Alternative cartography. The most unusual geographical maps of the world
Excellent educational material. Geographic maps "from the creation of the world" to the present day.Originally posted by asaratov at The most unusual geographical maps of the world ...
Terrible monsters that swallow ships, mysterious signs that accurately indicate the boundaries of storms and dangerous currents. Many people like maps, antique maps, with sea serpents and terrible monsters swallowing ships in the wide expanses of the ocean, maps showing what the world looked like in the distant and not very distant past.
Jerusalem in the Center, "Guide to Scripture" (Itinerarium Sacrea Scripturea) by Heinrich Bunting, 1545-1606
The 1502 Contino planisphere is the earliest surviving map showing the discoveries of Portuguese sailors to the west and east. It is considered the earliest map of America (apart from the map called America's Birth Certificate) and shows the Caribbean and parts of the Florida coast, as well as Africa, Europe and Asia with the Brazilian coast discovered a few years earlier:
Snippet: Europe and Jerusalem
Snippet: Caribbean Islands
Detail: Brazilian coast (left), Persian Gulf (right)
Pietro Coppo's 1502 map is one of last cards depicting the so-called "Dragon's Tail", coming from Asia and based on the idea of Ptolemy, who, 1500 years ago, believed that the Indian Ocean was surrounded on all sides by land:
The next great map, the map of Venice, shows most of the buildings from 1565. Maps in this style are still quite common on tourist postcards and in guidebooks of this city:
From the Asian "Dragon's Tail" to the mythical sea animals
The ornate 1539 Carta Marina may seem incomplete by modern standards, but satellite footage has shown that the sea monsters depicted in parts of the ocean on the map correspond to well-known storm fronts, currents and other maritime hazards. This may have been a warning sign for sailors of that time who dared to sail in those places:
Another map with monsters in the seas surrounding Iceland in the early 16th century:
A magnificent catalog of "sea monsters" that inhabit ancient seas and the imagination of sailors
And finally, the island whale, printed in the Novi Orbis Indiae Occidentals in 1621:
Earth upside down
The southern parts of the planet were the very last parts displayed by Europeans on a map at the time of the great geographical discoveries. But the idea of "Terre Australis" appeared in the time of Aristotle in the 4th century. BC. Many different theories have arisen over the centuries: in the south, the Indian Ocean is separated by land, the land of the northern hemisphere must be balanced by land in the southern hemisphere, Africa extends to the very South Pole. In 1820, Antarctica was finally discovered in an area that had previously always been associated with Australia. Here is a map from 1587. with a mythical continent that occupies a large part of the southern hemisphere:
Fragment of a decorative map of the world with Antarctica and part of North America, which was published in Amsterdam in 1689:
The 1566 Italian map of North America is one of the first maps to show the northernmost parts such as Canada:
Alternative history on hypothetical maps
The genre of alternative history has spawned a certain portion of the hypothetical maps. The following maps reflect what Europe might have been if Germany had won in the 1940s:
In the same spirit, the 1964 world map was drawn up from the novel Fatherland, the idea of which is the assumption that Germany won the Second World War. The III Reich is marked in red, the European Union, representing the Nazi allies and conquered nations, in brown, colonial possessions in orange, the possessions of the United States and allies in blue, and neutral countries in yellow:
Next is a map based on the novel by J. Orwell "1984" Areas on the map marked as contentious and leading to a perpetual state of conflict between various power blocs are reminiscent of the Cold War tensions in Africa and Asia between the superpowers:
In the 70s. K. Etzel Pearcy, a geography teacher, proposed to revise the boundaries of the US states. According to his theory, the country should consist of 38 states with new names, representing areas that are culturally and physically distinct from each other. Naturally, this idea was not implemented, but it is very interesting:
Another idea of revising the US borders took place in an advertising campaign for Absolut vodka, which took place in Mexico and caused a great resonance. In the US, there have been calls to boycott Swedish vodka. And yet the card has some real reasons, because Mexico lost territories of Upper California and New Mexico during the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. Mexico ceded 42% of its territory, which later became the states of California, Nevada and Utah, as well as parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. The company "Absolute" apologized, noting that the advertisement was created for the Mexican market and did not mean that the company opposed immigration, created anti-American sentiment, did not require a revision of borders, etc.
For those who doubt the above, we present a map of Mexico in 1824 with the territories later ceded to the United States:
Most history students are familiar with this map of Africa, dominated by European powers on the eve of World War I. After 1918. the German colonies were divided between Great Britain and France, and Africa remained under foreign control for decades to come. The color coding indicates the following: Great Britain in red, France in blue, Portugal in purple, Germany in light green, Spain in pink, Italy in emerald green, Belgium in yellow. Only Ethiopia and Liberia, which were created as the birthplace of freed slaves in the mid-19th century, remained independent:
These days, it is difficult to imagine that a country as small as Britain once owned a quarter of the world's territory, including huge populations such as India. Here is the British Empire in the 1920s after the annexation of German colonies in Africa and the partition of the former Turkish territories in the Middle East between Britain and France:
Here are some similar maps of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. This is an Asian vision of the world situation during the 1912 Chinese Revolution. This card was published in Japan, but reflects numerous foreign influences on China at the time. During this period, before the outbreak of World War II, the "Russian bear" posed a threat to all of Europe and Asia. Britain is depicted as a sea monster, reflecting the country's position as the dominant naval power at the time. Germany is depicted as a fanged warthog: Sea monsters, alternate history and the map of the true "Path to Success" ... We are still attracted by unusual maps. Let's take a look at cartographic wonders from around the world, from its inception to the present day.
Keith Thompson created this caricatured map of Europe on the eve of World War I for Scott Westerfeld's graphic novel Leviathan:
Before much of the world was mapped, there were strange, fictional creatures in the place of the world's mysterious oceans that supposedly lived there. This is a 1550 map with images of sea monsters:
And here is a sea monster, supposedly living off the North African coast of Sicily:
In this 1570 map of Asia, we see Japan of a rather curious shape and the Pacific Ocean, inhabited by mermaids and strange sea creatures:
Here is another old map Southeast Asia mid-seventeenth century:
This decorative map of the North Pole was created by the renowned cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1623:
Compare it to a map showing the current territorial claims in the Arctic from countries bordering the North Pole:
And on the other side of the earth, on a map from 1570, we see the imaginary large southern continent of Terra Ostralis Incognita:
Have you ever wondered what Antarctica would look like without ice? One person presents her like this:
In this delightful language map of Europe, you can see how the national borders align with the language spoken by the locals:
And here we see the national distribution in perhaps the most famous multinational empire - the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire (1911):
German-speaking Europeans once belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, which, as it turned out, was neither holy, nor Roman, and not an empire :) Just look at the many individual states belonging to the former Holy Roman Empire - this map is drawn in 1789, on the eve of the French Revolution:
How about an empire spanning three continents? Here we see the mighty Ottoman Empire under Suleiman I the Magnificent, around 1580:
Based on this map, Greater Colombia included today's Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela, as well as parts of Guyana, Peru, and Brazil.
And on this bright, delightful map of the United States, each state has its own (and in fact, foreign) flag:
Amazing comparisons
Below is a map for those who have forgotten that Australia is also a continent. This map shows how great Australia is in relation to all of Western Europe:
This interesting map also reminds us of how large Africa is compared to the largest countries in the world:
Unfortunately, Africa also stands out on this map, which displays the ratio of the number of inhabitants per doctor:
Whimsical illustrations in cards
This curious map of Scotland is drawn as ... a Scotsman, 1869 (bottom left):
It's over early card depicting Ireland as Lady Hibernia, 1795 (Hibernia is the Roman name for Ireland) (top right photo). It was painted by Robert Dayton, a renowned eighteenth century portrait and cartoonist.
This beautifully drawn map depicts the Netherlands and Belgium as a lion. In 1617, when the map was created, they were united as one country, although the territory was ruled by the Spanish:
British cartographer Lillian Lancaster drew this map depicting the 1880 American elections:
Adidas' map of Europe is actually modern, dedicated to the Euro 2008 football championship:
The world map, familiar to everyone from school, made in the Mercator projection, is far from the only version of the image of our planet on a plane. All modern diversity map projections arose with one single purpose - to depict the spherical Earth as accurately as possible on a sheet of paper. And since this is a very difficult task, many options have been proposed for its solution. But they are all far from ideal: somewhere too great distortion distances, angles are displayed incorrectly somewhere, and some options are too difficult to perceive. Nevertheless, there are many interesting solutions among them, with which we propose to get acquainted.
Butterfly projection
This polyhedral projection got its name from the shape of a butterfly, and it was created at the beginning of the 20th century by the American cartographer Bernard Cahill.
Dimaxion projection
The Dimaxion projection, or Fuller's projection, is a sweep of a polyhedron and can depict the globe in various ways. The projection was created by the American engineer Buckminster Fuller in the 40s of the last century. The length of each face of this polygon corresponds to the length of the arc the globe, and the surface inside the triangle is compressed with respect to real sizes.
Hood projection
This map was created by American cartographer John Goode in 1923. It combines different kinds projections that are designed to reduce distortion of areas compared to the traditional Mercator projection.
Werner projection
This pseudo-conical heart-shaped projection was created at the beginning of the 16th century by the Austrian Johannes Stabius, and a little later supplemented and improved by the German priest Johannes Werner.
Pierce projection
This conformal projection was created by the American mathematician Charles Pierce in 1879.