229 - Vital Statistics of a Deadly Campaign: the Minard Map

“The best statistical graphic ever drawn“, is how statistician Edward Tufte described this chart in his authoritative work ‘The Visual Display of Quantitative Information’.

The chart, or statistical graphic, is also a map. And a strange one at that. It depicts the advance into (1812) and retreat from (1813) Russia by Napoleon’s Grande Armée, which was decimated by a combination of the Russian winter, the Russian army and its scorched-earth tactics. To my knowledge, this is the origin of the term ’scorched earth’ – the retreating Russians burnt anything that might feed or shelter the French, thereby severely weakening Napoleon’s army.

As a statistical chart, the map unites six different sets of data.
• Geography: rivers, cities and battles are named and placed according to their occurrence on a regular map.
• The army’s course: the path’s flow follows the way in and out that Napoleon followed.
• The army’s direction: indicated by the colour of the path, gold leading into Russia, black leading out of it.
• The number of soldiers remaining: the path gets successively narrower, a plain reminder of the campaigns human toll, as each millimetre represents 10.000 men.
• Temperature: the freezing cold of the Russian winter on the return trip is indicated at the bottom, in the republican measurement of degrees of réaumur (water freezes at 0° réaumur, boils at 80° réaumur).
• Time: in relation to the temperature indicated at the bottom, from right to left, starting 24 October (pluie, i.e. ‘rain’) to 7 December (-27°).

Pause a moment to ponder the horrific human cost represented by this map: Napoleon entered Russia with 442.000 men, took Moscow with only 100.000 men left, wandered around its abandoned ruins for some time and escaped the East’s wintry clutches with barely 10.000 shivering soldiers. Those include 6.000 rejoining the ‘bulk’ of the army from up north. Napoleon never recovered from this blow, and would be decisively beaten at Waterloo under two years later.

Almost exactly a century and three decades later, Hitler would repeat Napoleon’s mistake by again underestimating the vastness of Russia, the inhospitability of its winters and the determination of the Russians.

The Economist, which in its last issue of 2007 published a story on the way in which some charts succesfully visualise statistical data (yes, those editorial meetings must be a riot), pointed out that “As men tried, and mostly failed to cross the Berezina river under heavy attack, the width of the black line halves: another 20,000 or so gone. The French now use the expression C’est la Bérézina to describe a total disaster.”

The map was the work of Charles Joseph Minard (1781-1870), a French civil engineer who was an inspector-general of bridges and roads, but whose most remembered legacy is in the field of statistical graphics, producing this and other maps in his retirement. This is a translation of the legend at the top of the map:

Figurative chart of the successive losses in men by the French army in the Russian campaign 1812-1813. Drawn up by Mr Minard, inspector-general of bridges and roads (retired). Paris, 20 November 1869.
The number of men present is symbolised by the broadness of the coloured zones at a rate of one millimetre for ten thousand men; furthermore, those numbers are written across the zones. The red signifies the men who entered Russia, the black those who got out of it.
The data used to draw up this chart were found in the works of Messrs. Thiers, de Ségur, de Fezensac, de Chambray and the unpublished journal of Jacob, pharmacist of the French army since 28 October. To better represent the diminution of the army, I’ve pretended that the army corps of Prince Jerôme and of Marshall Davousz which were detached at Minsk and Mobilow and rejoined the main force at Orscha and Witebsk, had always marched together with the army.

Jas Ellis sent me this link to the aforementioned Economist article, which enumerates and shows several other interesting infographics. It also has the clearest, most detailed reproduction of the Minard map I’ve ever seen; the map had been suggested to me previously by several readers, among whom Brian Westley, M. Kranz and Stephen Eckett.

Click on the map for a full-sized view.

228 - Merry Kiritimati!

There are three Christmas Islands in the world. One is a small community on mainland Nova Scotia (Canada) named after a nearby island, which is presently called Ghost Island but at some point was named after its sole occupant, a native man whose surname was Christmas.

Another is a 135 sq. km (52 sq. mi.) Australian island territory in the Indian Ocean, closer to Jakarta than to Perth and home to about 1.500 people (Chinese 70%, European 20%, Malay 10%). Two thirds of the island is a National Park, containing many flora and fauna species unique to the island. It was named by captain William Mynors of the Royal Mary on Christmas Day 1643. Discovery of huge phosphate reserves led to annexation by the British in 1888, settlement and mining from the 1890s onwards. The UK transferred sovereignty to Australia in 1957. Phosphate mining (closed in 1987, reopened in 1991) remains the main economic activity.

The most interesting of the three, I think, is the Pacific island of Kiritimati. This is the pronunciation of Christmas in the local language, Gilbertese, which is why it is not often recognised as the ‘other’ Christmas island (the more famous one being the aforementioned Australian-governed island). Here’s a quick overview:

• With a surface of 642 sq. km (248 sq. mi), the Pacific island of Kiritimati is the largest coral atoll in the world. It comprises 70% of the total land area of the republic of Kiribati, made up of 33 atolls in total.
• The island was named by captain James Cook, who discovered it on December 24, 1777.
• The island has a population of 5.115 inhabitants (2005 census), concentrated in four villages: London (1.829), Tabwakea (1.881), Banana (1.170) and Poland (235). A fifth settlement, Paris, is abandoned.
• Most places were named by French priest Emmanuel Rougier, who leased the island from 1917 to 1939 and planted 800.000 coconut trees there.
• In the early 1950s, Wernher von Braun proposed the island as a launch site for manned spacecraft.
• In May 1957, the British military executed Operation Grapple – the first test of their H-bomb. The Americans conducted a similar Operation Dominic here in 1962.
• The Japanese operate a satellite tracking station on Kiritimati, and at one time scouted the island as a landing location for their space shuttle HOPE-X (a project they now have abandoned).
• Apart from being named after the winterval known as Christmas, Kiritimati has another claim to end-of-year festive season fame: it’s located so close to the International Date Line (and on the right side of it, too) that it’s the first inhabited place on Earth to experience New Year.
• The eastern shore of the island curves to form the Bay of Wrecks, possibly a reference to how people feel the morning after a Christmas or New Year’s Party.

This map was provided by Toon Wassenberg, who sent this link to Christmas Island by way of season’s greetings; the link contains several maps of the Australian Christmas Island, and this one of its Pacific cousin.

227 - First the Cartoon, then the War: Europe in 1870

All was not well in Europe in 1870, the year the Franco-Prussian war would lead to a united German Empire and a humiliated France; one could call it the first of three European civil wars, the other two being World Wars One and Two.

This French satirical cartoon map (’Carte drôlatique d’Europe pour 1870‘) sought to get some laughs out of those tensions by showing an anthropomorphic map of Europe, where each country was represented by a caricature of its national ‘persona’.
• Prussia, made to look like its walrus-bearded ‘Iron Chancellor’ Otto von Bismarck, is haranguing its neighbours: kneeling on Austria, a sleeping soldier in undress; covering the Netherlands with its right hand.
• France, dressed as a fierce zouave soldier, is aiming a bayonet at the heart of the unwieldy Prussian military monster.
• Belgium, too small to be anthropomorphised, is being squeezed between France and Prussia (which would become its familiar, if uncomfortable lot in the First and Second World Wars).
• England is an old woman, struggling with Ireland, her rebellious lapdog on a leash (although it looks more like a small bear); Scotland is the old lady’s mobcap.
• Spain is a rotund senorita, smoking the day away while lying on her back and thus nearly crushing the small Portuguese soldier under her.
• Corsica and Sardinia are joined to show a leprechaun-like figure gleefully mooning the map-reader.
• Italy, possibly made to look like the great national leader Garibaldi, is holding off pressure from Prussia.
• Denmark is a small, swaggering soldier, no doubt hoping to recover Holstein, the territory it lost to Prussia in a war a few years earlier.
• Norway and Sweden are together turned into a ferocious dog.
• Switzerland is a closed cottage.
• Turkey in Europe is “an Oriental crushed by the superincumbent pressure of the other countries”.
• Turkey in Asia is a girl smoking a hookah pipe.
• Russia is a rag-collector in a patched coat, ‘Crimea’ written on the patch sewn on last.

The Degrees of Longitude at the bottom of the map are measured in rifle-lenghts – another comment on the explosive military situation.

This map was obviously drawn before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in July. Its author is mentioned as Hadol; Paul Hadol was a French illustrator and caricaturist, also publishing under the pseudonym ‘White’. He was one of the exponents of France’s Golden Age of Caricaturism in the mid-19th century.

In a sad irony, seeing that war was so imminent, most Europeans were able to agree that this was a funny map. It was republished in Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands.

A link to this map was sent to me by Marc da Costa, who found it at Bibliodyssey, a delightful blog now condensed into a delicious book. I usually don’t plug products, but having bought the eponymous book myself, I can vouch for its amazingness. There’s a link to it on the blog itself.

226 - Geo-Poetry, or: Finding Wordsworth

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! And again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur (…)

So begins one of the Lyrical Ballads, a collaboration between the English romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, published in 1798. Together with ‘I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud’, it’s one of Wordsworth’s most famous poems. It’s often referred to as ‘Tintern Abbey’, the ruin of a mediaeval monastery on the Welsh-English border that inspired it, but its actual, longer name is ‘Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks on the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798′.

Since air travel was out of the question in that period, Wordsworth obviously meant a few miles up- or downstream from the then ivy-covered magnet for proto-tourists, who flocked to the ruins for their ‘romantic’ (today we might equally say ‘gothic’) thrill.

This map, found here, shows exactly where Wordsworth might have penned the poem. If someone bothered to measure the exact distance, the poem could be renamed ‘Lines Composed 8.2 Miles Up the River from Tintern Abbey’… but that would no doubt detract from the work’s poetic quality. ‘I Wandered Lonely As a Stratocumulus’, anyone?

225 - Chicago’s 91 Hoods

Not many people know that the epithet Windy City was bestowed on Chicago not for meteorological but political reasons – apparently, Chicago politicians at one time were known for the windiness of their speeches. Its Latin motto – Urbs in horto; the city in the garden – reflects its spaciousness, as it sprawls out in all directions save that of Lake Michigan, on the shore of which it was founded.

Another nickname, the Second City, belies the fact that it is now the third-largest US city, after New York and Los Angeles, with almost 3 million in Chicago proper and almost 10 million in its metro area, dubbed ‘Chicagoland’. The Indian term at the origin of the city’s name, shikaakwa, means ’striped skunk’, by the way.

Neighbourhood-wise, the branches of the Chicago River divide the city in North, West and South Side. Sociologists have further divided the city in anything from 77 up to over 200 different neighbourhoods. This map chops up Chicago into 91 ‘hoods, which obviously leaves out many of the 200-plus in the most detailed overview. But the typography, whereby the name of each ‘hood fills out its assigned space as fully as possible, is pretty cool nevertheless.

This map was suggested to me by Jez Robinson, who found it here at orkposters, who designed (and sell) the map.

224 - The Tree of Life Down the Tube

Madonna should love this map, having both gone all British and jewish-mystical. This map, in the style of the London Underground(*), depicts the Kaballah Tree of Life.

Sephiroth (Hebrew for ‘Enumerations’) is the name for the ten attributes of God in the Kabbalah (a form of jewish esotericism). Ten in itself is of course also a significant number, as it is divinely perfect. The attributes are:

* The Crown (’Keter’ in Hebrew): the Creator Himself.
* Wisdom (’Hokhmah’): Divine reality/revelation; the power of Wisdom.
* Understanding (’Binah’): repentance/reason; the power of Love.
* Mercy (’Hesed’): grace/intention to emulate God; the power of Vision.
* Strength (’Gevurah’): judgment/determination; the power of Intention.
* Beauty (’Tif’eret’): symmetry/compassion; the power of Creativity.
* Victory (’Netzah’): contemplation/initiative/persistence; the power of the Eternal Now.
* Splendour (’Hod’): surrender/sincerity/steadfastness; the power of Observation.
* Yesod (’Foundation’): remembering/knowing; the power of Manifesting.
* Kingdom (’Malkuth’): physical presence/vision and illusion; the power of Healing.

As befits esoteric systems, the aforementioned terms are anything but elucidating, and furthermore they’re only one of many interpretations of the 10 sephiroth (rabbi Moses ben Jacob Cordovero’s, to be precise).

These 10 sephiroth are arranged in 3 columns, the middle of which is headed by the Crown and is known as the ‘Pillar of Mildness’, the right one topped by Wisdom is called the ‘Pillar of Mercy’, and the left one overseen by Understanding and known as the ‘Pillar of Severity’.

The 22 lines connecting the 10 sephiroth correspond with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Twenty-two plus ten equals 32, which (of course) refers to the number of Masonic degrees, the number of Kabbalistic paths to wisdom and the number of teeth in an adult’s mouth!

If all this sounds like mumbo-jumbo not unlike the sort you would hear from Madame Soleil-type soothsayers, that’s no coincidence. Occultists have connected the hermetism of the Kabbalah with the Tarot. The sephirothic tree of life has even been thought to symbolize the prototypical ‘Heavenly Man’.

I don’t know enough about esoteric card tricks to state beyond the shadow of a doubt that the stations in between the 10 main ones correspond with categories from Tarot, but I’m pretty sure they do.

This map was sent to me by Jamie M.A. Smith, who first saw it in Alan Moore’s comic book series Promethea.

(*) Not, as Kevin Kline’s character presumes in ‘A Fish Called Wanda’, some sort of resistance movement.

223 - Marzipan Europe

Candy isn’t usually applied to make political or geographical statements, but in this case marzipan, one of the more malleable confectioneries, has been transformed into a map of the European Union (of the EU25 period, before the accession of Bulgaria and Romania). This must have been done without a real map of Europe close by; if you can normally picture the continent as an abstract figure marching west (thanks to Italy’s boot), then this is a drunk abstract figure staggering towards the Atlantic.

The map was sent in by Michael Schrauzer and can be found here, quite aptly, in the Wikipedia entry for marzipan.

222 - Birthplaces of Mississippi Blues Artists

 Mississippi is the poorest of all states, but fortunately also has a happier distinction: it’s the place where most of the quintessentially American music genres originated, from blues and jazz to rock ‘n roll.An amazing accomplishment for a state that has under three million inhabitants, but it’s wirth noting that most of the musical history of these genres was written by Mississippians outside of their native state. This is due to the Great Migration following the railroads north to Chicago, an exodus that continued throughout the first half of the 20th century.This mainly black exodus was caused as much by plummeting cotton prices as by the contiuned disenfranchisement of former slaves. It resulted in Chicago’s status as the capital of jazzs and blues muesic (and Detroit as a major centre for soul).This blues map gives an idea where many of the blues greats originated - as well as which instrments they played, and if and when they migrated north. There is an interesting concentration of talent originating in and around Jackson, the state’s capital, but Clarksdale is also an important centre. It’s probably no coincidence that Clarksdale is the location of the Delta Blues Muesum - and, allegedly, of the crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his musical talent.A complete listing of the artists referenced in this map (and of course the map itself, which was designed by David Michael Miller) can be found here on Miller’s website Front Page Graphics. The site also has another map on the history of African-American music: Jazz and R’nB Landmarks of Downtown New Orleans.

221 - Greater China - Made in Taiwan

  The Chinese nationalist party Kuomintang that was defeated when Mao Zedong’s communists triumphantly took control of China in 1949, retreated to Taiwan, a small island off the coast of mainland China, roughly halfway between Hong Kong and Shanghai. Almost 60 years later, the Taiwanese government still maintains it is the rightful government for all of China, and the official name of the state is not Taiwan, but Republic of China (RoC). 

 

Over the years, this has become an increasingly hollow fiction, with most UN members having switched recognition to the mainland government, the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This leaves Taiwan - not even a member of the United Nations - in a sort of existential limbo. Concurrently, the animus for declaring independence is growing in Taiwan – a move strongly discouraged by the communist government in Beijing, who are also keen to maintain the fiction of territorial unity between the island and the mainland… with of course their government the rightful one, also on Taiwan. 

 

The length and breadth of that fiction can’t be illustrated any better than by this map, detailing the territorial claims of the RoC on the mainland. These revanchist claims are truly spectacular: not only do they include all the area presently under the control of the communist regime, but also many outlying areas controlled by China’s neighbours. The uproar over these claims would be much greater if Taiwan were in a position to actually (re)take these areas:

• The whole of Mongolia, now an independent republic;
• The Russian autonomous republic of Tannu-Tuva, called tannu Uriankhai by the RoC;
• A large part of Tajikistan, namely most of its autonomous province of Gorno-Badakhshan;
• A tiny sliver of Afghanistan’s Pamir corridor;
• Small areas of northern Pakistan and areas claimed by India;
• The eastern part of the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan;
• Parts of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh;
• Parts of northern Myanmar (Birma);
• And a small piece of Russian-administered territory on China’s northeastern border.

In all, the RoC claims territory from no less than ten countries, including of course all the territory of its nemesis, the PRC. The sovereignty fiction is completed by labelling the area under Taipei’s control (Taiwan, but also some smaller islands – some quite close to the mainland) the ‘free area of the Republic of China’, Taipei its ‘Provisional capital’ and Nanking (on the mainland) its ‘Official capital’. 

 

Special mention should be made of the Diaoyu islands (Senkaku islands in Japanese), which are claimed both by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and by the Republic of China (RoC) but are in fact administered by Japan, proving the old dictum that when two dogs fight over a bone, it’s often the third dog that runs off with it.

 

This map, to  be found here on wikipedia, was sent in by John Halton, who comments: “From what I understand, the RoC can’t actually drop these claims, however unrealistic they may now be. To do so would be interpreted by the PRC as tantamount to a declaration of independence, which the PRC would regard as an act of war.”

220 - Russo-Japanese War Cartoons

This is interesting: these cartoons obviously are about the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. But since I’m offline while writing this, I can’t find out much more of the context. So let’s see what I can extrapolate.

First, the facts – as far as I know them. The by now rather obscure Russo-Japanese War of 1905 was a relatively minor, mainly naval conflict that nevertheless echoed around the world: it was the first time in modern history that a non-European nation defeated a European one.

Over the centuries, Russia had expanded from its heartland to the west of the Urals into Siberia, eventually reaching the Pacific shores of the Far East. At the turn of the 20th century, these sparsely populated parts to the north of China and Japan were also outside the orbit of these two empires, the former ancient but impotent, the latter only just emerging from centuries of self-imposed isolation.

What exactly caused the war I don’t remember, but it centred on Russia’s possession of Port Arthur, a coastal city somewhere in the vicinity of the Korean peninsula. Japan, swiftly modernising by copying various bits of European civilisation – up to the Prussian cut of its school uniforms – disputed Russia’s push into its backyard and used its brand spanking new European-style navy to inflict a defeat on the Russians.

This shock was felt first and foremost in Russia itself, where the defeat at the hands of the Japanese contributed to the failed revolution of 1905, a dress rehearsal for the communist takeover of 1917. These cartoons, obviously mocking the Russian defeat, were not made in Russia itself – understandably, as the Czars were wont to send people too critical of their rule on a one-way trip to Siberia.

• The first cartoon is in French, and was tirée à 30 exemplaires (which is an extremely small figure for what should be a mass medium, one would think). It shows a bearded, booted Russian (a cossack, but possibly the Czar himself) lying on the ground asleep and overrun, Gulliver-like, by tiny soldiers marching up the Korean peninsula – Korea was a Japanese colony at the time, I think. The presumably Japanese war ships in the Sea of Japan (Mer du Japon) seem to underline the naval aspect of the Japanese victory. Two paper boats with a sailor each might symbolise European powers observing the Japanese victory. An English soldier on the left, probably at or near Hong Kong and another colonial standing behind a (the?) Chinese wall do the same.
• The Gulliver-theme is repeated in the second cartoon, also French. I’m not sure what le petit poucet means. Port Arthur is mentioned by name. A group of tiny solders watch as one of their number attempts to de-boot the sleeping Russian. The implication is that Russia’s defeat is due to its unpreparedness.
• The third cartoon shows a small pond in which a Japanese ship sinks a Russian one. The large, looming Russian is unable to hide his displeasure, while the smaller Japanese can’t hide his glee. Oh, what a surprise, reads the caption. No Gulliver theme here, but the Japanese figure is again a lot smaller than the European one.

Is this an indication of racism? One could think that by portraying ‘orientals’ as small and in large groups, this indicates that they are less ‘individual’, less ‘human’ than Europeans. Or maybe the smaller stature simply reflects the David-like character of the Japanese victory over the Russian Goliath.

I came across these cartoons a while ago, and can’t recall exactly where I found them.

219 - Found: a Map of the Island in ‘Lost’

Lost is not only the title of a popular American tv series, it also describes the exasperated feeling of those viewers looking for a semblance of a plot in the series. The broad outline goes something like this: The survivors of a crashed jumbo jet on a transpacific flight find themselves stranded on a tropical island, cut off from the civilised world and left to fend for themselves.

But that is where the similarities with Robinson Crusoë’s adventures end. They would be too tedious for today’s viewing audiences, used to shows that are fast-paced and action-packed. For example: Crusoë spent two whole years in hiding when he saw another person’s footsteps on his island. Imagine turning that into prime time tv fare.

Thus, we are provided with a dizzying array of mysteries wrapped in riddles, well hidden inside several family-sized enigmas, including but not limited to: the hatch, the Dharma Initiative and the ‘Others’. These are all somehow connected to each other, although it’s never quite clear how everything fits together. As if that is not disorienting enough, there are visions, dreams, flash backs and the occasional flash forward to ostensibly illuminate but actually obfuscate the progress of what for lack of a better definition we shall call the progression of the story.

So what do you do when you are lost in Lost? You draw a map, of course. This one places several elements of the series in an arrangement that looks like it’s designed to be a memory aide for the bewildered viewer.

The map does not resolve the one thing that has always bugged me most about the series: if you would spend all that time on an island, wouldn’t you give it a name? Every other island on the planet has one. Why not this one?

This map was sent in by Loirogato Gostoso, who refers to a Cleonir Maram as its publisher.

218 - Korea’s Dark Half

North and South Korea have been separated at the 38th parallel ever since the Korean War (1950-1953), which has never officially ended. In the ensuing ‘ceasefire’, North Korea developed into a communist dictatorship with a centrally planned economy, while South Korea became a capitalist democracy with a free market economy.

Economic hardship in the officially ‘self-reliant’ North has led to mass starvation, while the South has a vibrant economy able to compete with the best of the world. In 1996, the per capita GNP in the North was $920, while it was $11.270 in the South. A 1999 estimate of per capita GNPs put the South’s at 13 times that of the North. More recent figures will probably show an even wider gap.

Due to the different economic results on either side of the Demilitarized Zone, the ethnically quite homogenous Koreans have even begun to diversify physically, with the average North Korean male almost 7 cm shorter than his Southern counterpart (165,6 cm vs. 172,5 cm). North Korean females are on average 4 cm shorter than Southern women (154,9 cm vs. 159,1 cm). By 2025, the height difference is projected to increase to 11 cm for men, 6 cm for women. Unless the North’s economic situation changes drastically, that is.

So the South dwarfs the North, not just numerically (50 vs. 27 million), but also economically and even size-wise. Another stark reminder of the different worlds both Koreas now inhabit, is this map, a picture of the night-time illumination on the Korean peninsula.

The metropolitan area of Seoul, the South’s capital, holds 23 million people and is the second-largest conurbation on the planet (after Tokyo). Its huge lit-up area, close to the border with the North, is clearly visible from space. Other Southern cities, while quite a lot smaller than Seoul, are also clearly distinguishable on this satellite map, for example Gunsan on the western coast, directly below it the inland city of Gwangju, the cities of Masan and Busan on the southern coast, and several other cities, much smaller still.

By contrast (quite literally, even), the only speck of light north of the DMZ is the North’s capital of Pyonyang, a single, neat pinprick of white punched through an otherwise completely black canvas. The minimal lighting belies the fact that Pyongyang is home to an estimated 3 million people. Gunsan, in the South, has under 300.000 inhabitants.

There is only one bright side to this darkness that I can think of: North Korea must be a fantastic place for stargazing…

This map was sent in by Isak Asgeirsson, who found it here at Imageshack.

217 - East of Eden

According to Genesis 4:16 (KJV), “Cain went out from the presence of the LORD and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.” According to this map, that land of Nod might have been Sicily, which then was a land bridge between Italy and North Africa.

 

The author of this map maintains that:

 

• “Eden was a city and exists today as the city of Oudna in the nation of Tunisia.
• “Ararat was a city and exists today as the city Arwad on the coast of t he nation of Syria.”
• “The Great Flood occurred where and when an isthmus, which existed between the Apennine mountains of Europe and the Atlas mountains of Africa, collapsed and sank.”

This map of the antediluvian world was sent to me by Mr Patrick Archer, the author of this map. He did not provide any more context for his theories. Which is regrettable, as I would have liked to know why he places Ararat on the Syrian coast, and doesn’t equate it, as is more generally accepted, with the eponymous mountain in eastern Turkey.

And why the breached isthmus he refers to is near Sicily and not, as is generally accepted, near Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. I’m not enough of a bible scholar to know where Eden is supposed to have been, but I’m sure most experts would place it somewhere in the Fertile Crescent, in or near present-day Iraq.

216 - US Annexes Amazon Forest!

 

“Geographical manuals in US schools show an amputated Brazil, without the Amazon and the Pantanal. This is how students are taught that these are ‘international’ areas, in other words: this is how the North American public is prepared for the ‘internationalisation’ of these areas.”

“The following text is taken from a US high school geography manual, signalling the United States (jointly with the United Nations) can take over the Amazon to protect the water and air quality of the world.”

“The manual discusses how this area is in South America, a region with the worst poverty on the planet and divided among eight nations with a weird, irresponsible, cruel and authoritarian population – savages, drugs dealers, illiterates, etc… It is these peoples that could cause the death and destruction of the world, in a mere few years’ time.”

“Going into detail, page 76 of the manual ‘Introduction to Geography’ by David Norman (used at junior high school level), describes ‘Operation Columbia’:”

“North American troops (80.000 strong in Surinam and Guyana) will take over Brazilian airspace and launch rockets from Alcantara. The US will open a CIA office at the Foz de Iguazu tripoint (Argentina/Paraguay/Brazil) and implant two military bases in Argentina – one in Patagonia and one closer to Buenos Aires.”

“Legend below the map: ‘Here we see the International Reserve, consisting of territory of eight South American countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, French Guyana… Some of the most miserable countries of the world.”

“Since the middle of the 1980s, the most important nature area in the world became the responsibility of the US and the UN. The fund that was set up for this purpose is FIRAF (the ‘First International Reserve of the Amazon Forestal Fund’). This foundation has taken responsibility for the Amazon region, located in South America, a region among the poorest in the world and ruled by irresponsible, cruel and authoritarian governments. The area is part of eight different countries, the populations of which consist of violent types, drugs traffickers and ignorants, illiterates and primitives.”

“The foundation of FIRAF was approved and supported by the nations of the G-23 and it is a genuine challenge to our country and a gift to the whole world, as the ownership of this valuable global asset was in the hands of primitive peoples and countries without responsibility for these ‘lungs of the world’, which under their stewardship would disappear in a few years’ time.”

“We can say that this region has the greatest biodiversity on the planet, both in animal and plant species. The value of this region is incalculable, but the Earth can rest assured that the USA will not allow the Latin American countries to further exploit and destroy this heritage of all mankind. The FIRAF will be administered as any other US National Park, with strict rules regarding exploitation.”

“Please send this mail onto as many people as possible, to inform all of these insidious plans. Gracias, obrigado, thank you!”

This is the verbatim transcription of a rambling, repetitive chain mail (often but not always in Spanish or Portuguese) purporting to show a US scheme for taking over the Amazon basin, under the pretext of saving its globally vital resources from the clutches of the savage locals. It’s not hard to find some things wrong with it.

 

•  Why would the US cooperate with the UN, or vice  versa? Both entities are more often at odds with one another than not. Furthermore, any such action would have to be approved by the UN Security Council; it’s inconceivable how other veto-wielding members would permit it, especially the increasingly uncooperative Russians, or the Chinese, who no doubt have their own agenda in the region.
•  The quoted texts seem hardly appropriate for a school textbook, which are in most cases formulated in neutral tones, even in America… Unless this is an illustration of American arrogance as imagined by outsiders.
• Why would the CIA open an office at said tripoint, and why would the US implant military bases so far from their area of annexation?
•  The G-23 doesn’t seem to exist, or if it does, it’s neither googleable nor wikipediable. Maybe they meant the G-8?
•  FIRAF is googleable, but only seems to turn up in news reports of questionable veracity, whereas entering it in the – fallible, but rather comprehensive – reference website wikipedia, draws a blank.
•  An search for FIRAF does lead to this page of the US State Department, where this context is given:

 

“Since 2000, a forgery has circulated falsely claiming that the United States and the United Nations have assumed control of the Amazon rainforest in order to safeguard its treasures for all mankind.”

“The forgery purports to be page 76 of a U.S. sixth grade textbook titled An Introduction to Geography by David Norman. There is no indication that such a book exists. The U.S. Library of Congress, with more than 29 million books and other printed materials, has no record of it. The Online Computer Learning Center’s WorldCat database, the world’s largest database of bibliographic information with more than 47 million books, has no record of the book. Nor can such a book be found in Internet searches on amazon.com or Google.”

“To a native English speaker, the accompanying text’s many errors of spelling, grammar, and inappropriate tone and language are clear, although these would not necessarily be obvious to non-native English speakers. The words that are misspelled and some of the other most obvious errors are indicated in boldface. They are:”

 

• 3.000 should be 3,000; Americans use a comma, not a period to separate thousands from hundreds in numbers
• INT’L should be INTERNATIONAL; informal contractions would not be used in a textbook
• responsability should be spelled responsibility
• irresponsable should be spelled irresponsible
• authoritary should be authoritarian
• the “a” before “unintelligent” should be “an”
• destroying should be destruction
• vegetals should be vegetables
• calcule should be calculate
• cert should be certain
• explorate should be exploit. 

 

“In addition, the text uses an inappropriate tone and contains many other grammatical and word usage errors. Some of the spelling errors in the forgery indicate that the forger was a native Portuguese speaker. In Portuguese, the word for calculate is calcule, and a word for vegetable is vegetal. On June 8, 2000, the then-Brazilian ambassador to the United States, Rubens Antonio Barbosa, characterised the forgery as ‘disinformation made in Brazil by sectors still unidentified’.”

“Ambassador Barbosa added, ‘The initial source of the supposed news was a website associated with the slogan Brasil, Ame-o ou Deixe-o [Brazil: love it or leave it], but with no identification of those responsible for the website.’ The Minister-Counselor of the Brazilian embassy at the time, Paulo Roberto de Almeida, stated that the forgery was linked to Brazilian ‘right-wing sectors that specialize in transmitting news of supposed attacks against our sovereignty in a manner that is not merely paranoid, but also irresponsible’.”

“The Brazilian embassy in the United States has this statement on the forgery, in Portuguese, on its website. Although the textbook page has long been identified as a forgery, it continues to circulate widely via e-mail, and is often believed.”

Which is how it ended up in my mailbox…

215 – Montana, the Gorgeous Mosaic

 

In its issue of 22 April 1996, the New Yorker Magazine published a parody map of Montana, by cartoonist Roz Chast. The state ranks 4th in surface (after Alaska, California and Texas), but 44th in population, giving it the 3rd lowest population density (before Wyoming and Alaska). This desolation, coupled with its great natural beauty, endowed Montana with several nicknames, such as the ‘Treasure State’, the ‘Land of Shining Mountains’ and ‘Big Sky Country’. Most interesting, because of its ambivalence, is the ‘Last Best Place’.

This reflects on Montana’s spectacular Rocky Mountain landscapes, but also could be interpreted as meaning that the 1 million or so Montanans see the outside world as the Big Bad Wolf. Which is one of the insinuations of this not over-friendly big-city view of rural Montana – the title is decidedly sarcastic. Montana is portrayed as a quilt of mini-states run by disgruntled marginals: 

• Obsessed environmentalists
• Obsessed anti-environmentalists
• UFO buffs
• Militia groups
• Organised tax-dodgers
• Mad bombers
• Right-wing religious fanatics
• Macho writers, their hippie wives and their hippie children
• Hollywood pseudo-cowboys in need of privacy, open air, and a full-time personal staff of forty

I don’t really know enough about Montana to say whether there is any truth in this, but I guess the asinine tone of the labels reflects the prejudices of the ‘liberal, intellectual cosmopolitan coastal elite’ at least as much as it indicates those of the alleged fringe groups portrayed here – if not more.

This map was suggested to me by Wil Grewe-Mullins and is found here on Pruned, a blog on landscape architecture and related fields. A few people there commented on the veracity of the stereotyping in this map, which makes me wonder whether the New Yorker cartoon didn’t get it just about right:

• “The pseudo-cowboys should be down by Bozeman and the environmentalists should be by Missoula.”

• “I think I-5 goes right thru ‘anti-environmentalists’ and ‘organized tax dodgers’ – and I can attest to the truth of it! Stopping for gas in anything other than an old truck starts to get scary after a while.”

• “I would say the label ‘Hollywood pseudo-cowboys’ is true for the area around Kalispell (say the eastern half of that section) and I’d label the west part asbestos country: When I grew up, it was in the anti-environmental group. Bumper stickers of ‘Save a logger, eat a spotted owl’ were common. Right-wing religious fanatics can be found anywhere.”

214 - The Blonde Map of Europe

 

Q: How do you get a blonde out of a tree?
A: Wave

According to this map – and if you really believe that blondes have less brains –a nasty fall like that is more likely to happen in the central parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, where at least 80% of the population is fair-haired, the highest figure in all of Europe.

This map, indicating the varying degrees of ‘blondness’ in Europe, shows how fair hair gets rarer further away from this core area – towards the south, as one intuitively might presume, but also towards the east, west and even towards the north.

The consecutive bands (coloured in such a way as to approximately represent the ‘average’ hair colour in each area) surrounding the core blonde area in Scandinavia in most cases don’t correspond with national boundaries, but could be taken to represent certain degrees of ethnic variation, often with a possible historical explanation.

• The highest percentages of fair-haired people can be found around the Baltic Sea (e.g. Denmark, the Polish coast and the Baltic states), making it in effect an almost entirely blonde-bounded lake. Only the German part of the Baltic coastline is remarkably un-blonde.
• Iceland was settled by mainly Norwegian colonists, and Icelanders still share the same degree of blondness with the largest part of Norway.
• The southern border of the fairer-haired part of Great Britain seems to correspond quite well with the southern border of the Danelaw, which was ruled and settled by the Danish in the early Middle Ages.
• The northern border of the 50-79% blonde area in Britain excludes the Highlands, perhaps indicating this was a refuge for the darker-haired Celtic people of Scotland.
• The darkest-haired part of France seems to correspond with those areas most heavily populated by its more ancient Gallo-Roman inhabitants, lighter-haired regions possibly reflect a later influx of Celts (in Brittany) and a more pronounced settlement of Frankish tribes of Germanic origin (in northern France and down towards Burgundy).
• Galicia prides itself on its Celtic heritage. Maybe this explains the relative blondness of that nort-west corner of Spain.
• The darker-haired area of Switzerland seems to correspond with the areas where Rhaeto-Roman and Italian are spoken.
• The blonder area in northern Italy might reflect a larger Germanic, Celtic and/or Slavic component of the local population, a similar area in the heel of Italy, way down south, is more of a mystery.
• A significant blonder-darker divide cuts through the Balkans, dividing Serbia in two (whilst Montenegro lands on the ‘blonder’ side of the border, and Kosovo on the ‘darker’ side).
• Romanian areas closest to the Hungarian border are equally blonde – many ethnic Hungarians live in Romania, possibly most of them closest to the border.
• Moldova, ethnically Romanian, is equally dark-haired.
• As is an adjacent part of the Ukraine, which for the largest part is as blonde as most of central and eastern Europe (all the way down to Georgia).
• The darker areas in Russia’s far north (the Kola peninsula) and further east (Siberia) are probably due to the prevalence of native, darker-haired peoples, e.g. the Saami (formerly referred to as the Lapps), who also account for the darker area at the very north of the Scandinavian peninsula.

I’ve no idea which year this map is from, but I suppose the larger mobility of people nowadays would make for a more diffuse distribution of hair colouration. Which dovetails nicely with this blonde joke:

Q: What did the blonde do when she heard that 90% of accidents occur around the home?
A: She moved.

The map was sent to me by Faluvégi Balázs from Hungary, and can be found here on eupedia.com, together with other interesting maps showing the distribution of eye-colour, religion, ethnicity, GDP per capita, legal age to purchase and drink alcohol and even the legal status of cannabis.

213 - Pangaea Ultima: Climbing the Mediterranean Mountains

 “Is this what will become of the Earth’s surface?” asks the entry for 22 September 2007 of Astronomy Picture of the Day, a website affiliated with Nasa (judging from its url).“The surface of the Earth is broken up into several large plates that are slowly shifting. About 250 million years ago, the plates on which the present-day continents rest were positioned quite differently, so that all the landmasses were clustered together in one supercontinent now dubbed Pangea*. About 250 million years from now, the plates are again projected to reposition themselves so that a single landmass dominates. The above simulation from the Palaeomap Project shows this giant landmass: Pangea Ultima**. At that time, the Atlantic Ocean will be just a distant memory, and whatever beings inhabit Earth will be able to walk from North America to Africa.”

• Not only will the Atlantic Ocean disappear (and be replaced by an Atlantic Mountain Range), the Indian Ocean will become a large lake, bounded by the eastern coasts of South America and Africa, and the coast of southeast Asia. The protrusion of the Indian subcontinent is still recognizable.
• Australia, Antarctica and New Guinea will be joined too; if present species persist and the resulting mountain range doesn’t prove impassable, Australia might be overrun by penguins or Antarctica by kangaroos. Or Austro-Antarctic Guinea might be ruled by a new species that’s a hybrid of both, a tuxedo-clad marsupial, hopping across the icy wastes.
• The Hudson Bay and Alaska remain recognizable, but the Great Lakes appear to disappear.
• Ireland and Great Britain obstinately refuse to merge – both with each other and with the Continent.
• Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea will change position, but not shape.
• The Mediterranean Sea will be squeezed out of existence by Africa pushing into Europe, giving rise – quite literally – to a mountain range where at present there’s still sea.
• The Korean peninsula is still there, but Japan seems to be swallowed up by the Pacific Ocean, no longer content to be the biggest ocean in the world, it will be the world’s only ocean.

*: or Pangaea, in a more conservative spelling. This name for the supercontinent that existed around the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic eras was first used by Alfred Wegener in his 1920 book Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (’The Origin of Continents and Oceans’), in which he first proposed the theory of continental drift.**: or Pangaea Ultima, translatable as ‘the ultimate unified landmass’. The remaining sole body of water can then be dubbed Panthalassa Ultima. This map was sent in by Jenn Berg.

212 - Transit Map of the World’s Transit Systems

Be glad they don’t have coffee-tables in the Tube, métro, subway and U-Bahn, otherwise you wouldn’t have any excuse not to take this book with you on your subterranean peripatations. ‘Transit Maps of the World’ is an expansion of the earlier ‘Metro Maps of the World’ and was published at the end of October by Penguin USA.

This map was a promotional e-card for the book, the caption at the bottom reads: “This playful diagram shows all the cities which have, are building or are planning to construct an urban rail system. It is the opening page of a new book about the graphic design of subway, metro, underground and U-Bahn system maps and diagrams.”

Produced in the by now iconic style of Harry Beck’s 1933 London Underground map, the diagram reveals the differing degrees of metro-isation around the world.

• Africa is most poorly endowed with public underground transit systems: only Cairo and Alexandria (Egypt), Tunis (Tunisia), Algiers (Algeria) and Lagos (Nigeria) have or are planning them.
• Actually, Oceania is even less metro-ised, but this is self-explanatory: there’s no need for subways in a continent where most countries are small island nations. Only Australia (Melbourne, Sydney) and New Zealand (Auckland) – significantly less small than the other Oceanic islands – have them.
• Beck’s method of making geography subservient to clarity distorts distances, in London as well as on this fanciful map – rendered even more bizarre by some unlikely stops close to each other: how about Baghdad to Izmir via Jerusalem, or Athens to Esfahan via Tel Aviv? Or Taipei to Pyonyang via Seoul?
• As in Beck’s design, there’s a concentration of lines and stops in the central area (which on the London tube map, I’ve only recently discovered, has the shape of a bottle). This gives the impression that outlying areas, such as the Americas, are much less metro-ised. Which might be a bit of an exaggeration, much like the placing of Bologna at the centre of this world map is an overstatement of that city’s charm (to everyone but the Bolognesi, I’m sure).
• Okay, this is a fantasy transit map. But just imagine taking the metro in Vancouver, all the way to Shanghai! With stops in Montréal, Amsterdam, Prague, Kiev and Novosibirsk! Come to think of it: that’s a pretty long stretch to have to sit in a dark tunnel…

This map was kindly provided to me by Mark Ovenden, author of the book.

211 - Humbead’s Revised Map of the World (With List of Population)

They did a lot of crazy stuff in the Sixties, man. Especially at universities like Berkeley, a hotbed of political radicalism, of experiments with free love and cheap drugs  (or was that cheap love and free drugs?) and of… map reviews. This is the verbatim text of such a review from the Berkely BARB  de dato March 1-7, 1968 and written by E.D. Denson.

“Certainly the most astonishing document to come from the underground presses is Humbead’s Revised Map of the World With List of Population. It provides the independent verification of the fallacy of space, and that pernicious reasoning that makes New York and Berkeley seem far apart on normal maps. Everyone knows that what’s important is people, not distances, and now for the first time we have a map recognizing this.”

“It also provides the first real attempt to link together what Lonnie Feiner calls the tinker-toy of life. Perhaps you’ve noticed, if you are a traveller, that you continue to run into the same people over and over again as the years move on in different guises.”

“Today they are guitar makers, tomorrow gardeners, next year they’ll be selling insurance or founding religions, but you can be certain that in any new scene half of the population will be people you already know.”

“The reason for this is the relatively small population of the world, we’ve always suspected. Now here for the first time is a list of the population of the inhabited world (Berkeley, SF, LA, NYC, Boston & Cambridge) drawn by one of the most encyclopedic of our generation. A sample of the perhaps 1000 names: Big John Campbell, Stan Lee, Little Junior Parker, Ken Spiker, Danny Kalb, Lawrence Ferlinghetti.”

“Tom and I had, as we are wont, a long discussion of how this list was drawn up. It seemed unlikely that one person knew all of these names: I don’t and I’ve been in the same scenes that the compiler has, I believe. But it also seems unlikely that a committee drew up lists either, because there is some indefinable consistency in the names, some internal logic which links them together.”

“Perhaps they were taken from the Berkeley BARB 1966-67? But no, because the Berkeley BARB doesn’t know of many of these people because they have been living in other portions of the world. I fall back on my original thesis: one man knew all of these names.”

“You can too. As a public service several of us have agreed to pool our knowledge and publish the Charchild-Denson Identifier of Humbead’s List of the world’s Population. There are some gaps in our collective knowledge, which we invite the public to fill. So go to the Print Mint, get the map, turn on your decoder ring, and off we go.”

“NW QUADRANT: Campbell Coe–Photographer and owner of Campus Music. Brian Rohan–SF atty & recently dance promoter with the Grateful Dead. Ravi Shankar–Indian musician associated with the sitar, Billboard artist of the Year.”

“Lyndon Johnson–the latest, and perhaps last, president. Don Reno-hillbilly musician, flourished late 1940’s with Red Smiley? Eugene Pugatch–doctor of great renown. Timothy Leary–public figure, martyr, priest. Jesse Fuller–one man band from Georgia now resident in Oakland, records for various companies.”

“Peter Siegel–recorder and producer of Pat Kilroy’s record on Elektra. Paul Smith, Bill Stein (assistance please). Gypsy Boots–inventor of the Gypsy Boots energy bar. Rolf Cahn–neo-folk guitarist, founder of the Caballe, flourished Berkeley 1950’s. That’s all for today’s broadcast gang, tune in again sometime.”

Lyndon Johnson, perhaps the last president? That must have been some good acid. Or some deep shit.This map was sent in by John Ross, and can be found here on humbead.com.

Unfortunately, the names are illegible and I couldn’t google a larger image. Anyone? Man?

Update on the list of names: they can be found here on the aforementioned site. Thanks to ubermensch for pointing that out.

210 - French Kissing Map

Over 18.000 votes have been cast in a poll to determine once and for all the answer to the burning question: Combien de bises? That’s French for ‘How many kisses’, and kissing in France is a lot more complex the French’s somewhat overstated reputation for carefree libidinosity implies.

Unlike more reserved nationalities, the French greet each other with kisses on the cheek – but the practice varies to the point where one risks l’embarras social when the kisser has another number of pecks on the cheek in mind than the kissee. Suppose, for a moment, that you intend to give three kisses and the other person turns away after two. Ah, the humilitation!

This must have happened a few times to Gilles Debunne, because earlier in 2007 he set up a website to resolve the French kissing conundrum once and for all. Debunne asked his compatriotes to send in how many kisses were the rule in their particular département. The number, which varies from one to four (five is too much, even for the French), shows an interesting regional variability.

• One kiss is the preferred option in only two départements: Finistère at the western tip of Brittany and Deux-Sèvres in the Poitou-Charentes region.
• Elsewhere in Poitou-Charentes, three kisses are preferred: in the departments of Vienne and Charente. The largest block of three-kiss-départements is located in the southeast. Trois bises are the thing to do in Ardèche, Aveyron, Cantal, Drôme, Haute Loire, Hautes Alpes, Hérault, Gard, Lozère and Vaucluse.
• Four kisses are de rigueur in a large region in northeastern France. Apart from the isolated coastal département of Pas de Calais, this is a contiguous area, consisting of 22 départements from Normandy to the Belgian border: Ardennes, Aube, Calvados, Eure, Eure et Loire, Haute Marne, Indre, Indre et Loire, Loire et Cher, Loire Atlantique, Loiret, Maine et Loire, Manche, Marne, Mayenne, Orne, Sarthe, Seine et Marne, Seine-St-Denis, Val d’Oise, Vendée and Yonne.
• The rest of the country is two-kisses territory, apart from the same département in northeast Paris that stood out by turning Royal red amidst a sea of Sarkozy blue in the first round of the French presidential elections earlier this year (see entry #108).

Not visualised in this map is the confusion within the départements. Apparently, the quatre bises won out only just in Pas de Calais, narrowly defeating the almost 50% who said they preferred just deux. What happens when representatives of the former group meet someone from the latter one? A faux Pas de Calais? And that’s not even taking into account the class and age distinctions that may play a role in how many kisses are required – or even whether they are expected at all. 

“If you are invited to a dinner party with people you don’t know, you’ll shake their hands when you arrive. At the end of the evening, you might kiss them but it’s probably better to hold out your hand and see what happens,” says Constance Rietzler, director of La Belle École in Paris, offering courses in art and hopefully also joie de vivre, and quoted in this article in The Times on Mr Debunne’s website.

The map was sent in by Romke Soldaat of the website Frogsmoke, which asks the question: “What makes France such an endearing and infuriating country at the same time?

Why are the French a people that you love one day and hate the next?” And gives some pretty funny answers. Well worth a read.