Full disclosure: The West Wing is a formative influence, and if anyone is familiar with the show then you might also be familiar with "Big Block of Cheese Day." This, in and of itself, as nothing to do with maps. But, at one point on the show, there was a group of cartographers petitioning the White House to endorse a change from the traditional Mercator Map (which is the map of the world that everyone is familiar with) to the Peters Map, which showed a more accurate representation of land distribution among the continents.
Anyway, I was thinking about how maps can actually be a controversial topic in that the way they depict the size of countries and their relation to other areas of the world can overturn deeply rooted "knowledge" of geography. That's when I found this map:
Anyway, I was thinking about how maps can actually be a controversial topic in that the way they depict the size of countries and their relation to other areas of the world can overturn deeply rooted "knowledge" of geography. That's when I found this map:
This is, reportedly, a 1763 copy of a map originally drawn in 1418 by Zheng He, famed Chinese explorer and cartographer. Since it's discovery in 2001, research has mostly proved that this is not true, but it would have been really cool if it was. The entire history of the Western hemisphere would have to be rewritten to accommodate this new evidence. However, the map is still interesting given its actual age, especially since it also depicts California as an island.
No comments:
Post a Comment