MetaFilter posts tagged with cartography and History

Search the Bible with Google Maps

Effigy2000 — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:49:53 -0800

Biblemap.org is an interactive map system for the bible, which is great for visualising where certain biblical events are said to have occured. It's also great for people who don't subscribe to any kind of organised religion but do like looking at maps (like me!).

400 Years Ago

netbros — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:35:41 -0800

Have you ever wondered what New York was like before it was a city? Find out at The Mannahatta Project, by navigating through the map to discover Manhattan Island and its native wildlife in 1609. “The goal of the Mannahatta Project has never been to return Manhattan to its primeval state. The goal of the project is to discover something new about a place we all know so well, whether we live in New York or see it on television, and, through that discovery, to alter our way of life. New York does not lack for dystopian visions of the future…. But what is the vision of the future that works? Might it lie in Mannahatta, the green heart of New York, and with a new start to history, a few hours before Hudson arrived that sunny afternoon four hundred years ago?”

I have a boot in my eye! And I am shaped like a boot! To boot!

goodnewsfortheinsane — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:39:04 -0800

Satirical maps of Europe from 1914-15.

The Map-Happy Chaplain

Rykey — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:15:08 -0800

John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg emigrated from Germany to the United States, where he was eventually a Chaplain in the American Civil War. He also really liked maps; in the course of traveling over his lifetime, he collected hundreds of maps, some dating back to the 16th century. [Most maps in Latin]

Inflicting a historical atlas on the world

Kattullus — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:14:40 -0800

Physicist Howard Wiseman has a hobby, history. On his website he has three history subsites, filled with lots of information: 1) Ruin and Conquest of Britain 2) 18 Centuries of Roman Empire 3) Twenty Centuries of "British" "Empires". Especially informative are his many maps. As he says himself: "Drawing historical maps of all sorts has been a hobby of mine since my mid teens. Now I can do it digitally, and inflict it upon the world!"

Mapping Canada

St Urbain's Horseman — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 21:22:05 -0800

Canada at scale: Exploration, colonization and development. And a pop-up menu. Go, eh!

Historic maps and photos of Africa

Rumple — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:26:14 -0800

Northwestern University hosts a fine collection of historic East African photographs, viewable as sample sets or in their original photo-albums (requires flash). But the real prize is their wonderful collection of 113 historic maps of Africa, which are zoomable to incredible detail, also 1, 2, 3. via

The Book of Curiosities

peacay — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:21:19 -0800

For anyone with even a passing interest in Islamic history or cartography, 'The Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes' site at Oxford University's Bodleian Library will provide a thoroughly interesting timesink. This recently discovered 13th/14th century copy of an 11th century Egyptian manuscript was partly based on Ptolemy and includes the oldest rectangular map of the world...not to mention the famed human-bearing Waq-Waq tree. [via]

The Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography

carter — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 08:33:05 -0800

The Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography Maps, mappers, and the history of mapping, with slide shows, online exhibitions (e.g. The French Empire in North America, popular cartography), and journal articles. Part of the Newberry Library, Chicago.

Who can invent for us a cartography of autonomy, who can draw a map that includes our desires? - Hakim Bey

absalom — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 17:51:57 -0800

Cartography is a skill pretty much taken for granted now, but it wasn't always so. Accurate maps were once prized state secrets, laborious efforts that cost a fortune and took years (or even decades) to complete.

How things have changed. (Yours now, $110) It took almost 500 years to map North America, but it's only taken one tenth of that to map just everything else. In the last 50 years, we've been able to create acurate atlases of two planets and one moon (with a second in the works). Actually, we've done a lot more than that. We're actually running out of things to map.

Maybe Not.

Images of the Southwest

plep — Mon, 14 Jul 2003 00:12:07 -0800

Images of the Southwest. The American southwest, that is. The Bisbee Deportation of 1917 - 'an event specific to Arizona that influenced the labor movement throughout the United States'; early cartography of the southwest; a rural school newspaper; mission churches; folk arts - Easter eggs, murals and so on; War Relocation Authority camps (some photos ; and more.

old japan maps

stbalbach — Sun, 13 Apr 2003 11:48:21 -0800

A bunch of very beautiful Old Japanese Maps has been put online. Java application Insight(tm) required to view and includes a nifty GIS application to overlay old maps on current maps with 3-D animated fly-throughs. State of the art in online map presentation "The digital images are even better than the originals because you can amplify them, rotate them to look at them from different angles," Mr. Zhou said. "In practical terms, this is a better way of using the material than actually coming here to see the pieces."

geronimo_rex — Thu, 04 Oct 2001 12:03:09 -0800

Maps. Recent events have sent me all over bookstores and the web to look at and learn from maps. This is the best, and one of the least known sites. For current events, try the Middle East and Afghanistan sections, but don't miss the incredibel Historical maps collection.

lagado — Mon, 30 Oct 2000 03:29:45 -0800

The Hereford Mappa Mundi (Map the World) is a remarkably beautiful and rare glimpse into the medieval view the world. It is the largest map its kind (54 x 64 inches) to have survived and dates from around 1295. It still resides at Hereford Cathedral in England just as it has done for the last 700 years.

The map depicts the world as a flat disk with east at the top. It shows all the features the then known world including Africa, India and China. Paradise is depicted somewhere east India. The Holy Land and its important sites expand to fill the middle the map. Jerusalem is placed at the centre the world.

It is a work of cosmology as much as a cartography. That is, it seeks to explain the world as well as merely depict its features. This was a time when the population was uneducated and provincial. In the Hereford map, people could revel in this vision of the outside world, which taught natural history, classical legends, explained the winds and reinforced their religious beliefs.

Here is a simplified sketch which makes the details and country names easier to identify. Here is the original and a very good written description.