350 – Accidental Maps: Cartocacoethes or Blatant Pareidolia?

I learned a new word today, but the condition it describes has been with me for quite some time: cartocacoethes – the compulsion to see maps everywhere. More on that here on the excellent blog Making Maps. Turns out that the famous Çatalhöyük map, dating from around 6200 BC and often called “the oldest map in the world”, might not be a map after all (and thus a prime example of the aforementioned condition).

Be that as it may, the existence of that condition does not negate the fact that some non–cartographic visual stimuli really do look a lot like the familiar shapes of countries or continents we know from our atlases. Or, to quote Kurt Cobain on a related phenomenon: “Just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you.”

In its most general definition, this experience of seeing patterns in random data is called apophenia -  a term that also covers the phenomenon of ‘false positives’ in statistics, for example.

A more specific type of apophenia, appliccable here, would be pareidolia: perceiving significance in stimuli that have none. This perceived significance is usually more revealing of the perceiver than of the stimuli,which is why this principle is used in Rorschach (i.e. inkblot) testing. It also might explain why it’s often the devout that see images of Jesus on a piece of toast.

But, as mentioned before, sometimes the stimulus is just too convincing, the pareidolia too blatant. This blog already covered a few examples of cartographic pareidolia (Britain in a cloud, #154, and Jamerica, #268). Here are a few more examples that have trickled into the Strange Maps mailbox over the last few months, and a few others found adrift on the internet. If you have a nice picture of a cloud that looks like Denmark, an Alaska-shaped inkblot on your school book, or any other form of accidental cartography, please send it in and I will add it to this post!

• Another Britain-Shaped Cloud

Cornwall has hypertrophied and the southeast looks rather vague, but Scotland is quite solid and just about right, while even the Shetlands put in an appearance. Found here on the website of the truly awesome Cloud Appreciation Society.

• The United States of Naan

“While enjoying a meal at a local Indian restaurant a few nights ago, I began to tear my naan bread then looked down stunned to find a very proportionally accurate map of the US,” writes Simon Wood of Wellington (NZ). “What was even more remarkable was the tear seemed to correspond really well with the Mississippi River. I realise people might call shenanigans on this, but it was entirley coincidental. I was happily nibbling away with no idea I was creating some my very own atlas out of garlicy bread.”

“The straight Canadian border along the top was where the Naan was cut in two by the chef, and you can still see the original half-circle shape along the West Coast. Granted, Florida has been pushed up a little and the distinctive features of New England and the Midwest are all but missing, but all of my dining companions knew straight away what they were looking at.”

• Mexican Paint Job

This Mexican paint job gets two things right which typify the geographic shape of Mexico: the Baja California peninsula on the Pacific coast¨, and the bending shape of its southern part as it narrows to become the Central American isthmus, further down (map here).

• Africa In A Milanesa

“I was cooking this typical Argentinian food called milanesa, when I found the map of Africa in my saucepan,” writes Manuel Barcia from Argentina. “This typical dish is made out of a cut  meat from the back of the cow, called nalga, covered with a mix of mashed bread and eggs and then fried. I always say that each piece of meat looks like an undiscovered island or some unknown place, but this looked just like Africa.” 

• The Puddle of the United States

“Being a cartographer and all I could not help, but notice the puddle of the United States forming in my carport this past Thanksgiving weekend and thought it would make a great addition to the collection,” writes Chris Jackson of Atlanta (GA).

• A Meat Map of Argentina

This simulacrum is quite apt, since Argentina is a huge exporter of beef (photo found here).

• China Set in Stone

“A rare natural stone with detailing that looks like a map of China on it was recently found in Jiaozuo City, central China’s Henan Province,” relates this story on the website for the English service of China Radio International (link found at Making Maps, cf. sup.)

“Local newspaper the Orient Today reported that the football-sized black stone has on its surface a vivid yellow-coloured China geographical map. Places like Taiwan Island, Hainan Island, north-east provinces and Bohai Bay can all be clearly seen on the surface.”

“Zhang Jian, the owner of the stone, who got it at a public market, highly appreciates the natural beauty of the rare find.”

• Australia As A Puddle

Quite accurate, and quite ironic, since Australia has been particularly badly drought-stricken of recent (map here on a fauxtography and other myths-debunking message board at snopes.com, the urban legends website; for the record, the majority opinion of the posters seems to be that the picture is real).

349 – The Slaw of the Land: West Virginia Hot Dog Map

“The shootings, the knifings, the beatings… old ladies being bashed in the head for their social security checks… Nah, that doesn’t bother me. But you know what does bother me? You know what makes me really sick to my stomach? It’s watching you stuff your face with those hot dogs. Nobody… I mean nobody puts ketchup on a hot dog.”

- Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) in ‘Sudden Impact’.

Got that, punk? Hot dogs are serious business, and conflicts regarding what constitutes a ‘real’ hot dog may turn nasty (or even deadly, when it’s Dirty Harry you’re disagreeing with).

The elemental, essential parts of the hot dog are not in dispute – a frankfurter sausage (or ‘frank’) and an equally long, sliced bun to place it in. It’s what goes on the dog that causes all the trouble and discord. The garnishings and condiments that top up hot dogs vary greatly according to personal style and regional tradition. Among those regional varieties are, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (yes, there is at least one of everything in America):

• New York: hot dogs topped with steamed onions and a pale, deli-style mustard;
• Chicago: smothered in yellow mustard, dark green relish, chopped raw onion and tomato slices, sprinkled with celery salt;
• Kansas City: topped with sauerkraut and melted cheese;

The NHDaSC also cites a Southern preference for coleslaw as a hot dog topping (imaginatively dubbed ‘dragged through the garden’). This also happens to be an essential ingredient of the West Virginia Hot Dog (WVHD), as described by wvhotdogs.com: “A true WVHD is a heavenly creation that begins with a wiener on a bun. Add mustard, a chili-like sauce and top it off with coleslaw and chopped onions (…) Different parts of West Virginia have variations on the theme but the common elements are sweet, creamy coleslaw and chili. Anything else is just not a true WVHD!”

Wvhotdogs.com is dedicated to “honoring and expanding awareness of this culinary delight”, by reviewing Hot Dog Joints (HDJs) in the state, and by providing this map. It details in which West Virginia counties coleslaw, that essential part of a WVHD, is habitually standard, optional or nonexistent as a topping. Interestingly, it is in both of West Virginia’s panhandles that coleslaw is least used.

If slaw dogs are a typically West Virginian phenomenon, it would indeed be understandable that they are less prevalent in the state’s most outlying areas. No HDJs in the Eastern Panhandle’s two easternmost counties (Jefferson and Berkeley) offer coleslaw topping, and it is ”usually not offered” in Morgan County, the westernmost one of the Eastern Panhandle’s three. Coleslaw is similarly inubiquitous is the Northern Panhandle’s two most (Hancock, Brooke) and least (Ohio, Marshall) extremitous counties. 

In West Virginia’s ‘mainland’, only Marion County mirrors the panhandles’ unfamiliarity with coleslaw. Strangely, nearby Barbour County is exactly the opposite: and island of hot dog orthodoxy in a sea of coleslaw renegades, where the topping is merely “optional” or “usually available”. In Barbour, as in the rest of the state (except the renegade north and northeast, and Cabell and Mercer Counties in the southwest), coleslaw topping is “standard”. As wvhotdogs.com states: “If you have to ask for slaw on a hot dog, it’s not a true WVHD.”

It would be interesting to know if this coleslaw deficiency in the state’s north and northwest corresponds to any broader cultural differences in the state. As for the origin and spread of coleslaw as a hot dog topping in West Virginia (and beyond), wvhotdogs.com has the following theory:

“Legend has it that slaw was first served as a hot dog topping at The Stopette Drive In on Route 21 near Charleston, West Virginia. This was during the Great Depression when weenies and cabbage were two of the most plentiful and affordable food items. The Stopette sold hot dogs with slaw for only a few years before every eatery in the area copied them. Within a few years restaurants all over southern and central West Virginia were including slaw as a standard ingredient. As many West Virginians left the state looking for work in the southern United States they took their taste for slaw on hot dogs with them. Slaw Dogs are now found in many areas of the south where West Virginia natives settled.”

And finally, it has this to say about ketchup on hot dogs: “There are many reasons why one shouldn’t eat ketchup on a hot dog any hot dog.First, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council’s Hot Dog Etiquette rules dictate that no one over 18 should ever eat ketchup on a hot dog. Ketchup is destructive of all that is right and just about a properly assembled hot dog since its sweetness and acidic taste overpowers food and disguises its true flavor.”

Many thanks to Rich Rostrom for sending in a link to this map.

348 – An Imperial Palimpsest on Poland’s Electoral Map

“Your map showing the electoral divide in Ukraine (#343) is quite interesting, and put me in mind of a similar one that I saw last year, that prompted me do a bit of map research,” writes David G.D. Hecht. “If you look at the Wikipedia article on the Polish legislative elections of 2007, there is a map there similar to the Ukrainian one. I looked at this map and thought, hmmm…where have I seen this divide before? Looks very familiar. This isn’t just some urban/rural, professional/worker, white-wine-and-brie/beer-and-sausages thing!”

Mr Hecht did some overlay work, and came up with this remarkable fit: “The divide between the (more free-market) PO and the (more populist) PiS almost exactly follows the old border between Imperial Germany and Imperial Russia, as it ran through Poland! How about that for a long-lasting cultural heritage?!?” How about: amazing, bordering on the unbelievable?

The Ukraine map isn’t the first example on this blog of electoral cartography showing older cultural divides. Map #330 demonstrates a correlation in the Southern US states between areas of intense cotton production in 1860 and counties voting for Obama in 2008. And map #108 shows the regional divides at issue in France during the 2007 presidential election. I am reminded of German artist Heinrich Böll (b. 1917 in Cologne), who once said that he could still sense the cultural difference between both banks of the Rhine, once the border between the Roman Empire and the barbarian hordes across the river.

The erasure of older borders doesn’t mean they totally disappear — the new map is a palimpsest, even if it sometimes has to be held up to the UV light of an election for those old, overwritten boundaries to reappear. But it is quite strange for an old border like the one between the Kaiser’s Germany and the Czar’s Russia to reappear on a Polish election map as recent as 2007. Poland has moved around the map of Europe quite a bit, most recently in 1945. Poland basically moved west, losing its eastern part to the Soviets and gaining the eastern part of Nazi Germany.

The losses and gains of territory were accompanied by huge movements of people, in numbers probably not seen since the Völkerwanderung at the collapse of the Roman Empire. Expropriated Germans moved west, as did Poles, who took their place. In the context of that momentous re-organising of the region’s ethnic composition, the palimpsest of the Imperial border, cutting Poland in half, seems improbable. And yet there it is, in an almost perfect fit. As I am not an expert in Polish politics, the history of Polish resettlement in the country’s new territories, or the putative phenomenon of cultural-historical anamnesis, I welcome all tentative explanations for this phenomenon.

Many thanks to Mr Hecht for producing and sending in this overlay map.

347 – Leyden, In the Style of De Stijl

The charming city of Leyden in the Netherlands (‘Leiden’ in Dutch, pop. 120,000) could without much hyperbole be called the Dutch Oxford. The town boasts the country’s oldest university and is home to museums, libraries, botanical gardens and other institutions connected to its position as the country’s prime centre of learning. Leyden is also home to Oudt Leyden, Europe’s (and possibly the world’s) oldest pancake house.

Located in the province of South Holland and possibly occupied since Roman times, Leyden was granted city rights in 1266. The city’s cloth industry flourished after the arrival of weavers from plague-ridden Ypres in the 14th century. In 1572, Leyden joined the rebellion against Spanish overlordship of the Netherlands and withstood a Spanish siege. In 1575, William of Orange, the leader of the Dutch rebellion, founded the university at Leyden in gratitude for its role in the war against the Spanish. Leyden still celebrates the lifting of the Spanish siege every year on October 3rd, with a parade and a lot of food and drink.

Leyden flourished both academically and economically during the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century, becoming Holland’s second city after Amsterdam. As in Amsterdam, the layout of the expanding city was determined by grachten (canals). The city’s luck changed with that of its textile industry, pushed out in the 18th century by Holland’s high wages. The city shrunk, and would only start to grow beyond its Golden Age-sized belt of grachten at the turn of the 20th century.

Over the centuries, Leyden was home to many scientists, including Constantijn Huyghens, René Descartes and Albert Einstein, as well as a number of notable artists, such as Rembrandt (a native of the city) and other Old Masters. Leyden was also the city in which Theo van Doesburg founded De Stijl in 1917, together with Piet Mondrian. De Stijl was both a magazine and a movement, founded on the principle of abstracting things down to their geometric essence.

De Stijl was in part a result of the Netherlands’ non-participation in the First World War, isolating Dutch artists from Paris, then the cultural capital of the world. Van Doesburg sought to counter this isolation by starting an art magazine and art movement, inspired by the cubism that was making (square-shaped) waves in the wider art world. At first, the group’s neo-plasticism was expressed in manifestos rather than in art or architecture, but over time, its ideas would exert considerable influence on people like Mies van der Rohe and Rietveld, and more broadly on the course of 20th century art and architecture in the Netherlands and beyond.

This map of Leyden, in the style of De Stijl, was made by Jos Agasi in 2007, the 90th anniversary year of the movement’s founding. “The map was originally made for a project by RAP Architectuurcentrum here in Leyden,” writes Mr Agasi. “In 2008, together with Sanne Dresmé, I organised the project `U bevindt zich hier – Een reis door Leiden in 80 kaarten` (`You are here – A voyage through Leyden in 80 maps`). That project also featured this De Stijl map, which I subtitled: `Design for a stained glass window in Leyden city hall`, hoping the city might find it a nice idea. I made a sketch on my site of how it would look. Who knows, one day it will come true.”

“I was inspired by works by Theo van Doesburg, who lived in Leyden from 1916 to 1920. My map is a homage to his work, which I admire greatly. The map started out as a graphic exercise: I was curious to find out whether it would be possible to ‘translate’ Leyden city centre to a map, using only verticalm, horizontal and diagonal lines. I managed to do it — all the streets and alleyways in Leyden are on the map!”

Many thanks to Mr Agasi for allowing me to use his map.

346 – The Face That Launched 1,000 Pavements: Ciudad Evita

Ciudad Evita is perhaps the world’s weirdest marriage of urban planning and personality cult. Evita City was founded in 1947 by Argentinian President Juan Domingo Peron. By Presidential Decree No. 33221, he willed into existence this new suburb of Argentinia’s capital city Buenos Aires. Exceptionally, the perpendicular street lay-out so typical of new cities in the Americas for this project.

For not only was this suburb named after his wife Eva (‘Evita’) Peron, nee Duarte, it was also shaped to resemble her profile. This map was sent in by Sergio Balbin, who is a current resident of Ciudad Evita: “Your recent post about the Southern Ontario Elephant (#340) brought to mind the place where I live. Ciudad Evita was founded by Peron for the working class. If you see the map, you will notice Eva Peron’s profile in it. It clearly shows Evita’s classic bun (…) Of course this wasn’t a coincidence.”

Maria Eva Duarte was born out of wedlock in 1919 and pursued a career in acting until she met and married Colonel Juan Peron in 1945. One year later, ‘Evita’ (literally Little Eva) became Argentina’s First Lady when Peron was elected president. To say she got involved in her husband’s presidency would be putting it mildly. Evita ran the Health and Labour ministries, the Eva Peron Foundation, and the Female Peronist Party.

In 1951, her candidacy for the vice-presidency received enthusiastic support from the lower classes, but was opposed by Argentina’s military and economic elite. She died in 1952, after the Argentine Congress bestowed the title Spiritual Leader of the Nation on her. In the years since, ‘Evita’ has become an icon in Argentina and beyond, as the subject of biographies, movies and – perhaps most famously – a musical.

Ciudad Evita currently has about 70,000 inhabitants. It’s part of Greater Buenos Aires, situated about 20 kilometres from the city centre and 6 kilometres from the International Airport. Evita City was declared a National Historical Place in 1997.

Many thanks to Mr Balbin for sending in this map.

 

345 – Europe’s Continental Divide

“America’s continental divide is known worldwide. However, nobody ever considers the presence of a European’s continental divide. While for America the subdivision seems more obvious (Atlantic and Pacific coasts, though nobody ever talks about the Pacific and Arctic divide!), in Europe the subdivision might be between the two largest water bodies bordering the subcontinent: Atlantic and Mediterranean Europe.”

“This physical (hence, objective) subdivision is interesting per se, since some countries considered Mediterranean actually are mostly looking towards the Atlantic (Portugal fully and Spain mostly), others considered central European actually lie fully within the Mediterranean basin, such as Hungary, or mostly (Slovenia, Austria). Even Germany has a big fraction of its area within the Mediterranean watershed!”

Thanks to Javier Garcia-Perez Gamarra for producing and sending in this map.

 

 

 

 

344 – Adventures in the Land of the Good Groove

“A while back, I found a record album in a thrift store here in NYC, and I just had to buy it,” writes Adam King. As a mapophile, I understand the categoric cartographic imperative at work here. The map in question is the front cover of Nile Rodgers’ 1983 solo album ‘Adventures in the Land of the Good Groove’. The name Nile Rodgers sounded vaguely familiar, but a little research turned up that this was due to my lack of musical knowledge, not Mr Rodgers’ lack of notoriety. He is influential in his own right as well as instrumental in the careers of many other world-class artists.

Nile Rodgers (b. 1952) started out as a session guitarist for the Sesame Street band, Harlem’s Apollo Theater house band and as a backing musician for Aretha Franklin and Parliament Funkadelic, among others. He became famous with the disco band Chic, best known for their hit ‘Le Freak’. A sample of Chic’s ‘Good Times’ was featured in the Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’, which is often cited as the first hip-hop record. After Chic’s demise in 1983, Rodgers founded Sister Sledge (hit: ‘We Are Family’) and focused on producing (for Diana Ross, David Bowie, Madonna, Duran Duran, Laurie Anderson, INXS, and many others). More recently, Rodgers has taken up producing soundtracks for video games, such as the Halo series. He also wrote music for movie soundtracks, among which the song ‘Love Me Sexy’ for the Will Ferrell vehicle ‘Semi-Pro’.

For this Nile Rodgers solo album, the native New Yorker chose to have lower Manhattan represent the ‘Land of the Good Groove’. The map is made to look like an antique map of the 17th century or thereabouts, down to the ornamental ships and ‘monsters’ in the water. The use of (pig) Latin amplifies the old feel of the map, and is used to some humorous effect — Brooklyn is labelled Terra Incognita and New Jersey is Nova Joisea.

Lower Manhattan’s streets and avenues also get the fake Latin treatment, and are rendered as Twenty-Thirdium, Houstanus, Canalus and Via Broadicus. Other locales include Tribeccium, Terra Financicus and Villagius Easticus. Over on the West Side is the intriguing Mysterium. Is anybody familiar enough with Mr Rodgers’ oeuvre to know why?

Many thanks to Mr King for sending in this image of the album cover.

 

 

 

343 – To which Viktor the Spoils? A Tale of Two Ukraines

Russia is no longer the hub of a worldwide Communist empire, nor the main ingredient of the Soviet Union; but the Kremlin still insists on wielding power in its old sphere of influence, an area of special interest to Russian foreign policy that it calls the Near Abroad.

The most recent – and, to Russia’s other neighbours, most intimidating – example of that insistence was this summer’s brief Russo-Georgian war, in which the Russian Army established final control over Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, eventually recognising their independence.

In the years immediately following the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia was too weak to prevent what it qualifies as EU and NATO ‘encirclement’ (an old Russian geopolitical worry). But now, a resurgent Russia flush with oil money insists on checking what it sees as further encroachment by the EU and(especially) the US.

The term Near Abroad therefore excludes far-flung corners of the worldwide socialist experiment, such as Vietnam or Cuba (although Russia maintains good relations with old-school leftist regimes such as Cuba’s and new ones such as the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez).

It also seems to exclude what used to be called Eastern Europe, states that were independent before 1945 and are again now, almost all firmly lodged in western institutions such as the European Union and NATO (i.e. East Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria; of the former Yugoslav states, only Slovenia is fully integrated).

An interesting twilight zone are the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), in NATO and the EU, but with considerable historical baggage vis-a-vis their giant neighbour to the east – they were independent between the World Wars, but part of the Soviet Union thereafter, and each harbours considerably large Russian minorities.

The Ukraine however, with 45 million inhabitants and about the size of France, is firmly within Russia’s Near Abroad. Its east is ethnically mainly Russian (Ukrainian nationalism tends to be a western thing), and Russia has strategic interests in the Crimea (Russian until 1954, when it was transferred to the Ukraine, but still home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet). The country itself seems divided on whether it is an eastern outpost of the west, or a western outpost of the east.

The 2004 ‘Orange Revolution’, in which pro-western candidate Viktor Yushchenko successfully contested the rigged results of the presidential election that was ‘won’ by his pro-Russian opponent Viktor Yanukovich, seemed to place the Ukraine firmly in the western camp. Ukrainian politics has however seen several reversals of fortune since that time, proving that Ukraine is unique among the former Soviet republics: pro-western and pro-Russian sentiments are almost completely in balance.

That balance is not spread out evenly across the country. This map shows which of both Viktors was the victor in each of Ukraine’s regions in the (contested) November 2004 presidential elections. Each candidate has won in a remarkably contiguous area – Yushchenko winning the northwestern half of the country, Yanukovich the southeastern part. Both Moscow and the West are eager to have the populous, and potentially prosperous Ukraine in their camp. Will the fault line running through the Ukraine become the front line of a Second Cold War?

This election map was taken here from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

342 – “More Typical Than Any Real State of the Union”: Sinclair Lewis’s Winnemac

Winnemac is a real-world North American name of a few persons and places, but also refers to a fictional US state, the brainchild of one of America’s most successful writers of the 20th century, who drew up detailed sketches of the towns and cities of Winnemac — maps which are tantalisingly difficult to find online.

‘Winnemac’ means ‘catfish’ in the language of the Potawatomi Indians, who live in the upper reaches of the Mississippi. The name also refers to three of their chiefs, one of whom signed the Treaty of Greenville (1795) with general ‘Mad’ Anthony Wayne. Wayne defeated the Indians in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which ended the Northwest Indian War and handed the Americans possession of large parts of Ohio and of the area later home to Chicago. The Windy City is home to a Winnemac Avenue and a Winnemac Park; there is also an Indiana town called Winamac and a school district in Minnesota spelled Win-E-Mac.

Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) was the first American to win the Nobel prize for Literature, in 1930. His breakthrough novel Main Street, depicting the small-mindedness of small towns, was set in Gopher Prairie, a fictionalised version of his own hometown of Sauk Centre, Minnesota. The citizens of Sauk Centre were so appalled at their portrayal in the book that Lewis devised a wholly fictional US state in which to set his subsequent, interrelated novels. He describes the state in his novel Arrowsmith (1925):

“The state of Winnemac is bounded by Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, and like them it is half Eastern, half Midwestern. There is a feeling of New England in its brick and sycamore villages, its stable industries, and a tradition which goes back to the Revolutionary War. Zenith, the largest city in the state, was founded in 1792. But Winnemac is Midwestern in its fields of corn and wheat, its red barns and silos, and, despite the immense antiquity of Zenith, many counties were not settled till 1860.”
“The University of Winnemac is at Mohalis, fifteen miles from Zenith. There are twelve thousand students; beside this prodigy Oxford is a tiny theological school and Harvard a select college for young gentlemen. The University has a baseball field under glass; its buildings are measured by the mile; it hires hundreds of young Doctors of Philosophy to give rapid instruction in Sanskrit, navigation, accountancy, spectacle-fitting, sanitary engineering, Provencal poetry, tariff schedules, rutabaga-growing, motor-car designing, the history of Voronezh, the style of Matthew Arnold, the diagnosis of myohypertrophia kymoparalytica, and department- store advertising. Its president is the best money-raiser and the best after-dinner speaker in the United States; and Winnemac was the first school in the world to conduct its extension courses by radio.”

Other Sinclair Lewis novels set in Winnemac are Babbitt, Gideon Planish, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry and Dodsworth. The state has been described as “more typical than any real state in the Union”; it has also been suggested that the name Winnemac might be an amalgamation of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan. References throughout Lewis’ work seem to indicate that the state’s capital is called Galop de Vache, the largest city is Zenith, and others are Monarch, Sparta, Pioneer, Catawba and Eureka.

This “Map of Sinclair Lewis’ United States” was sent in by Travis (sourced here). It was compiled in 1934 from references in all of the Sinclair Lewis books published up until then, and shows Winnemac as covering the southern quarter of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, the northern half of Indiana and the northwestern quarter of Ohio. But, as Travis remarks, Lewis himself “personally made a ton of maps that detailed Winnemac down to the level of individual neighborhoods.” As early as 1921, wrote Lewis’s then wife in a letter to a friend, he had made “the most astonishingly complete set of maps of Zenith, so that the city, the suburbs, the state” were clear in his mind. Those maps remained unpublished during Lewis’s lifetime — they would have made for fascinating endpaper illustrations of the relevant novels.

Some of Lewis’s own maps of Winnemac were discovered in his Vermont studio in 1961, showing discrepancies with this 1934 map: Winnemac “is much further north than had previously been thought (…) New York City is decidedly southeast of Zenith (…) Lake Michigan is simply ignored by Lewis in creating the state.” According to Wikipedia, “Lewis’ map places Zenith due east of Chicago. Cities and towns on the map include Minnemegantic, Banjo Crossing, Roysburg, Tuttleville, Vulcan, Hamburg, New Paris, St. Ruan, Babylon, Chestnut Grove, Parkinton, Eureka, Aetna, Madrid, St. Agatha, and (of course), a Springfield.”

As Travis mentions in his email, Amazon.com refers to a book called “A Sinclair Lewis Portfolio of Maps, Zenith to Winnemac”, published in 1971, out of print and unavailable. Does anyone have an image of these Winnemac map(s) by Sinclair Lewis?

Click on the map for a larger image.

341 – Hungariform Crossword For Magyarophone Cartophiles

 

Here’s a treat for all you cruciverbally obsessed Hungarian cartophiles out there: a Magyarophone crossword in the shape of Old Hungary, i.e. the other half of the Austrian-led Double Monarchy that ruled much of Central Europe until its defeat in World War I.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved after the war, and Hungary descended into chaos. At the Treaty of Trianon (1920), Hungary lost an astonishing 72% of its territory – including its access to the sea – to literally all of its neighbours: the newly formed states of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, Romania, Austria itself and even bits to Poland. Most of these lands were majoritarily non-Hungarian, but the loss was (and to some extent still is) experienced as an unfair humiliation.

So ‘Old Hungary’ lives on, albeit here in the form of an irredentism-flavoured crossword puzzle. It’s hard to tell whether the nostalgic theme extends to the content of the puzzle. Hungarian is a non-Indo-European language, rendering it virtually unintelligible to most other Europeans. The only words I recognise are ‘Mahatma Ghandi’ and (I think) ‘gratulátunk!’

So gratulátunk (I hope) to Pál Szabó for sending in this map.

340 – The Southern Ontario Elephant

Elephants are native to Africa and India and… Canada? Well, not really, but if you tilt your average north-oriented map of Ontario 90 degrees to the right, the province’s southern peninsula will show a more than passing resemblance to an elephant, tooting its trunk.

This Southern Ontario Elephant gains added clarity due to the fact that the peninsula is bounded by lakes (Erie, Huron, Ontario, Simcoe) and other bodies of water, such as Georgian Bay and Niagara Falls.”The only ones who weren’t amused by [the Southern Ontario Elephant] were those in rather unfortunately-placed Owen Sound which, much to our amusement, became known as The Elephant’s b*tth%le,” writes Dave Collins, who sent in this map.

For the record: Owen Sound has been known as the ‘Chicago of the North’ and ‘Little Liverpool’ and at present as ‘the Scenic City’. According to Wikipedia, on the October 18, 2006 episode of The Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert asked viewers to suggest bad things to say about Owen Sound, not being able to come up with any himself. I guess he had never heard of the Southern Ontario Elephant, let alone the position of its posterior.

Finally, just for fun, here are 10 facts about elephants you might not know:

• Elephants are not only the largest land animals, but also the second-tallest, after the giraffe.
• The Buddha’s mother dreamed a white elephant gave her a lotus flower on the eve of his birth. Possession of a white elephant has since been seen as a blessing by the monarchs of Southeast Asia. Because these animals were exempt from work, their upkeep was very expensive, and therefore also a bit of a curse. Hence the term ‘white elephant’ for prestige projects that cost (a lot) more money than they bring in.
• In South Asia, elephants were used to execute the condemned, by crushing them underfoot.
• The 37 war elephants used by Hannibal in his famous military campaign against Rome (in 218 BC) were probably North African forest elephants, a now extinct, smaller subspecies of the African elephant.
• As humans are either left- or right-handed, elephants are usually left- or right-tusked. The ‘master tusk’ is typically more worn down than the other one.
• The Prophet Muhammad was born in the Year of the Elephant (app. 570 AD), so named because the (Christian) king of Yemen attacked Mecca but failed to reach the Ka’aba because Mahmoud, a white war elephant, refused to enter the city. The story is related in the 105th surat of the Qur’an, entitled al-Fil (‘the elephant’).
• Harun al-Rashid, the caliph of Baghdad, presented Charlemagne, emperor of the Frankish empire, with an elephant in 798. This elephant, named Abul-Abbas, actually only arrived in the empire’s capital of Aachen in 802. It was sent forth in battle against the Danish under king Godfred in 804 and died a few years later of pneumonia, possibly caught while swimming in the Rhine.
• Hunting of tusked elephants has increased the mating chances of elephants with the absent-tusk gene, raising the percentage of tuskless elephants from 1% (1930) to 30% now.
• Old elephants adapt to their last, worn-out set of teeth by moving to marshland with soft foliage. When their last teeth finally fall out, they die of starvation.
• Elephant Appreciation Day is on September 22nd.

 

339 – America’s Hat

Not very correct cartographically, but mildly funny.

338 – The Jeopardy! Map of the US

“A popular game show in which contestants need to answer trivia questions on a variety of topics that has been running on US tv for nearly 45 years, and has been syndicated around the world.”

“What is Jeopardy! ?”

Jeopardy! debuted on NBC in March 1964 and the quiz show has been a top-rated fixture of the American television landscape ever since.

Contestant Ken Jennings holds the record for greatest amount of prize money won in one day ($75,000, on 23 July 2004) as well as the longest winning streak (182 calendar days) and greatest overall amount won ever ($2,522,700).

Jennings (b. 1974) has since become a minor celebrity in his own right (in the world of quiz nerds and trivia buffs, anyway) and has written two books on trivia and continues to be active in the quiz/media world. He also runs a blog, and posted this curious map a while ago.

It was published at the show’s 35th birthday (in 1999) and shows exactly where in the US Jeopardy! at that time was popular and where it was not (or less so).

• Trebekkies (after the host Alex Trebek) watch the show most avidly. These are concentrated in South Dakota and Mississippi (whole state covered), Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Florida, Vermont, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Montana.
• The most trivia-challenged states are Utah (entirely) and (for a large part) California, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, Minnesota, Indiana and Ohio.

Jennings, for once, doesn’t have an answer for the discrepancies in this map. To be fair, it’s quite unclear how the data on this map were collated. Anyone?

Many thanks to Kathleen Mikulis for sending in this map.

337 – Europe Without Germany

Imagine. Italian songs echoing off the Danube shores. The Netherlands big enough not to have to worry about the sea. A French-Polish border. Imagine Europe without Germany. This map does.

During most of the first half of the 20th century, Germany was seen by much of the rest of the world as a rogue state in the heart of Europe, its incorrigible belligerence a problem not only to be defeated but also to be eradicated – somehow. Inevitably, some on the lunatic fringe called for wiping Germany off the map — literally. One such plan was discussed earlier on this blog (#123).

Although that particular plan was real, and even though the Second World War was contested with more apocalyptic zeal than any other modern-era conflict, simply obliterating Germany was never seriously considered an option. The aforementioned Kaufmann scheme was the work of a lone pamphlettist, and profited Nazi propaganda more than the Allied cause.

Even the Morgenthau plan, used to similar effect by the German propaganda machine, never envisioned dissolving Germany — merely dismembering and dividing it, while neutralising its economic capacity to wage war. This is in effect what happened after the war, albeit that on top of this, the two halves of Germany ended up on opposing sides of the ideological fence now dissecting Europe.

This ‘neutralised’ Germany and relegated questions of its right to exist to the dustbin of history. Some of the old anxieties did resurface in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and the West Germans steamrollered German Reunification, much to the dismay of many others. “I like Germany so much that I prefer to have two of them”, was the sarcastic sentiment of many European politicians (the quote is attributed to Francois Mitterrand).

Is this what a Europe without Germany could have looked like? For starters, it doesn’t resemble the Kaufmann map (cf.sup.) And it’s unknown which basis in fact (or fiction) it might have. But the re-drawn borders don’t look like an occupation so much as an absorption: German toponyms have been rendered in the idioms of each conquering country.

• Denmark spills out of Jutland all the way down to Hamborg.
• Poland’s new western border corresponds exactly to the old DDR one, with East German cities renamed Drezno (Dresden), Lipsk (Leipzig) and Berolinsk (Berlin), among others.
• The Czech Republic extends into northern Bavaria, including Nuremhora (Nuremberg).
• Austria has gone completely Italian (Salzburg is now Salcastello) and has overrun southern Bavaria, including Monaco di Baviera (Munich).
• France reaches across the Rhine all the way up to Cassel (Kassel), and has frenchified cities like Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), Mayence (Mainz) and Charlesrepos (Karlsruhe).
• The Netherlands reach Hamburg and touch Poland, and include Keulen (Cologne), Dusseldorp (Dusseldorf) and Willemspoort (Wilhelmshaven).

Some of the toponyms used here are the accepted translations for German city names already in use in other languages, e.g. Keulen (Dutch), Hamborg (Danish) and Mayence (French). Others are overtranslated: e.g. Eeten for Essen, both of which mean ‘to eat’ in Dutch and German respectively, whereas the city derives its name from a term for the East of for ash trees.

This map found here on the Kalimedia website, which also publishes The Atlas of True Names, discussed in #334. Many thanks to all those who sent in this map.

336 – McZealand

Fast food chains generally don’t have a good rep when it comes to healthy, eco-conscious dining. There is some re-branding going on, though, like at McDonald’s, which is moving heaven and earth to project itself as lean and green instead of mean.

This is how they do it in New Zealand, reports Mark Whybird: “This is what appeared on my tray. The fry in the middle is not real – it is printed on to the paper, and bent into a shape resembling this country, New Zealand. Here’s the text of the caption: Last year over 95% of the produce we used was grown right here in New Zealand. Our fries, for instance, are made from the highest quality Russet Burbank potatoes grown on Canterbury farms. Take a fresh look.“

New Zealand is one of the more easily recognisable countries on a blind world map, owing to its distinct composition of a North and South Island. This iconic shape must invite use in all manner of design — but to have your country represented as a French fry? If I were a kiwi, I don’t know whether I would be amused or offended…

Thanks to Mr Whybird for sending in this picture.

335 – 10,000,000 Hits

This blog reached its 10 millionth hit last Tuesday. That is amazing. I’m speechless. Well, almost:

Thanks to all visitors, casual and regular, for helping Strange Maps reach that incredible number! I am honoured by the continuing interest in the blog. Should you wish to express your appreciation for this blog, please consider Supporting Strange Maps via the link in the right hand column.

Your comments and map suggestions are as appreciated as ever, but due to increasing volume I haven’t been able to reply to all incoming mail — for which I beg your understanding. A quick word about the Atlas of Strange Maps: the manuscript is at the publisher’s, and production is proceeding as planned. The book should be available in the second half of the New Year.

I will be posting a celebratory batch of maps in a few minutes’ time, one for each million. And after that, I think I might see about that can of beer left in the fridge. Then I’ll be off to bed. Here’s to you all, cheers and goodnight!

334 – The Atlas of True Names

Travellers, discoverers and cartographers have named the world around us so that we might find our way in it. The purpose of a place name, therefore, is to be as distinguishing as possible. But there is another, opposite force at work in toponymy: geographical and other similarities often lead to different places receiving similar names — even if these names are then modified by differences in language.The English city of Oxford and the Dutch city of Coevoorden (*) were named after river segments shallow enough to facilitate bovine transport.

This phenomenon becomes apparent when one digs up the ‘deep etymology’ of place names, as is done in The Atlas of True Names. The Atlas substitutes the original meanings of the world’s place names for the better-known, ossified toponyms. The authors of the Atlas, German cartographers Stephan Hormes and Silke Preust, have said their clever technique was inspired by the place names in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, some (but not all) of which are indeed quite direct. (‘Mount Doom’ is grimly descriptive, but a name like ‘Lothlorien’ means diddly squat — unless you speak Elvish, of course).

The Atlas was first published in German as Der Atlas der wahren Namen, and in that version all the original etymologies are of course rendered in German. If like most people you are at least mildly conditioned by movies, literature and other media dealing with World War II to associate the German language with fascism, this ‘germanified’ version of the world is a bit disconcerting. London, for example, transmogrifies into ‘Hügelfest’, and nearby Norfolk is still recognisable but considerably more ominous as ‘Nordvolk’. Ethiopia becomes ‘Land der Brandgesichter’ and its capital Addis Abeba ‘Neue Blume’.

The more recently published English version of the Atlas presents us with an equally disorienting and sometimes revealing array of ‘original’ place names. Across the Irish Sea (or ‘West Land Sea’) from Blackpool lies another ‘Blackpool’, more commonly referred to as Dublin. ‘Trading Folks’ is none other than the Canadian capital of Toronto Ottawa. The British port of Plymouth is literally ‘Mouth of the Plum’, Brussels is ‘Marsh Cell’, and London’s ‘Hügelfest’ translates as ‘Hillfort’. Nicaragua is ‘Here are people’ and Newfoundland… remains ‘Newfoundland’, one of remarkably few place names with an etymology recent enough for us to take the toponym literally.

But etymology is not an exact science, and some derivations are too funny or elegant to be true. Consequently, some of the etymologies used by Hormes and Preust have been disputed. One example is the word-origin of the Mexican peninsula of Yucatan, which is rendered in the Atlas as “I don’t understand you!” — supposedly uttered by the Maya when addressed by the first Spanish conquistadores (a similar folk etymology traces the origin of the word kangaroo to a miscommunication between aboriginals and British explorers). Other examples abound, but the authors themselves include a caveat lector, stating that they think their work is not scientific, approximately 80% correct and should primarily be seen as an invitation to look at the world through fresh eyes.

Thanks to the dozens of people who sent in this map. A few excerpts of the Atlas can be found here on Kalimedia, which also publishes the German version of the book (here). For a critical discussion of the book, see this entry on Languagelog.

*: and, by derivation, the Canadian city of Vancouver, named after a British captain of Dutch descent whose surname originally was van Coevoorden.