also, if turned 90 degrees to the left, a convincing approximation of a dino’s head.

The narrow southern strip of South America shared by Chile and Argentina is the beast’s lower jaw, Africa’s southern part its upper jaw. The big, blunt bulk of West Africa is the animal’s neck. Lake Victoria, the greatest of African lakes, doubles as the menacing eye of the Afro-Latinosaurus…

Many thanks to Daryl K. Putman, Timothy Vowles, James Bisset, Mark and a few others for sending in this map, found here.

*: a somewhat similar activity, a discipline of divination, is called nephomancy: the ability to interpret shapes of clouds.

 

419 – France, Reconstructed from Apparently Inadequate Data

How little information do you need to be able to draw a map? This zen-like question provided the basis for a short article in the May 21st, 1971 issue of Nature, intriguingly entitled Construction of Maps from “Odd Bits of Information”.

The article, according to its author David G. Kendall of Cambridge University’s Statistical Laboratory, starts from a “rather general principle in historical geography”, i.e. that maps can indeed be produced from apparently inadequate data, and goes on to describe a research programme based on that principle, carried out by Kendall’s lab.

The research concentrated on setting up a suitable (dis)simularity matrix believed to “lie naturally” in a Euclidian space of k dimensions, making use of a computer programme called MD-SCAL. The article mentions two experiments, the first one involving the mapping of eight parishes of the district of Otmoor in Oxfordshire. Amazingly, a fairly accurate map for the eight parishes was extrapolated solely from data on the intermarriage rates between them for the period 1600-1850.

The second experiment involved a map of 88 French departments (excluding the Corsican and Parisian ones), with the only information available being “whether or not one of the 3,828 pairs of departments shares a common boundary.” The map thus computer-produced is one “in which each department is represented by a point, but this system of linked points is converted to a honeycomb of cells by exploiting a natural duality.”

Mr Kendall finally mentions a future experiment with MD-SCAL: “The next step [...] will be to attempt to reconstruct a fifteenth century manor from the abuttals in a contemporary cartulary.”

These maps show France as it really is, and France reconstructed from abuttal data. Please note that the departments are numbered not in the usual alphabetical order, but by “an alternative which approximately orders the departments first by longitude and then by latitude.”

Many thanks to Randall B. Irmis, the paleontologist who sent in these maps, and whose attention was originally drawn to the article following this one, on the dinosaur species called Hypsilophodon.

418 – The Turkish-Islamic Empire

Like Russia or the UK, Turkey is the successor state to a once dominant world power. And much as in those other countries, nostalgic memories of Empire (the Ottoman one, in Turkey’s case) compare unfavourably with today’s status as merely a ‘normal’ country.

All former superpowers must deal with a world that is decidedly less impressed by them than before. The resulting frustration is confined (mainly) to the extremist fringes of politics. But in those margins, chauvinist delusions of grandeur conspire to make up for lost glories. Point in case is Russia’s projected ‘Third Empire’ (see entry #177).

This map is another example of geopolitical grandstanding, but from a Turkish perspective. It shows what a global empire based on pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism would look like – a mega-state combining the Ummah (the lands where Islam dominates) with Turan (the name for all countries and regions inhabited by Turkic people). The Empire thus projected results from the maximum overlap of two distinct ideologies of which Turkey is, in the mind of the map-maker at least, the natural point of convergence. The Turkish-Islamic Empire (I can only infer that translation of the map’s title) occupies:

• Turkey in its present form, of course;
• The whole of Cyprus;
• Certain Muslim-majority areas in the Balkans, i.e. Bosnia and Albania
• As well as Eastern European regions where Turks or related nationalities live: in Bulgaria, the Crimea, southern Moldavia (i.e. Gagauzia)
• In Western Europe, areas where Turks or other Muslims are heavily present, i.e. France, Germany and Spain;
• Most of Africa north of the Equator (with notable exception of Liberia, parts of Nigeria, Mali, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia) and some parts to the south of it, namely the coastal areas of Kenia and Tanzania, and an enclave in the DR Congo;
• The whole of the Middle East, excluding Lebanon (partly Christian), but including Iran;
• A large part of the former Soviet Union, including all the central Asian republics (Turkic and Muslim) and large areas of Russia proper (indigenous Turkic peoples, who generally aren’t Muslim);
• Mongolia, East Turkestan (Chinese at present, recently the scene of riots between native Turkic muslims and immigrated Han Chinese);
• Afghanistan, Pakistan, almost all of India, half of Sri Lanka, all of Bangladesh, the whole of Indonesia and Malaysia and even the only partially muslim Philippines.

As a nationalist movement, pan-Turkism’s rise and heyday coincided with similar ideologies in 19th and 20th century Europe, such as Pan-Germanism, Pan-Slavism and even Zionism. Nationalism seems a largely discredited and spent force nowadays. Pan-Islamism is a bit more a la mode, as Islam as a global political force has been in the ascendant in recent decades.

It is, however, not clear that political Islam’s agenda is driven by a vision of the Caliphate, the once and future Empire covering the Ummah, under one ruler uniting absolute spiritual authority with temporal power. But surely it is significant, especially for this vision of a Turko-Islamic Empire, that the last holder of the title of Caliph, however symbolic by that time, was the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, deposed by Ataturk’s secularist republic.

 Which lends extra poignancy to the vision of Turkey as the lynchpin of this empire, covering all Muslims and all Turks. However, at no point did any sultan even come close to uniting all Turks and Muslims, or even all Turks or Muslims, in one state. So this Turko-Islamic Empire isn’t an object of nostalgia, but a political project. One can see why this would come naturally to hardcore Turkish nationalists, but it’s hard to see what’s in it for those who do not share their ‘overlap’. Why would a Siberian shaman feel any desire to be a citizen of the same state as a West African Muslim? Or vice versa?

Many thanks to Ilya Vinarski, another_m69, and others who contributed this map, found here.

417 – As It Might Have Been: Hexagonal London

It takes aspiring London cabbies two to four years to acquire ‘The Knowledge’. Only if they know their way around the 25,000 streets in a 6-mile radius from Charing Cross (and along 320 main roads within Greater London) will they be licensed to drive one of London’s iconic black cabs. The London Taxicab Examination System is reputed to be the hardest of its kind in the world, and this speaks to the complexity of the British capital’s road grid.

That complexity, and the cabbies’ Knowledge, put passengers at the risk of being overcharged, the Victorians feared. Mid-19th century, even before the current Examination System was instituted (in 1865), a Mr John Leighton devised a system to prevent passengers from being taken for a proverbial as well as a literal ride. Leighton, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, published a scheme to divide London in a number of hexagonals, specifically aimed at preventing overcharging by cab drivers.

“John Leighton suggested that the old borough boundaries should be altered to conform to a honeycomb pattern. Within a 5-mile radius of the General Post Office all the sprawling, differently sized boroughs were to become hexagonal-shaped areas, 2 miles across. There were 19 altogether with the City in the centre of the honeycomb. Each hexagonal borough would be identified by a letter, and the letter as well as a number would be painted or cut out of tin-plate to be visible by day and night on lampposts at every street corner.”

The proposal for a hexagonal London is described in London As It Might Have Been, a book by Felix Barber and Ralph Hyde, also detailing plans for a giant pyramid to house the remains five million dead Londoners, and a scheme to erect a structure in Wembley to dwarf the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Leighton’s hexagonal plan obviously never came to fruition; it is strangely reminiscent of a proposal dating from 1790 by Jacques-Guillaume Thouret to divide France into completely rectangular departments (#159) and of the ideal, geometric city as envisioned by Sir Ebenezer Howard in 1898 (#234).

Of the two maps shown here (*), the one the left shows the Metropolitan Parliamentary Boroughs as Constituted Under the Act of 1855, centred on the City, and shown with their subdivisions (St Pancras, for example, is divided in N, S, E and W). The result is a veritable hodgepodge of miniscule fiefdoms. The map on the right presents a more regimented view of London, re-divided in 2-mile hexagon-shaped boroughs, centred around the City in three concentric circles.

Six boroughs in the first circle are numbered thus (clockwise from the top):

• 1 Islington
• 2 Bethnal Green
• 3 Southwark
• 4 Kennington
• 5 Westminster
• 6 St Pancras

Twelve boroughs in the second circle are numbered thus (clockwise from the top):

• 1a Hornsey
• 2a Hackney
• 3a Old Ford
• 4a Poplar
• 5a Deptford
• 6a Peckham
• 7a Brixton
• 8a Battersea
• 9a Chelsea
• 10a Marylebone
• 11a St John’s Wood
• 12a Kentish Town

Eighteen boroughs, unnumbered, are in the third circle (clockwise from the top):

• Tottenham
• Stamford Hill
• Leyton Essex
• Forest Gate
• West Ham
• Blackwall
• Greenwich
• Lewisham
• Forest Hill
• Norwood
• Balham
• Wandsworth
• Fulham
• Kensington
• Paddington
• Willesden
• Hampstead
• Highgate

Many thanks to Simon Austin for sending in this map, found on Kosmograd, a blog animated by an interest in, among other things, utopian architecture, disurbanism, cyberspace. The relevant post starts from this original hexagonal idea to produce a contemporary hexagonal map of London.

(*) a bit dark and hazy; any image of better quality is very welcome.

416 – Iceland Crushed by Europe

 

With a society prospering in splendid isolation and a population smaller than one-thousandth of the EU total (1), Iceland until recently had little incentive to be subsumed by the Brussels bureaucracy, an institution judged by many to be like the bus in Speed: racing towards an undesirable outcome, but unable to stop.

Then, in the second half of 2008, the Downturn happened. Iceland was particularly badly hit. The collapse of its three major banks constituted, mutatis mutandis, the worst national banking crisis ever, anywhere (2). Grassroots protests against the Icelandic government’s mishandling of the crisis swelled to something called the Kitchenware Revolution, a reference to the pots and pans being banged. The protesters also hurled snowballs and yoghurt at the parliament building, breaking at least one window. Pretty light-hearted stuff, but by January 2009, the protests turned from anecdotal to properly riotous, with police using tear gas to disperse thousands of protesters – a situation unheard of in the normally placid world of Icelandic politics.

Previous to the Downturn, Icelanders assumed that being in the European Free Trade Association the stability of belonging to a large trade area without imposing on their independence, economic or otherwise. But the banking crisis exposed the vulnerability of the Icelandic economy, especially the volatility of its currency, the krona (ISK). In January 2008, it traded at 90 ISK to the euro. On October 7th, the Icelandic central bank tried to peg the krona to the euro at a rate of 131 to 1, but it plummeted to 340 the next day, and trading was suspended. Opinion polls conducted at the end of 2008 suggested that at least 68% of Icelanders now opted for EU membership, with an even larger majority (over 72%) wanting to adopt the euro.

In January 2009, a euroskeptic government was replaced by a more pro-EU one. The new prime minister Valgerður Sverrisdóttir floated the idea of joining the eurozone but not the EU (3), but a government study considering that option has concluded, in March of 2009, that combining membership of the EU and the eurozone would be the better choice. In mid-July 2009, the Icelandic parliament approved the country’s application for EU membership. The EU has already indicated that Iceland might be able to join as early as 2011, together with Croatia.

Necessity does not imply enthusiasm, however, and Icelanders remain lukewarm europhiles at best – as illustrated by this map, sent in by Icelander Anna Rögnvaldsdóttir. She explains that it is the product of Fiton, an Icelandic ad agency. “Recently, [they] held an in-house poster competition (just for the fun of it, I gather). The challenge: To design a propagandistic poster either in favour of Iceland joining the EU or against.”

This one, clearly in the Against-camp, is the image of a Frankenstein-like monster, composed of European Union member states, about to crush Iceland underfoot. Predictably, one of those feet is Italy, already boot-shaped. The one about to step on Iceland, however, is made up of the UK and the Czech republic, with the latter’s Moravian borderlands within channel-swimming distance of the southern Welsh and western Cornish coast. Crete is jammed into Scotland’s North Sea coast while the rest of Greece balances uneasily atop the Hebrides. Slovakia, Bulgaria and Hungary make up the rest of the EU monster’s right leg.

The left leg is completed by Germany resting on Italy (not that much of a stretch, since normally only a thin sliver of Austria separates the two). Romania, on top of Germany, actually does border Hungary, which is placed right next to it. The core of the European bogeyman is made up of France (fittingly, some might say), while Finland and Denmark are its left arm and Sweden and Belgium its right arm.

Poland could be considered Europe’s left shoulder, but Ireland seems just to be there as filler – and is that Albania just north of the Galway coast? That can’t be right. The head looks scary and non-human, Austria and Slovenia mimicking mandibles straight out of a science fiction movie and Spain’s Galician protrusion representing a brow more prominent than that of the most eminent neanderthal. Atop the whole construction, somewhat forlornly, sits the Netherlands.

What a contrast, this scary composite picture of Europe, to the heart-shaped image of the United States puzzled together in a similar way in #402.

————-

(1) 320,000 Icelanders versus 497 million EU citizens.
(2) estimates of the foreign debt held by Landsbanki, Glitnir and Kaupthing are of more than €50 billion, or €160,000 per Icelander. Or almost 6 times Iceland’s gdp (of €8.5 billion).
(3) as is currently the case in Montenegro and Kosovo (which previous to the euro had used the Deutschmark) and the Vatican, Monaco and San Marino (which as per agreement are allowed to coin their own euros) and Andorra (which uses the euro by default, having previously used the Spanish peseta and the French franc).

415 – Gagauzia, Land of the Straight-Nosed Turks

If the saying is true that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy, then landlocked, frigate-less Moldova is only halfway there. The Eastern European republic, celebrated for its obscurity, has struggled with its national identity ever since breaking free of the Soviet bear-hug in the early 1990s.

Formerly known as the Soviet republic of Moldavia, Moldova shares its language with neighbouring Romania (1), but insists on calling it Moldovan rather than Romanian. This doesn’t half annoy the Romanians, who would like to see the matter rectified before Moldova joins them in the European Union (2).

But while the Moldovans were busy maintaining that they are not Romanian, some of their countrymen were keen to stress that they are not Moldovan. As with most post-soviet national identities, Moldova’s was based on the dominant ethnicity, leaving minorities wondering what they were doing in a state run by Moldovans and for Moldovans. This spurred two separate autonomist movements.

The mainly Russian region of Transnistria has seceded with support of the Russian army, and is maintained by it in in a state of phantom-nationhood. Its obscure history – and especially its strange shape – has been described on entry #311 of this blog. Another, more amicable path towards autonomy was achieved by the Gagauz, a tribe of Turkish-speaking orthodox Christians whose homeland, in the south of Moldova, received a degree of autonomy – and the promise of independence, if Moldova chooses to (re)unite with Romania.

Where the Gagauz came from, is unclear. Local historians have listed over 20 different theories on their origins. There is even uncertainty about the origin of the ethnonym itself. ‘Gagauz’ might mean ’straight nose’, it possibly refers to the Oghuz tribe, or it could be a reference to Kaykaus II, a Seljuk Sultan who settled in the area. Wrapping this riddle in a mystery is the fact that, before they migrated from Bulgaria to areas vacated by the Nogai tribe in present-day Moldova, Gagauz referred to themselves as “old Bulgars” or “true Bulgars”. The question whether the Gagauz are turkified Bulgars or christianised Turks is hardly trivial – we are, after all, in the Balkans – but very difficult to answer.

During the 20th century, the Gagauz have been independent twice, albeit very briefly. In 1906, a peasant uprising led to the Republic of Komrat, which collapsed after either 5 or 15 days (sources vary). In August 1990, Gagauzia proclaimed its autonomy, mainly in reaction to Moldova’s adoption of Moldovan as its official language. On 18 August 1991, the day of the Moscow coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev, Gagauzia proclaimed its independence. Transnistria would follow its example in September 1991. Both declarations were annulled by the Moldovan government.

While Transnistria and Moldova are still at odds with each other, Gagauzia came back into the fold. On 23 December 1994, the Moldovan parliament approved Gagauzia’s current special status. The size of the region was determined by referendum, three towns and 27 villages wanting to be included. The Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia (3) consists of four separate areas in the southern part of Moldova, near the border tripoint with Romania and Ukraine. The largest, northern area contains the region’s capital, Komrat.

The names of all localities on this map are marked in the region’s three official languages, Romanian/Moldovan, Gagauz and Russian (here transcribed in the Latin alphabet), and to some comic effect when the names are exactly the same (Avdarma/Avdarma/Avdarma). The region’s official names are Găgăuzia (in Moldovan/Romanian), Gagauz-Yeri (in Gagauz) and Гагаузия (in Russian).

Information about Gagauzia is scarce, apart from the most basic statistics. The area’s total surface is 1,832 km2, its population hovers around the 150,000 mark, 83% of which is Gagauz. The capital Komrat is home to 23,000 people, and its main industries are rugs, butter and wine. A National Museum of Gagauz People and History is located in the town of Besalma (“Five Apples”). About 40% of the Gagauz are city-dwellers, and of those, 18% has a phone (in comparison to only 8% of rural Gagauz). The Gagauz elect their own Governor (Guvernator in Moldovan/Romanian, Bashkan in Gagauz), at present Mihail Formuzal.

This map found here on Wikipedia. 

 

(1) Itself formerly known under the slightly more menacing-sounding moniker of Rumania. See also Belarus, formerly known as Belorussia. These countries not only dropped ‘Soviet’ and/or ‘socialist’ from their titulature, but found it necessary to modify their proper name. The implied critique is that the communists couldn’t even get the spelling of their countries right – the ultimate insult of a failed utopian project. (Update: commenters point out a better explanation for the Rumania/Romania word pair. So there goes that theory).

(2) A dispute reminiscent of the one between Greece, which sees itself as the sole custodian of all matters Macedonian, and the Former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, which on Greece’s intransigent insistence still has to circumspectly describe itself on international fora with the acronym FYROM. It might yet catch on, and the proud Fyromans will then have a toponym all of their own to defend.

(3) Or ATUG. Cf sup.

414 – Strangling Hitler-Germany

It was recently revealed that the recently deceased Michael Jackson thought he might have “cured” Adolf Hitler of his evil ways if he’d had an hour or so alone with the Number One Nazi. That would have had to be one hell of a moonwalk. For although Jacko believed that even the Führer possessed enough goodness in his heart to be saved from his own Dark Side, most people prefer to think of him as incurably and inexorably nefarious. They would presumably use their Hour with Hitler not to dissuade him, but to dispatch him to the nether regions of the hereafter. In popular culture, Hitler is not just an example of evil, he is its epitome – as close to the devil incarnate as ever a mortal man is likely to get.

As he now almost completely overlaps with the concept of evil in the public’s eye, so Hitler once also symbolised the country he led, iron-fistedly, from hubris through hatè to nemesis (the Greek version of the warning that who lives by the sword shall die by it). The Germans, who excel at describing complex phenomena with single words, also have one for this particular period of their own history, when Shepherd and Flock were as one: Hitlerdeutschland.

But to have political leadership personalised to the extent dictators are wont to do (or unable to avoid), also means exposing the entire regime to the ridicule directed at its leader. Hitler’s temperamental rhetorical style opened his whole ideology up to parody (e.g. Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator). His personification of the Nazi regime also facilitated Allied propaganda during World War Two, as exemplified by this map.

A hand reaching out from the west is seen strangling a Germany in its pre-war borders – a shape cleverly concomitant with Hitler’s silhouette. The Weser estuary doubles as Hitler’s contorted mouth, the Schleswig region near the Danish border is his nose. His cap is captured by the winged layout of German territory in the east, with Pomerania in the north and Silesia in the south. Berlin is Hitler’s eye. Hitler’s throat, being strangled by the Allied hand, is the industrial area of the Ruhr, no doubt a reference to Allied air raids meant to cripple Nazi Germany’s capacity to wage war.

Many thanks to Ilya Vinarsky for sending in this map (found here), which unfortunately is rather low-res, rendering the writing rather illegible. Any higher-resolution images are welcome.

413 – The McFarthest Place: 145 Mi to the Nearest Big Mac

 

There are over 13,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the US, or about 1 for every 23,000 Americans. But even market penetration this advanced doesn’t mean that McDonald’s is everywhere. Somewhere in South Dakota is the McFarthest Spot, the place in the US geographically most removed from the nearest McD’s (*). If you started out from this location, a few miles north of State Highway 20 (which runs latitudinally between Highways 73 in the west and 65 in the east), you’d have to drive 145 miles to get your Big Mac (if you could fly, however, it’d be only 107 miles).

This map is the brainchild of Stephen Von Worley, who got to thinking about the strip malls sprawling out along I-5 in California’s ever less rural Central Valley: “Just how far can you get from generic convenience? And how would you figure that out?”

His yardstick for that thought experiment would be the ubiquitous Golden Arches of McDonald’s – still the world’s largest hamburger chain, and to cite Von Worley, the “inaugural megacorporate colonizer of small towns nationwide.” That’s not the whole story: like other convenience providers aimed at the motorised consumer such as gas stations and motels, McDonald’ses have a notable tendency to occur on highways and, specifically, to cluster at their crossroads.

This map moreover demonstrates that the spread of McD’s closely mirrors the population density of the Lower 48, the most notable overall feature of which is the sudden transition, along the Mississippi, of a relatively densely populated eastern half to a markedly less populated western half of the country. Some notable ‘dark spots’ in McDensity east of the Mississippi are the interior of Maine, the Adirondack region of New York state, a large part of West Virginia, and the Everglades area of southern Florida.

Out west, the Arches are fewer and further between, with the exception of the heavily populated coastal areas. To achieve identical density to the rest of the country, this sparsely burgered part of the country would have to be sandwiched between them so that southern California and western Texas would almost touch, and Seattle would be a day’s drive from Minneapolis. The blackest holes in the western McTapestry are the Nevada desert, some mountainous parts of Oregon and Idaho, and the plains of South Dakota – home to the aforementioned McFarthest Spot.

This map found here on Mr Von Worley’s blog, Weather Sealed. Many thanks to all who sent it in: Laura Hope Evans, Raphaël Schroeter, George Nassas, Frank LeRoy, Dana Hanley, Findlay Christopher Thomas, Jonathan Shomroni, Stephanie McCain, Alan Cunningham, Marc Dressler, Simon Holding, Patrick Dea, Jake Crouch, Stannous Flouride, criggie, Martin Sovik and Leela Kumar.

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(*) N 45.45955 W 101.91356, to be exact, or if you prefer the poetry of toponymy to the precision of a grid reference: 12.5 km WxNW of Glad Valley, 25 ExSE of Meadow, 31 km N of Iron Lightning and 32 km NxNW of Thunder Butte Creek (all in SD). Note: this McFarthest Spot did not take into account McD’s geographic penetration in Alaska and Hawai’i, and therefore only applies to the 48 contiguous states.

412- Federal Feathers

 

The German language describes the difference between two main types of federal states aptly and concisely as being between a Bundesstaat (1) and a Staatenbund (2). The European Union, in which the 27 constituent nations retain sovereignty over such key issues as defence and foreign policy, clearly is an example of the latter. The United States, where federal sovereignty clearly trumps states’ rights, is of the former type.

This does not mean, however, that the 50 constituent states are completely homogenised; in fact, they exhibit a marked tendency to stress their uniqueness and individuality, among other means by choosing a raft of state insignia – even if often as trivial as a State Toy (Kansas: Etch-A-Sketch), State Instrument (Kentucky: Appalachian dulcimer), or State Beverage (Massachusetts: cranberry juice).

Only a handful of states have adopted such idiosyncratic symbols. A much more popular one, adopted by all states and DC in fact, is the State Bird. Funny thing, though: instead of choosing birds unique to each state, or at least not shared with other states, these insignia show an intriguing degree of overlap, and geographic contiguity – as shown by this map.

* Seven states in a contiguous area in the Mid-West and Mid-Atlantic share the Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) for a State Bird. These states, coloured red, are: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia. The Northern Cardinal is called Cardinal because it looks like it’s dressed in the flowing red robes or Roman Catholic cardinals, and Northern because it only occurs in that hemisphere. It is also called Redbird, because of the brightly coloured plumage of the male (the female is a more dullish brown-red).

* Six green-coloured southern states (Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Florida and South Carolina) all have the Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottus) as a state symbol. Mockingbirds get their name from their ability to mimick (or mock, if you will) the songs of other birds and even other species.

* Six states west of the Mississippi and north of the Missouri Compromise Line share the Western Meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta) as a State Bird. The Western Meadowlark is a blackbird with yellow underparts. These states, here coloured purple, are Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon and Wyoming.

* Four states opt for the bluebird – although in the case of Nevada and Idaho it’s the Mountain Bluebird (Siala curricuides), and for Missouri and New York it’s the Eastern Bluebird (Siala sialis). The former is bluer than the latter, and occurs mainly west of the Rockies, whereas the latter’s habitat is to the east thereof.

* Three states go yellow by opting for the American Goldfinch (Carduelis tristis): Washington, Iowa and New Jersey.

We therefore have five dominant colours on the ornithological map of the US: red, blue, green, purple and yellow. Thus, ornithology is more than double as colourful as politics, which only manages to colour the States in red or blue. Most other state birds have mottled, multicoloured coats, but at least one colour could be added: that of New Hampshire’s Purple Finch (Carpodacus purpureus).

Many thanks to Raynor Ganan for sending in this map, found here on the Ragbag.

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(1) – litt. ‘federal state’, federation.
(2) – litt. ‘federation of states’, confederation.

411 – Lit Map of Frisco

Whoever after due and proper warning shall be heard to utter the abominable word “Frisco,” which has no linguistic or other warrant, shall be deemed guilty of a High Misdemeanor, and shall pay into the Imperial Treasury as penalty the sum of twenty-five dollars. - Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, 1872

While the self-proclaimed Norton I, a.k.a. Joshua A. Norton (1819-1880), may have contributed more to San Francisco’s reputation for eccentricity than to its literary allure, the latter does owe a thing or two to the former.

The Beat Generation, perhaps the best-known bunch of literati to be associated with Frisc… I mean, San Francisco(*), were nothing if not eccentric – their liberal attitude towards sex, drugs and jazz helped gear-shift American culture from the conformist Fifties into the anything goes Sixties.

The works and influence of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti et alii transformed San Francisco into one of the focal points of the countercultural movement that swept the western world in the Sixties and Seventies. But the literary endowment of the city transcends that flowers-in-your-hair phase, as shown by this map.

Based on a similar map of St Petersburg by Vera Evstafieva and Andrew Biliter (**), this one places city-relevant quotes on a San Francisco map, where possible on the district the quote relates to. San Francisco Bay, cable cars, the Mission, the Tenderloin District and Chinatown are all name-checked in this map, which quotes following authors:

• Alice Adams (Second Chances – 1988)
• Isabel Allende (Daughter of Fortune – 1999)
• Maya Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – 1969)
• Gertrude Atherton (The House of Lee – 1940)
• Albert Benard de Russailh (Last Adventure – 1851)
• Ambrose Bierce (The Death of Halpin Frayser – 1891)
• Herb Caen (Herb Caen’s San Francisco – 1957)
• Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – 1968)
• Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – 2000)
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Dog – 1958)
• Allen Ginsberg (Sunflower Sutra – 1956)
• Andrew Sean Greer (The Confessions of Max Tivoli – 2004)
• Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon – 1930)
• Robert Hass (Bookbuying in the Tenderloin – 1967)
• Bob Kaufman (No More Jazz at Alcatraz)
• Maxine Hong Kingston (China Men – 1980)
• Jack Kerouac (On the Road – 1957)
• Gus Lee (China Boy – 1991)
• Armistead Maupin (Tales of the City – 1978)
• Czeslaw Milosz (Visions From San Francisco Bay – 1975)
• Alejandro Murguia (The Medicine of Memory – 2002)
• Frank Norris (McTeague – 1899)
• Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49 – 1968)
• Ishmael Reed (Earthquake Blues – 1988)
• William Saroyan (The Living and the Dead – 1936)
• John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley – 1961)
• George Sterling (The Cool, Grey City of Love – 1920)
• Robert Louis Stevenson (Arriving in San Francisco – 1879)
• Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club – 1989)
• Michelle Tea (Valencia – 2000)
• Hunter S. Thompson (The Great Shark Hunt – 1964)
• Mark Twain (Early Rising, As Regards Excursions to the Cliff House – 1864)
• Sean Wilsley (On the Glory of It All – 2005)

Funny thing about these quotes by San Francisco-linked writers: ‘Frisco’ pops up twice…

Many thanks to John McMurtrie of the San Francisco Chronicle for sending in this map, which accompanied an article in the Chronicle in mid-July (online version here on SFGate, the paper’s website).

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(*) The abbreviation San Fran is apparently equally disliked by the city’s residents.

(**) a low-res version here.

410 – Manifest Density: Three Dutch Megacities

At 404 inhabitants per square kilometre (1,040/mi2), the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated nations in the world (1). The country’s population density, over 23 times the global average, is a factor in the national discussion on immigration, arming proponents of stricter rules with the slogan “Nederland is vol” (“The Netherlands is full”). While that sounds conversation-stoppingly irrefutable, the premise of that particular political slogan is easily proved wrong – with these maps.

The maps are the work of world-renowned Dutch architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas, whose influential publications on urban design include S,M,L,XL. That 1,376-page, 2.7-kg (6-pound) behemoth of a book is a rumination on “Manhattanism” – i.e. the tendency of city centre densities to be taken to new heights, sometimes literally, in the form of an urban grid filled with skyscrapers. These three maps demonstrate the scope of super-concentrated urbanity by applying two distinct types of density to a population-versus-surface configuration reputed to be “full”.

The top map shows how full the Netherlands would be if its 15 million-strong (2) population would be concentrated in the density of Los Angeles (3). The Dutch would occupy no more than 6,000 km2 (2,317 mi2) barely filling out one-seventh of its total area (41,526 km2; 16,033 mi2). Repeating that experiment with the population density of Manhattan (4) substituted for LA’s, the second map shows how all of the Netherlands’ inhabitants would live cheek-by-jowl in an area no larger than 600 km2 (232 mi2), which would occupy no more than 1.44% of the total territory of the Netherlands – concentrated in the south of the country’s Limburg panhandle. The third map unwraps that same area to a strip along the 345 km-long (214 mile) Belgian-Dutch border, which would be no wider than 1.75 km (1.08 mile).

Koolhaas labelled these three thought experiments in urban design “Puntstad” (Point City), “Zuidstad” (South City) and “Grensstad” (Border City) respectively. It would be interesting to see which real-life effects such a whimsical realignment of the Netherlands would have on Dutch society. The LA version of the Netherlands doesn’t seem too bad - a bit congested, but at least there’s still easy access to the uninhabited north, providing great hunting, fishing and trekking opportunities for the completely urbanised Dutch. The mega-Manhattan in Holland’s southern extremity, however, conjures up some of the horrors that occur when too many test rats are packed together in too little space. And wouldn’t Border City be the most improbable, unworkable, unliveable city in the world, suffering from a cross between the challenges posed by Chile’s elongation and the Gaza Strip’s overcrowding?

Many thanks to Joeri Cornille for sending in this map.

(1) the 27th out of 238 according to Wikipedia, although if all dependent territories (Macau, Hong Kong, Gibraltar, Bermuda, Guernsey, Jersey, the Palestinian Territories, Saint-Martin, Aruba, Mayotte, Puerto Rico) are disregarded, it climbs to 16. Subtracting densely populated miniature states such as Monaco, Singapore, the Vatican, Bahrain, Malta, the Maldives, Barbados, Mauritius, Nauru, San Marino and Tuvalu edges it up to 5th place, preceded only by (in descending order) Bangladesh, Taiwan, South Korea and the Lebanon.
(2) these maps use outdated data (I nominate the term “outa-data” for this type of thing). The 2009 estimate is 16.5 million.
(3) according to this map: 2,500/km2 (6,474/mi2), although according to Wikipedia it’s 3,168/km2 (8,205/mi2).
(4) according to this map: 25,000/km2 (64,740/mi2), Wikipedia says 27,490.9/km2 (71,201/mi2).

409 – A Map of FDR’s Vacation

Whether out of financial prudence or budgetary necessity, the annual summer vacation has been a “staycation” for millions of families during this recession year. Local attractions have had to do, far-flung destinations will have to wait.

US presidents are not subject to the same level of financial stringency – at least not on a personal level: the presidential salary (*) easily allows for a luxurious trip to anywhere in the world. However, for reasons more to do with political symbolism, presidents choose to holiday domestically (**). Most recently, the Obamas vacationed on Martha’s Vineyard, the island off the Massachusetts coast also favoured by the Clintons during Bill’s presidency.

Because the exclusive, snobbish image of the Vineyard clashes with the economic hardships many Americans are now experiencing, President Obama felt obliged to defend the “quality time” he got to spend with his family there. President Clinton was advised to stay away from the island for a while in order not to appear ‘out of touch’ with ordinary Americans.

 Clearly, president Roosevelt did not have similar concerns in 1935. Even though the country was still suffering from the Great Depression, FDR went out of country to go deep-sea fishing off the Pacific coast of Mexico – but he did combine work with pleasure:

• FDR left Washington (symbolised on this map by an image of Congress rather than the White House) by train, travelling west to alight in St Louis, MO; Omaha, NE; Fremont, NE (where the president had a speaking engagement); Cheyenne, WY; and Salt Lake City, UT.
• The president also spoke at the Boulder Dam (now known as the Hoover Dam), at that point still a giant work in progress. The dam was the world’s largest concrete structure when it was completed, a year later – two years ahead of schedule.
• FDR held speeches in Los Angeles and San Diego, possibly at the opening of that city’s California Pacific Exposition, held in Balboa Park (1935-1936).
• That sort of concluded the official part of FDR’s Grand Tour, for then he boarded a US Navy cruiser to the Pacific Ocean off Mexico. The president, a keen angler, probably got some serious deep-sea fishing done.
• FDR’s cruiser also called at Cocos Island, an uninhabited island about 340 miles out of the Pacific coast of Costa Rica (and not officially annexed by that country until 1947; it later might have served as Michael Crichton’s inspiration for the insular dinosaur sanctuary in his novel Jurassic Park).
• A final stop on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal is indicated as Pearl Island. This is probably Isla del Rey, the main island of the Pearl Islands, an archipelago of over 100 islands (and probably best known now as the backdrop for several series of the Survivor reality tv show).
• When crossing over into the Atlantic, president Roosevelt was not really visiting another country. The Panama Canal Zone was under US administration from 1903 to 1979. Incidentally, one of its more famous native sons is John McCain, who, had he been elected president in 2008, probably would have attracted his own set of ‘birthers’ (i.e. those who dispute his eligibility on the grounds that he was not born in the US).
• The home stretch of FDR’s vacation jaunt led him across the Caribbean, past the eastern edge of Cuba (so close to Guantanamo, even then an American outpost, that one wonders whether he wouldn’t have stopped over there too).
• Curiously, the end destination of FDR’s cruise is not indicated – possibly because it was unknown or kept secret at the time of publication. Two possibilities are indicated: Charleston, SC and Annapolis, MD.

Many thanks to Dan Anderson for sending in this map, taken form an (unspecified) newspaper from Green Bay, WI.

(*) $400,000 a year since the last raise in 2001, not including travel expenses of $50,000 a month and other perks.

(**) Abraham Lincoln left the White House for extended periods, but only went to Soldier’s Home, on a hill still inside the District of Columbia. Probably wise for a wartime leader not to travel too far away from the office. Several more recent presidents delighted in the downtime spent on their ranches. Lyndon Johnson loved to spend time on his ranch in Texas, where he had a herd of 400 Hereford cattle. Ronald Reagan spent a lot of time on horseback at his Rancho del Cielo near Santa Barbara, CA. George W. Bush broke the record for most days spent on presidential vacation while clearing brush on his ranch in Crawford, TX. Others vacationed according to their dynasty. The Kennedys had made Hyannis Port, MA their family resort, and the Kennebunkport, ME mansion favoured by George Bush (Sr) has been in the family since the early 20th century. Still others mix work and pleasure to such an extent that their holiday homes became known as the ‘Florida White House’ (Richard Nixon’s place in Key Biscayne, FL), the ‘Western White House’ (the same’s mansion in San Clemente’ CA), the ‘Little White House’ (Harry Truman’s Key West pad, used before him by president Taft and Thomas Edison, and after him by presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy). Another ‘Little White House’ was the pine house built for FDR in Warm Springs, GA. The president felt the springs after which the town was named were beneficial for the symptoms of his polio. He died in that house in 1945.

408 – Big Wheel Keep On Turnin’: The Mainzer Rad

The Wheel of Mainz is an essential element of the heraldry of the German city and archbishopric of Mainz. It is a regionally prominent symbol in Rheinland-Pfalz (the Rhineland-Palatinate, one of Germany’s constituent states, or Bundesländer) and beyond, as indicated by this map. The Mainzer Rad is a silver-coloured, six-spoked wheel on a red background. The city of Mainz uses a double representation of the wheel to distinguish its Wappen (coat of arms) from that of the Kurstaat (Electorate) of Mainz, which used a single wheel.

The lack of certainty on the origins of the Wheel of Mainz has led to a wealth of theories. Among the less verifiable ones is a presumed origin in the cult of Mithras, the now extinct religion of Persian extraction that was popular throughout the Roman Empire before Christianity became the flavour of the millennium. Another one links the heraldic symbol to the equally pre-Christian worship of Mogon, a Celtic sun-god. An early Christian origin is postulated by those who see it as a stylised rendition of emperor Constantine’s heraldic use of the interwoven Greek letters chi (X) and rho (P), the first ones of the epitheton christos (‘the anointed one’).

A slightly more credible origin story, if only because it is datable to the year 975, is of when Willigis, the son of a cartwright, was elected archbishop of Mainz. He championed the Wheel as part of his heraldry to honour his modest antecedents. But since this version was popularised by the Brothers Grimm (in their Deutsche Sagen, or German Sagas), this version is probably also nothing more than a fairy-tale.

The wheel most probably refers to an attribute of Saint Martin, patron saint of the city and the Dom (cathedral) of Mainz. Certainly, imagery on a city council seal dated to around 1300 shows the saint with the double wheel since associated with the city. Furthermore, for some reason, the mediaeval archbishops of Mainz were also called currum Dei (charioteers of God). The transportational metaphors of both wheel and chariot might be reducable to the biblical vision of the prophet Ezechiel of the Chariot of God.

The importance of Mainz as a secular and religious centre doubtlessly was instrumental in the spread of the Wheel’s heraldic use far beyond the city walls. In mediaeval times, the archbishop of Mainz was the substitute of the Pope north of the Alps, making Mainz the only see other than Rome referred to as a Holy See. This religious primacy led to secular prominence as well. The archbishop of Mainz not only was a prince-bishop (i.e. a secular leader), he was also a Kurfürst (an Elector, i.e. a member of the electoral college that voted in the next German Emperor), making Mainz a Kurstaat (Electorate) on a footing similar only to Cologne and Trier. These three religious electoral states were known as Kurmainz, Kurköln and Kurtrier. The archbishop of Mainz was the most prominent, as he was also the president of the imperial electoral college, as well as the arch-chancellor of Imperial Germany until the early 19th-century involvement of revolutionary France in Germany, which would lead to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.

This map shows the heraldic distribution of the Wheel of Mainz.It is used in the coat of arms of the Bundesland Rheinland-Pfalz (the state of Rhineland-Palatinate; light pink), several Landkreise (administrative districts; dark pink) around Mainz and more north in a contiguous area from Göttingen to (but not including) Weimar. It obviously also figures in the heraldry of the bishopric of Mainz (the yellow-striped area, covering also a large enclave in central Hesse), and in the coat of arms of the Eichsfeld, an area in Lower Saxony and Thuringia that has been associated with the archbishopric of Mains over several centuries. The usage of the Wheel of Mainz in the heraldry of Gemeinden (communes) and Ortsteile (administrative subdivisions) generally corresponds with the areas described above, except for a sprinkling of occurrences, mainly in northern Hesse.

This map found on this page at Wikipedia (available under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2). Many thanks to Aleksa Jorga for suggesting it.

407 – Buss, the Un-Discovered Island

In September 1578, while sailing near Greenland’s southernmost point at Cape Farewell, captain James Newton of the Emmanuel recorded in his log the first sighting of an island “seeming to be fruiteful, full of woods, and a champion countrie.” The island came to be known as Buss, after the type of boat that discovered it – the Emmanuel being a short, two-masted herring buss. And despite its non-existence, Buss Island appeared on nautical maps of the area well into the 19th century, making it one of the more persistent of the many phantom islands that once dotted maps of the North Atlantic.

The existence of Buss Island was first made public in a book written by George Best in the same year of its discovery, called A True Discourse of the Late Voyages of Discouerie for Finding of a Passage to Cathaya by the North-Weast, under the Conduct of Martin Frobisher, Generall. It appeared on the Molyneux globe (1592) and a Plancius map (1594), and was again spotted in 1605 by James Hall, albeit in a different place from where he expected it. No matter: Buss Island continued to make regular map appearances, was deemed as real as Frisland (another fabrication since disproved – and mentioned earlier on this blog) or Greenland (which still exists). It was sighted again in 1668 by Zachariah Gillam, captain of the Nonsuch (sic).

The 1671 claim by Thomas Shepherd, captain of the Golden Lion, to have visited, explored and mapped the island extensively, led to an royal charter and an expedition aimed specifically at Buss. Shepherd’s description was tantalisingly precise (this map by John Seller, from 1673, details Shaftesbury Harbour and  Arlington Harbour and a small, outlying Shepherd Island, among other illegible data). But of course, the elusive island would only reveal itself to sailors not looking for it, not to those who sought it out. This stubborn refusal to be found, coupled with an increase of transatlantic traffic, caused the presumed size of Buss Island to shrink and later its very existence to be questioned. Eventually, it was presumed the island had ’sunk’, a theory that reconciled the earlier, incontrovertible eyewitness reports with its obvious absence.

It took another Arctic expedition to also put the sinking theory to rest. In 1818, the Isabella, captained by John Ross (and still looking, as Frobisher had been, for the Northwest Passage) established that there were no shallows in the area proposed for Buss’s sinking. Ironically, Ross himself mistook a North Atlantic mirage for dry land, naming it “Crocker Hills”; the controversy of their either-or-not-existence would later dent his reputation (which was later redeemed by his discovery of the magnetic north pole, and the heroic, 4-year expedition during which he made it).

Only in 1856 would Buss Island disappear from the last nautical charts, the rich potential of its existence finally yielding to the disappointing reality of its un-discovery. The only mysteries remaining are what might have been mistaken for Buss Island: mirages? Parts of Greenland? Lies or delusions to make a dreary North Atlantic trip more interesting?

This map taken from this page at Cape May Magazine.

406 – “Caruso Can’t Touch You”: A Road Map to Success

I just love allegorical maps like these, if only for their delightfully straightforward semiotics. This map of the Road to Success depicts an actual road, winding up to success signified by a lyre.

This (literally) lyrical prize is achieved by first entering the Gate of Opportunity. People are running through, but some have already settled in to the sit-down life of ease and comfort in what looks like the Beer Garden of Bohemianism.

Some manage to pass by those delights to check in to the Hotel Know It All, because they hold to mottoes such as Nobody can tell me, or I don’t need to practice, or I’m a born genius, or yet: I don’t need system.

Similarly misguided cries are heard on the patio of the Mutual Admiration Society: You’re the Hit of the Age, You’ll Set the World on Fire, You’re a Wonder My Boy, or (my favourite): Caruso Can’t Touch You.

Those who avoid those three establishments of ill repute might still fall victim to the deep, dark well of Illiteracy, or the spinning, disorienting wheel of Conceit. A select few manage to board the train called Right System at the Railroad Station.

That doesn’t stop some from running along the rail track towards Success, only to succumb to the ugly hand of Vices, the spinning fan of Bad Habits (blowing its victims towards Oblivion), or the pitfall of Bad Reputation. Others fall prey to Charlatanism, or get tangled up in the webs of Jealousy and Do It Tomorrow.

Those who overcome all these perils will enter the gates of System. But while the train crosses a bridge across the river Failure, those on foot are threatened by the Cauldron of Misrepresentation, and tempted by Short Cuts.

Some do manage to wade across the river to the other side, but there must overcome Bad Temper, Carelessness, Shiftlessness and Bad Memory. Then there’s Lack of Preparation, a giant rock which the train can tunnel through effortlessly, while the surviving pedestrians must trek across it.

Sprees, Laziness and Bad Business Methods then still threaten them, until at last they come before two gates, the one for Weak Morals remaining forever closed, the Gate of Ideals open to the train (and some on foot).

Conclusion: you can be successful without adopting the Right System, but your chances are far smaller. And you’ll have to make a lot bigger effort to get there.

Many thanks to Varun Chablani for sending in this map, found here on Moonbuggy. The origin of the map is not referred to, but judging by the artwork (and the moralising tone – not to mention the reference to Caruso), it’s early 20th century.

405 – Scroll Britannia: the UK’s First Road Map

This extraordinary map, dating from 1675, details The Road From LONDON to the LANDS END Comencing at the Standard in Cornhill and Extending to Senan in Cornwall. It was made by IOHN OGILBY Esq[ui]r[e] his Ma[jes]ties Cosmographer and covers 308 miles and 3 furlongs (almost 500 km).

The life of John Ogilby (1600-1676) can be qualified without exaggeration as rather eventful. He freed his father from debtors’ prison by buying a winning lottery ticket, founded a dance school in London and later Dublin’s Theatre Royal, got shipwrecked on his return from Ireland, produced a very successful English verse transaltion of Virgil, lost all his property in the Great Fire of London (1666), and towards the end of his life managed to produce the Britannia Atlas (1675), considered to be the first road atlas of Britain.

The atlas set the standard for using 1760 yards for the mile, and a scale of one inch to the mile. It contained a large number of strip road maps like these, which proved popular in planning journeys throughout the United Kingdom.

The first strip on the left-hand side from this map takes in much of contemporary London, showing (bottom to top, i.e. east to west) part of the City of London (containing Cornhill), Southwark, Westminster, Hide Park, Kensington, Hamersmith, Turnham Green and Smallheere Green. The next strips are labelled A through E (at the bottom) and B through F (at the top), showing the orientation and order in which they should be viewed.

The strips take in places such as Hounslow, Stanes, Egham, Windsor Park, Bagshot Park, Basingstoke, Wotton, Whitchurch and Andover. The rivers and hills encountered are noted, as are the forks in the road, and the directions in which these lead. Andover, the last town on this map, is in Hampshire, and is still a long way away from Land’s End, the end point of this road map; indicating that this page is still a few scrolls short of being a complete map.

Some of the notes on the map are remarkable for their spelling of place-names; 17th-century English insisted on spelling bridg without the final -e; and Paddington was known as Pudington, for example.

Many thanks to Paul Kerrigan for sending in this link to Priddy’s Hard, a website about the eponymous area near Gosport in Hampshire. The link shows a number of maps, including this one.

404 – Europe, Sunny Side Up

The German polymath Sebastian Münster (1488-1552) also was a cartographer, and one with a penchant for strange maps. He produced an anthropomorphic map of Europe as a queen (#141) for his Cosmographia (1544), and also this one, a map of Europe oriented south instead of north. The effect is quite literally disorienting, and provides an opportunity to re-examine an all too familiar geography from a different perspective. The Iberian peninsula, for example, seems too large this way up; but looks to be just about the right size if you turn the map the ‘right’ way up. Or is that just me?

This map was sent in by the people over at Martayan Lan, a New York dealer in rare books and fine antique maps, globes and atlases. Their website currently features a few of Munster’s more extraordinary maps, including this one.

403 – Regional Political Mentalities in Switzerland

Safe, neutral, boring Switzerland is a strangely fertile source of curious cartography. Previously, this blog has zoomed in on wartime contingency plans for a Schweizer réduit (#109), Jules Verne’s fictional New Switzerland (#133), the Swiss/German enclave of Büsingen am Hochrhein (#235) and the geo-culinary phenomenon of the Röstigraben (#257).

That last post touches upon the fact that the different language communities within Switzerland also have distinct political mentalities – the French-Swiss supposedly having a more pro-European outlook, and the German-Swiss apparently less likely to support a stronger federal government. This map expands that little scrap of Swiss political geography into a full-blown cartogram of regional political mentalities in Switzerland.

A cartogram being a map morphed by non-geographic data, there is very little left of Switzerland’s familiar shape to recognise here. The confederation’s centuries-old cartographic persona is transformed by two axes, from liberal to conservative (north-south) and from left-wing to right-wing (east-west). The colours denote the country’s main language areas: German (green), French (red) and Italian (yellow)*. Higher altitude lines correspond with higher population density.

This Switzerland of regional political mentalities is an island that serendipitously looks like Verne’s aforementioned New Switzerland. It is also reminiscent of the Inglehart-Weltzel cultural map of the world (#127), which similarly rearranges the world’s countries along two axes of cultural values.

The French-Swiss area generally is more liberal and left-wing than the rest of Switzerland, but with significant internal diversity. The municipality of Collonge-Bellerive is among the most liberal in Switzerland, but is rather more right-wing than Geneva (marked in German as Genf) and Lausanne, the largest cities of la Suisse romande (French-Switzerland). And Delémont apparently is the hotbed par excellence of socialist agitation in Switzerland. Italian-Switzerland is equally left-wing, but not quite so liberal as the French-Swiss.

If one draws a line from the map’s “southwestern” to its “northeastern” corner, one notices that Deutschschweiz (German-Switzerland) takes up the entire conservative/right-wing half of the island. The only German-speaking areas outside of this half are the urban centres of Basel, Zürich, Bern, Luzern** and Sankt-Gallen. These are more liberal and left-wing than the rest of German-speaking Switzerland, but still more conservative and right-wing than French-speaking Switzerland. Urbanity therefore seems a good predictor of a preponderance of liberal and left-wing politics, while speaking German on average appears to predestine one to a more conservative and right-wing outlook.

Thus, on the axis of Swiss political mentalities, super-conservative Unteriberg is the mirror-image of ultra-liberal Collonge-Bellerive, and right-wing Küsnacht is just about as far away on the political spectrum as one can get from left-wing Delémont.

This map of regional political mentalities also name-checks some political toponyms unlikely to show up on a regular map, such as the Arc Lémanique (the “Lémannic Arc”), i.e. the most liberal area of French-Switzerland, on the Lac Léman, and the Zürcher Goldküste (the “Zurich Gold Coast”), an equally liberal, but more right-wing area in German-Switzerland.

Many thanks to Marcel Bieler for sending in this map, found here on www.sotomo.ch, a Swiss website on political geography.

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* German: 64%, French: 20%, Italian: 6.5%. The fourth national language, Rhaeto-Romance (0,5%) apparently is too irrelevant to be represented here.

** Luzern (without Umlaut) in German, Lucerne in English (and French)

402 – Homeland Is Where the Heartland Is

In geopolitical theory, the term ‘Heartland’ refers to the area between the Volga and Yangtze rivers, and between the Himalaya and the Arctic regions. According to H.J. Mackinder’s 1904 article The Geographical Pivot of History, this area was of paramount geopolitical importance due to its crucial position within what he called the World-Island (i.e. Europe, Asia and Africa). Mackinder summarised his ‘Heartland Theory’ thus: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island controls the world.”

Mackinder’s theory emanated from a late-19th century vision of wars being decided by massive, land-based troop movements (speeded up by rail transport). The theory proved valuable as a context (or even a justification) for Germany’s push into the Soviet Union during the Second World War, and to a certain extent as a frame of reference during the Cold War. But one can wonder how relevant it remained, with the development of highly destructive long-range air raids as a major component of modern warfare.

Another use of the term ‘Heartland’ is as shorthand for the giant Hinterland of the United States. This American Heartland is not totally identical to its obvious geographic manifestation – i.e. the flyover states, the vast, landlocked bulk of the country without its more populated, urbane Atlantic and Pacific coasts. It also a symbolic concept, referring to an essentialist vision of an America where an apple pie is forever cooling on the window-sill. This America is less defined by geography than by nostalgia; a Heartland that is not merely a place, but also a yearning - for a country still defined by pioneering spirit and small-town values.

The heartland portrayed here is a very literal one, composed by cleverly arranging all 50 US states to have their oblique sides help form the outline of a giant heart. Texas’ pointy southern extremity represents the bottom part of the iconic heart-shape, while the slightly wedge-shaped top of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is very aptly chosen as the place where the tops of both heart halves merge. All in all, this picture is a very nice fit – considering that all states are drawn to the same scale.

Many thanks to Casey T. for pointing out this (he)artwork, originally titled ‘States United’ (although the artist, Beauchamping, inevitably also considered ‘Heartland’). The original context of the work is here, on the website www.etsy.com, a “global vintage and handmade marketplace”.

401 – What’s On Earth Tonight?

 

The first tv images of World War II are about to hit Aldebaran star system, 65 light years [ly] away. If there’s anybody out there alive and with eyes to see it, the barrage of actual and dramatised footage of WW2 will keep them shocked and/or entertained for decades to come. Which is just as well, for they’ll have to wait quite a few years to catch the first episodes of such seminal series as The Twilight Zone and Bonanza (both 1959), just about now hitting the (putative) extraterrestrial biological entities of the Mu Arae area (appr. 50 ly). The Cosby Show, Miami Vice and Night Court (all 1984) should be all the rage on Fomalhaut (25 ly). Meanwhile, the sentient, tv-watching creatures near Alpha Centauri (4.4 ly), our closest extrasolar star, are just recovering from the infamous “wardrobe malfunction” during Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s halftime show during the 2004 Superbowl.

All this is assuming, of course, that the aforementioned extraterrestrials prefer American tv to, say, German Fernsehen. And – this surely is the greater assumption – that our terran television signals are able to penetrate the universe in a way that makes them receivable in the far-flung corners of our galaxy.

Many thanks to Patrick McComb and Wallace J. McLean for sending in this map, found here on Abstruse Goose.

400 – Japanese Whispers: Mapping the Forbidden Outside World

For two centuries after 1640, the official Japanese policy towards the outside world was known as sakoku (‘closed country’), by which both Japanese leaving the country and foreigners entering it could expect the death penalty.

Although not quite as harshly absolute as that, isolationism prevailed until American commodore Matthew Perry’s Black Fleet sailed into Uraga harbour in 1853, forcing Japan to open up, first to commerce with the US, later to trade with other western countries.

This Japanese world map circa 1850, gives an impression of the country’s view of its place in the world on the verge of its forced reintegration into the international community. It is an intriguing mix of foreign knowledge and native perspective.

The Japanese archipelago is placed self-confidently at the centre of the map, banishing Europe from its usual central place to a marginal one, at the western edge. The American continent is banished to the map’s far eastern side.

The continents, each assigned a different colour, are generally in the right position vis-a-vis each other, but their contours are very poorly rendered, as if the map was not drawn directly from a contemporary western example, but via a system of Chinese whispers.

• Europe is an elongated mess, the Black Sea landlocked, the Greek peninsula melted, the British Isles fragmented into multiple rocks the very presence of which has smoothed out the continent’s northwestern shores to an almost straight line from Biarritz to Hamburg.
• Africa is intersected by giant rivers morphing into two fabulous (and fabulated) inland seas; South Africa’s Natal region is placed on its own island. Madagascar had bent out of shape, its northern cape aiming at a clutter of too-large islands.
• the Red Sea is coloured red, but the Arabian peninsula is coloured in as part of Europe – not to mention triangle-shaped. The Indian subcontinent (which actually is triangle-shaped) is rendered as a tired, sagging lump of land, much smaller than the huge Indochinese land mass.
• Unless one generously discerns the St Lawrence River in the giant wound gaping in North America’s eastern side, that continent shows hardly any resemblance to its actual shape (South America is shown much more realistically).
• By 1850, the British were busy colonising Australia, but this map still presupposed the area to be barely visited, showing it as a confused, semi-discovered muddle of land, attached to the Southland – the mythical Terra Australis Incognita of ancient – western – lore.

However flawed it may be, what this map proves by getting the general gist of the world’s geography right,  is that Japan was not entirely cut off from outside knowledge. Indeed, during the whole period of sakoku, severely restricted but nonetheless significant trading and other contacts were maintained with a handful of privileged partners.

The Dutch, who were allowed to maintain a foothold on the small island of Deshima, were Japan’s main source for western scientific knowledge, including cartography. This allowed Japan to keep up with the general development of geography, even if sometimes, as in this case, only very generally.

Many thanks to An Olaerts for providing me with this link to a series of antique Japanese world maps.

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NB: this is the 400th entry on Strange Maps, and if that isn’t enough to feel at least a bit festive, it will (most likely) coincide with the 12 millionth hit on the blog. Add to that the fact that the publication date of the Strange Maps book is approaching, and there’s three whole reasons to be cheerful. My thanks to all readers, commenters and contributors to this blog!

 

 

 

399 – Cracked and Gone: the World’s Largest Map

 

 

The terrazzo map in 1964; for a more contemporary image, cf. inf.

 

When this 130 by 166 foot plot of polished terrazzo tiling was inaugurated at New York’s 1964 World’s Fair, it was the largest map in the world. A facsimile extrapolation of a New York State road map by Rand McNally, the half-acre-sized piece of cartography today would still be the world’s largest map - if it had actually survived. But decades of human neglect and hard work by the elements have left their mark on the plywood tiles.

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The Texaco-sponsored map was one of the eyecatchers at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, serving as the floor of the Tent of Tomorrow, which was later turned into a concert venue but fell into disuse by the late Sixties. By the early Seventies, the plywood tiles were covered with a layer of polyurethane and the area was used as a skating rink. It now is part of the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens. With Ozymandias-like predictability, the Tent of Tomorrow’s 16 concrete pillars now support little more than sky. The only part of the New York State contribution to the Fair to survive unscathed is the Queens Theater in the Park, once the pavilion’s Theaterama.

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 As the driving irony of heritage conservation dictates, the map wasn’t deemed of value until it was nearly gone. By early 2008, the New York Times in this article called it “an exuberantly overstated mix of small-town parochialism, space-age optimism and Pop Art irony” in the course of reporting on a rescue attempt of this “valuable artifact”.

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As reported by the Times, a team of the University of Pennsylvania’s graduate programme in historic preservation has been trialing the preservation of four of the 567 4×4-foot panels that make up the map. They were replacing missing letters, numerals and symbols on the original map. It was estimated that conservation would cost about $1,100 per panel, bringing the total cost up to $623,700. However, no plans were made beyond the trial conservation, and I have no update on the current status of the project.

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In any case, the conservation process apparently would leave the map in dubious condition, rendering the purpose of a restored map rather unclear: the surface is so fragile and uneven that walking it, as back in the mid-Sixties, would be impractical at best, and probably quite dangerous.

Many thanks to Chris Perriman, who sent in this link to Tent of Tomorrow, a website dedicated to the eponymous construction, and the 1964 World’s Fair in general. Both images taken from that website. 

398 – Bridge to Nowhere: a Map of Golden Gate Jumpers

It’s 75 metres (245 ft) down from the deck of the Golden Gate Bridge to the water below. That drop will kill most people (*). And that’s exactly what it did to over 1,200 people who jumped off the bridge since its opening in 1937.

San Francisco’s most famous landmark, the world’s longest suspension bridge at its opening, has earned the sad distinction of being the world’s most popular suicide spot (others include Aokigahara, the “Sea of Trees” at the foot of Mount Fuji [Japan], Niagara Falls [US/Can], Beachy Head and Clifton Bridge [both in England]).

The number of jumpers from the bridge, spanning the over 2 km (6,700 ft) wide strait at the entrance of San Francisco Bay, has varied greatly throughout the years, never more than around 10 until 1960 (with the exception of the 20 of 1948), then rising dramatically to peak at 40 in 1977 and dropping again to a low of less than 10 in 1990.

In 2004, 24 people jumped off the Bridge, spiking to 38 in 2007 – an increase many blamed on The Bridge, a documentary about the place’s fatal attraction. In 2008, authorities voted to install a ’safety net’ six metres below the Bridge (although how this should prevent people from jumping from the net  is a question that should definitely be covered by the study to be conducted on the net’s impact).

This cartogram details the exact locations of the suicides, corresponding them with the 128 light poles that line the Bridge (east to west, even ones on the oceanside, uneven ones on the bayside). For obvious reasons, the areas closest to the edges of the Bridge are less popular (most suicides aim for maximum effect, i.e. longest way down). Remarkably, the bayside is a lot more popular than the oceanside. The hotspot is light pole 69 with – if I counted correctly – 56 recorded suicides.

Many thanks to Szymon Piotr Nogalski, who most recently submitted this map, and others who did so earlier. The map was sourced here on SFGate, the online presence of the San Francisco Chronicle, the newspaper that first published this suicide map. 

(*) After a fall of about 4 seconds, a jumper would hit the water at approximately 140 km/h (87 mph) – lethal in most cases. Those surviving the actual fall usually succumb to hypothermia, induced by the cold (8°C/47°F) water of the Bay. Over the decades, 26 people are known to have survived the fall and the cold water.

397 – Eliminating the Bottom 5%

How would you eliminate almost half the planet by subtracting just 5% from it? This map shows you how: delete the countries that constitute the bottom 5% of global GDP contributors, and you scrap almost 3 billion people from the equation. Those people mainly live in Africa and South East Asia, as demonstrated by the disappearance of those areas beneath the waves.

This map was first shown on the political website FiveThirtyEight (“Politics done right”), in reaction to an argument that climate change would affect global GDP by “only” 5% over the next 100 years. Quite rightly, the point was raised that a reduction in potential GDP might not be an adequate measure of the human impact of such society-shattering change.

As per-capita GDP varies across the world’s countries by a factor of 800 (or 2,000 if you count Zimbabwe), this is a rather cynical (or at least cold-hearted) way of measuring the worth of human lives, making the average Rwandan life hundreds of times less important than that of the average Luxembourger.

To demonstrate the impact of a reduction of global GDP by a mere 5%, FiveThirtyEight erased the countries constituting the bottom 5% of global GDP (IMF estimates for 2008), in reverse order of magnitude:

Zimbabwe (1), Burundi, DR Congo, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Malawi, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Niger, Afghanistan, Togo, Guinea, Uganda, Madagascar, the Central African Republic, Nepal, Myanmar (Burma), Rwanda, Mozambique, East Timor, the Gambia (2), Bangladesh, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Mali, Lesotho, Ghana, Haiti, Tajikistan, the Comoros, Cambodia, Laos, Benin, Kenya, Chad, the Solomon Islands, Kyrgyzstan, India (3), Nicaragua, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Mauritania, Pakistan, Senegal, Sao Tome and Principe, Ivory Coast, Zambia, the Yemen, Cameroon, Djibouti, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, Nigeria (4), Guyana, the Sudan, Bolivia, Moldova, Honduras, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Bhutan, Egypt (5), Vanuatu, Tonga, Paraguay, Morocco, Syria, Swaziland, Samoa, Guatemala, Georgia, the Congo, Iraq, Armenia, Jordan, Cape Verde, the Maldives, Fiji and Namibia (6).

All in all 81 countries (almost half of the 192 UN member states), representing nearly 2.9 billion people (about 43%) of the world population. But still, a mere 5% of world GDP…

Thanks to Jackson Wagner for providing me with this link to the FiveThirtyEight page.

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(1) 0.02% of global GDP, or $55 p.p.

(2) the list of countries up til now represents only 0.27% of global GDP.

(3) apparently constitutes only 2% of global GDP, surprisingly

(4) the list of countries up til now represents 3.6% of global GDP.

(5) the list of countries up til now represents 4.4% of global GDP.

(6) these countries together constitute 4.99997% of global GDP.

 

396 – “You take it – No, you take it”: the Bir Tawil Trapezoid

 

The Bir Tawil Triangle is a desert of sand and rocks on the border between Egypt and the Sudan. It is also officially the most undesired territory in the world. Bir Tawil is the only piece of land on Earth (*) that is not claimed by any country – least of all by its neighbours. For either of them to claim the Bir Tawil Triangle would be to relinquish their claim to the Hala’ib Triangle. And while Hala’ib is also mainly rock and sand, it is not only ten times larger than Bir Tawil, but also adjacent to the Red Sea - so rather more interesting.

This bizarre situation started out with what is supposed to be the simplest of borders: a straight line. By the Condominium Treaty of 1899, the British drew the line between Egypt and what was then still known as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan at the 22nd parallel north, resulting in a straight-line border of about 1,240 km (770 miles) from Libya to the Red Sea.

Straight-line borders are not uncommon in the sparsely populated Sahara desert, from Egypt all the way to Mauritania. But the border between Egypt and the Sudan apparently proved a bit too straight. In 1902, the Brits amended it in three places. A small area north of where the Nile crosses the border was handed over to Sudanese control on account of the local villages being more accessible from the south. The Wadi Halfa Salient is still Sudanese, but claimed by the Egyptians, who solved most of the problem by submerging all of the villages in the salient in Lake Nasser after the construction of the Aswan Dam.

The Bir Tawil Triangle, east of the Wadi Halfa Salient and south of the 22nd parallel, was handed over to Egypt because a tribe on the Egyptian side of the border used the area as grazing lands (Bir Tawil apparently means ‘water well’). Conversely, the Halaib Triangle, north of the 22nd parallel but touching Bir Tawil, went to Sudan because the locally dominant tribes were based in the Sudan.

Actually, Bir Tawil is less of a Triangle than a Trapezoid, its northern edge (the 22nd parallel) 95 km long and its southern edge, around 30 km to the south, 46 km long. Its total area is just over 2,000 km². The Hala’ib Triangle is about 20,500 km² in size.

De iure, the conflict between Egypt and the Sudan over Hala’ib and Bir Tawil is still unresolved, although Egypt has asserted itself as the de facto administrator of the larger of both areas in the 1990s. I have been unable to ascertain whether either country exerts any practical control over Bir Tawil, leaving open the exciting possibility that it is indeed the only officially ungoverned territory on Earth.

Many thanks to Bill (a.k.a. ‘The Eidolon’) for alerting me to Bir Tawil, discussed here on his blog. The best map I found was this tiny one on Wikimedia Commons. Many thanks to Eugene van der Pijll for providing me with the link to the present image (see comment #4).

(*) No country officially occupies any part of Antarctica, but this is only because the 1959 Antarctic Treaty froze any existing territorial claims to the continent.

395 – Strange Mats: Afghan War Rugs

A rug, to quote The Big Lebowski, can really tie a room together. The Dude (or El Duderino, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing) opted for a pretty run-of-the-mill carpet – a classic Persian or Oriental design, if I recall correctly.

Here is an example of an exciting subgenre that is sure to be a conversation piece at your next cocktail party. Or after-bowling get-together. The Afghan War Rug is a modern reinterpretation of an age-old art. Where the regular oriental carpet has an abstract design, these rugs are figurative, including tanks, guns and other weapons, and usually show a map of Afghanistan. They also deal with a very specific subject matter – the troubled recent history of Afghanistan.

Examples include rugs celebrating the defeat of the Soviets, who withdrew from Afghanistan in 1988, to this one. It is similar to the Soviet Exodus mats (note the column of tanks heading north). However, it is dated to the year 2002.

Some of the lettering is in Latin script, the top text is in Farsi, apparently reading “The army of al-Qaeda is leaving Afghanistan”. According to the website www.warrug.com, which specialises in selling modern carpetry of this type, this rug “is a transitional piece between the Soviet story rugs and the War on Terrorism rugs (…) Until the US eliminated the Taliban regime, this style of rug was woven by refugees in Pakistan. After we drove al-Qaeda and the Taliban back to the age of the Cave Man, these weavers were able to return to their native homes and produce these rugs around Mazar I’Sharif and Sherberghan.”

An interesting afterthought: in weaving recent history into mats, these Afghan artisans are unwittingly imitating the tapestry-as-news school of carpetry that had its most famous early example in the Bayeux Tapestry, which detailed William the Conqueror’s usurpation of the English throne.

Many thanks to Pál Szabó for alerting me to these strange mats.

 

394 – Athanasius Kircher’s Atlantis

Irrespective of whether it’s entirely mythical or merely missing, the ‘lost’ island of Atlantis is one of the most sought after pieces of real estate in history. The oldest source for the stories of a once mighty land now vanished beneath the waves are two of Plato’s Dialogues (4th century BC). But while Timaeus and Critias place Atlantis beyond “the Pillars of Hercules” (i.e. the Strait of Gibraltar) in the Ocean that still bears its name, evidence of Atlantis has been proposed and presumed in places as far apart as Sardinia, Antarctica, Cuba and Indonesia.

These days, most serious scientists prefer one theory over all others; that the drowning of Atlantis is a folk memory of a catastrophic volcanic eruption on the island of Thera (present-day Santorini) some time around 1600 BC that caused a tsunami, wiping out the Minoan civilisation. Many pre-modern scientists held to Plato’s original thesis, that Atlantis was once lapped by the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. One of them was Athanasius Kircher, who produced this map in his book Mundus Subterraneus (‘The Underground World’, ca. 1665).

A biography published in 2004 dubbed Kircher (1601-1680) was titled The Last Man to Know Everything, and the German Jesuit’s interests and expertise were certainly wide and deep enough to rival Leonardo Da Vinci’s. Both would be close contenders for the title of Ultimate Renaissance Man. Kircher wrote 40 books, on subjects as diverse as geology, music theory, Coptic grammar and magnetism (typically for his syncretic style, both of the gravitational and amorous kind).

Like Da Vinci, Kircher was fascinated by the invention and perfection of mechanical contraptions. He designed what has been described as the world’s first megaphone, perfected a magnetic clock and invented a cat piano, whereby a pin would pierce the tails of the animals which would then yowl at specific pitches (it’s not clear whether Kircher ever realised this scheme, although Monty Python in one of their sketches adapted the idea to a ‘mouse organ’). He is also credited with inventing the magic lantern.

That Kircher’s international fame was eclipsed by Rationalism later in his life may be understood from some of his more outlandish theories. Although still considered one of the founding fathers of Egyptology, he believed that Egyptian was so ancient that it must have been the language of Adam and Eve. Centuries before the hieroglyphs were deciphered, Kircher convinced himself that he had cracked the code, producing volumes of nonsense translations. An equally early pioneer of Sinology, Kircher thought the Chinese descended from Ham, and Confucius identical to Moses. In Arca Noë, he discussed the logistics – including the feeding schedules – of Noah’s Ark voyage.

Mundus Subterraneus is a blend of vision and error typical of Kircher. He correctly postulates “fires” raging inside the earth, but links the tides to the interaction with an underground ocean. Included in the work is this map of Atlantis, placing the lost island (or rather mini-continent) between Spain and America. For some reason, the map is oriented upside down, with the south on top. The main island of Atlantis is accompanied by two smaller, unnamed ones to its right (west).

Is anyone familiar enough with Latin to hazard a translation of the text on this page?

Many thanks to Barry Ruderman for sending in this map. A larger-scale picture can be seen here on Rare Maps, the website of Mr Ruderman’s antique map dealership. The website has a special section detailing many other antique print curiosities, both cartographic and otherwise.