1934 Map Resizes the World to Show Which Country Drinks the Most Tea

in Food & Drink, Maps | November 22nd, 2017

Not a day goes by that I don’t use Google Maps for some­thing or oth­er, whether it’s basic nav­i­ga­tion, research­ing an address, or find­ing a dry clean­er. Though some of us might resent the dom­i­nance such map­ping tech­nol­o­gy has over our dai­ly inter­ac­tions, there’s no deny­ing its end­less util­i­ty. But maps can be so much more than use­ful tools for get­ting around—they are works of art, thought exper­i­ments, imag­i­na­tive flights of fan­cy, and data visu­al­iza­tion tools, to name but a few of their over­lap­ping func­tions. For the impe­ri­al­ists of pre­vi­ous ages, maps dis­played a mas­tery of the world, whether cat­a­logu­ing trav­el times from Lon­don to every­where else on the globe, or—as in the exam­ple we have here—resizing coun­tries accord­ing to how much tea their peo­ple drank.

But this is not a map we should look to for accu­ra­cy. Like many such car­to­graph­ic data charts, it pro­motes a par­tic­u­lar agen­da. “George Orwell once wrote that tea was one of the main­stays of civ­i­liza­tion,” notes Jack Good­man at Atlas Obscu­ra. “Tea, assert­ed Orwell, has the pow­er to make one feel braver, wis­er, and more opti­mistic. The man spoke for a nation.” (And he spoke to a nation in a 1946 Evening Stan­dard essay, “A Nice Cup of Tea.”) From the map above, titled “The Tea is Drunk” and pub­lished by For­tune Mag­a­zine in 1934, we learn, writes Good­man, that “Britain con­sumed 485,000 pounds of tea per year. That’s one hun­dred bil­lion cups of tea, or around six cups a day for each per­son.” We might note how­ev­er, that “the pop­u­la­tion of Chi­na was then nine times big­ger than that of the U.K., and they drank rough­ly twice as much tea as the Brits did.” Why isn’t Chi­na at the cen­ter of the map? “The author made a ten­u­ous point about the cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences between the two: the Chi­nese drank tea as a neces­si­ty, the British by choice.”

Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty library’s descrip­tion of the map is more forth­right: “While Chi­na actu­al­ly con­sumed twice as much tea as Britain, its posi­tion at the edge of the map assured that the focus will be on the British Isles.” That focus is com­mer­cial in nature, meant to encour­age and inform British tea mer­chants for whom tea was more than a bev­er­age; it was one of the nation’s pre-emi­nent com­modi­ties, though most of what was sold as a nation­al prod­uct was Indi­an tea grown in India. Yet the map brims with pride in the British tea trade. “Thus may be told the geog­ra­phy and alle­giance of Tea,” its author pro­claims, “an empire with­in an empire, whose bor­ders fol­low every­where the scat­tered ter­ri­to­ries of that nation on which the sun nev­er sets.” A lit­tle over a decade lat­er, India won its inde­pen­dence, and the empire began to fall apart. But the British nev­er lost their taste for or their nation­al pride in tea. View and down­load a high-res­o­lu­tion scan of the “Tea is Drunk” map at the Cor­nell Library site.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell Explains How to Make a Prop­er Cup of Tea

10 Gold­en Rules for Mak­ing the Per­fect Cup of Tea (1941)

Col­or­ful Maps from 1914 and 2016 Show How Planes & Trains Have Made the World Small­er and Trav­el Times Quick­er

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Colorful Maps from 1914 and 2016 Show How Planes & Trains Have Made the World Smaller and Travel Times Quicker

in Maps | November 21st, 2017

This time of year espe­cial­ly, we com­plain about the greed and arro­gance of air­lines, the con­fu­sion and inef­fi­cien­cy of air­ports, and the sar­dine seat­ing of coach. But we don’t have to go back very far to get a sense of just how tru­ly painful long-dis­tance trav­el used to be. Just step back a hun­dred years or so when—unless you were a WWI pilot—you trav­eled by train or by ship, where all sorts of mis­ad­ven­tures might befall you, and where a jour­ney that might now take sev­er­al dull hours could take sev­er­al dozen, often very uncom­fort­able, days. Before rail­roads crossed the con­ti­nents, that num­ber could run into the hun­dreds.

In the ear­ly 1840s, for exam­ple, notes Simon Willis at The Econ­o­mist’s 1843 Mag­a­zine, “an Amer­i­can dry-goods mer­chant called Asa Whit­ney, who lived near New York, trav­elled to Chi­na on busi­ness. It took 153 days, which he thought was a waste of time.” It’s prob­a­bly eas­i­er to swal­low plat­i­tudes about des­ti­na­tions and jour­neys when the jour­ney doesn’t take up near­ly half the year and run the risk of cholera. By 1914, the explo­sion of rail­roads had reduced trav­el times con­sid­er­ably, but they remained at what we would con­sid­er intol­er­a­ble lengths.

We can see just how long it took to get from place to place in the “isochron­ic map” above (view it in a large for­mat here), which visu­al­izes dis­tances all over the globe. The rail­ways “were well-estab­lished,” notes Giz­mo­do, “in Europe and the U.S., too, mak­ing trav­el far more swift than it had been in the past.” One could reach “the depths of Siberia” from Lon­don in under ten days, thanks to the Trans-Siber­ian Rail­way. By con­trast, in Africa and South Amer­i­ca, “any trav­el inland from the coast took weeks.”

The map, cre­at­ed by roy­al car­tog­ra­ph­er John G. Bartholomew, came pack­aged with sev­er­al oth­er such tools in An Atlas of Eco­nom­ic Geog­ra­phy, a book, Willis explains, “intend­ed for school­boys,” con­tain­ing “every­thing a thrust­ing young entre­pre­neur, impe­ri­al­ist, trad­er or trav­eller could need.” All of the dis­tances are mea­sured in “days from Lon­don,” and col­or-cod­ed in the leg­end below. Dark green areas, such as Sudan, much of Brazil, inland Aus­tralia, or Tibet might take over 40 days trav­el to reach. All of West­ern Europe is acces­si­ble, the map promis­es, with­in five days, as are parts of the east coast of the U.S., with parts fur­ther Mid­west tak­ing up to 10 days to reach.

What might have seemed like wiz­ardry to Wal­ter Raleigh prob­a­bly sounds like hell on earth to busi­ness class denizens every­where. How do these jour­neys com­pare to the cur­rent age of rapid air trav­el? Rome2rio, a “com­pre­hen­sive glob­al trip plan­ner,” aimed to find out by recre­at­ing Bartholomew’s map, updat­ed to 2016 stan­dards. You can see, just above (or expand­ed here), the same view of the world from its one­time impe­ri­al­ist cen­ter, Lon­don, with the same col­or-cod­ed leg­end below, “Dis­tances in Days from Lon­don.” And yet here, a jour­ney to most places will take less than a day, with cer­tain out­er reaches—Siberia, Green­land, the Arc­tic Cir­cle, stretch­ing into two, maybe three.

Should we have rea­son to com­plain, when those of us who do travel—or who must—have it so easy com­pared to the dan­ger, bore­dom, and gen­er­al unpleas­ant­ness of long-dis­tance trav­el even one-hun­dred years ago? The ques­tion pre­sumes humans are capa­ble of not com­plain­ing about trav­el. Such com­plaint may form the basis of an ancient lit­er­ary tra­di­tion, when heroes ven­tured over vast ter­rain, slay­ing mon­sters, solv­ing rid­dles, mak­ing friends, lovers, and ene­mies…. The epic dimen­sions of his­toric trav­el can seem quaint com­pared to the ster­ile tedi­um of air­port ter­mi­nals. But just maybe—as in those long sea and rail­way voy­ages that could span sev­er­al months—we can dis­cov­er a kind of romance amidst the queasy food courts, tacky gift shops, and motor­ized mov­ing walk­ways.

via  1843 Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Col­or­ful Map Visu­al­izes the Lex­i­cal Dis­tances Between Europe’s Lan­guages: 54 Lan­guages Spo­ken by 670 Mil­lion Peo­ple

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The Roman Roads of Britain Visu­al­ized as a Sub­way Map

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

An Interactive Map of Every Record Shop in the World

in Maps, Music | November 16th, 2017

Arriv­ing in a new city usu­al­ly means find­ing the near­est decent gro­cery, phar­ma­cy, cof­fee shop, book­store, laun­dry, etc. And before near­ly every musi­cal whim could be sat­is­fied with a few clicks, it also meant for many peo­ple find­ing the near­est record store. Even the local strip mall chain might hold a sur­prise or two. But the true finds appeared among the small pro­pri­etors, mer­chan­dis­ers of dusty LPs in wood­en bins and keep­ers of local music scene lore. Enter­ing a well-curat­ed music shop can feel like walk­ing into a medieval apothe­cary. What­ev­er ails you, you’re sure to find a rem­e­dy here. If it doesn’t work, there remains a cer­tain mag­ic in the trans­ac­tion. We con­tin­ue to believe in music even when it lets us down.

But have we lost faith in the record shop? I hope not. Online stream­ing and buy­ing has the regret­table effect of flat­ten­ing every­thing into the same two dimen­sions with­out the aura of phys­i­cal media and the musi­cal para­pher­na­lia we find in real life stores. Should you be among the unlucky who lack a local music store, fear not.

You can recov­er the romance by trav­el­ing to any one of the thou­sands of shops world­wide that are cat­a­logued and mapped on Vinyl­Hub, a crowd-sourced “endeav­or,” Ron Kretsch writes at Dan­ger­ous Minds, “to cre­ate an inter­ac­tive map of every brick-and-mor­tar record store on Earth, a per­fect resource for the world-trav­el­ing vinyl obses­sive.”

Brought to us by mas­ter­minds behind Discogs and their sim­i­lar spin-off online cat­a­logs for books, movies, etc., this project might get us out of our chairs—maybe even out of the country—and into new places to dig through the crates. But even if we’re not inclined to leave the house, Vinyl­Hub offers a wealth of fas­ci­nat­ing infor­ma­tion. “The sin­gle city with the largest den­si­ty of shops,” we learn, “is Tokyo,” though “had you asked me,” Kretsch writes, “I’d have prob­a­bly said Lon­don.” I’d have guessed New York, which comes in at a sur­pris­ing 7th place.

The most remote record store on Earth is a clus­ter of CD stalls above a pro­duce mar­ket in the tiny Pacif­ic Island King­dom of Ton­ga, but Vinyl Run, locat­ed on the tiny Indi­an Ocean island of Réu­nion, sure looks like a con­tender. The north­ern­most is in Alta, Nor­way; the south­ern­most is in Inver­cargill, New Zealand.

The UK is cur­rent­ly sec­ond in num­ber of shops by coun­try: 537, with .8443 shops per 100,000 inhab­i­tants. The Unit­ed States at num­ber one has almost triple that num­ber, but also over five times the pop­u­la­tion. These fig­ures are pro­vi­sion­al. Much of the world remains uncharted—at least as far as record shops are concerned—and Discogs mem­bers con­tin­ue to sub­mit new entries. Should you find a blank spot on the map that needs a lit­tle record icon, you can join for free and con­tribute to the Vinyl­Hub com­mu­ni­ty. While there’s noth­ing like a trip to a new music store, even if you’re only in it for the data, you’ll find much here to inspire.

Over at the Discogs blog, we learn sev­er­al more facts, such as the two shops that are far­thest apart (Madrid’s Citadel Records and Star Sec­ond-Hand Book-Music in Palmer­ston North, New Zealand: 19,978 km) and the loca­tion of that most remote shop (the mar­ket in Nuku’alofa in Ton­ga, address: “Upstairs of wet mar­ket”). VinylHub’s “Explor­er” map uti­lizes Google Maps fea­tures to give you unlim­it­ed access to every region in the world. Zoom in to see the num­bers by city and the indi­vid­ual loca­tions of each and every shop in the data­base. You can even find record stores list­ed in Pyongyang—or rather record sec­tions of sev­er­al hotel book­shops. I would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly rec­om­mend mak­ing the trip, but it’s inter­est­ing to imag­ine what odd trea­sures we might find there—or at any of the oth­er sev­er­al thou­sand shops from around the world.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25,000+ 78RPM Records Now Pro­fes­sion­al­ly Dig­i­tized & Stream­ing Online: A Trea­sure Trove of Ear­ly 20th Cen­tu­ry Music

You Can Have Your Ash­es Turned Into a Playable Vinyl Record, When Your Day Comes

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 12 ) |

Interactive Map Lets You Take a Literary Journey Through the Historic Monuments of Rome

in History, Life, Literature, Maps, Museums, Travel | November 9th, 2017

Arch­es on arch­es! as it were that Rome,

Col­lect­ing the chief tro­phies of her line,

Would build up all her tri­umphs in one dome,

Her Col­i­se­um stands; the moon­beams shine

As ’twere its nat­ur­al torch­es, for divine

Should be the light which streams here, to illume

This long-explored but still exhaust­less mine

Of con­tem­pla­tion; and the azure gloom

Of an Ital­ian night, where the deep skies assume

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heav­en,

Floats o’er this vast and won­drous mon­u­ment,

And shad­ows forth its glo­ry.

—Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pil­grim­age (1818)

A mod­ern vis­i­tor to Rome, drawn to the Col­i­se­um on a moon­lit night, is unlike­ly to be so bewitched, sand­wiched between his or her fel­low tourists and an army of ven­dors aggres­sive­ly ped­dling light-up whirligigs, knock off design­er scarves, and acrylic columns etched with the Eter­nal City’s must-see attrac­tions.

These days, your best bet for tour­ing Rome’s best known land­marks in peace may be an inter­ac­tive map, com­pli­ments of the Mor­gan Library and Muse­um. Based on Paul-Marie Letarouil­ly’s pic­turesque 1841 city plan, each dig­i­tal pin can be expand­ed to reveal descrip­tions by nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry authors and side-by-side, then-and-now com­par­isons of the fea­tured mon­u­ments.

The endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the film Three Coins in the Foun­tain, cou­pled with the inven­tion of the self­ie stick has turned the area around the Tre­vi Foun­tain into a pickpocket’s dream and a claustrophobe’s worst night­mare.

Not so in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s day, though unlike Lord Byron, he cul­ti­vat­ed a cool remove, at least at first:

They and the rest of the par­ty descend­ed some steps to the water’s brim, and, after a sip or two, stood gaz­ing at the absurd design of the foun­tain, where some sculp­tor of Bernini’s school had gone absolute­ly mad in mar­ble. It was a great palace-front, with nich­es and many bas-reliefs, out of which looked Agrippa’s leg­endary vir­gin, and sev­er­al of the alle­goric sis­ter­hood; while, at the base, appeared Nep­tune, with his floun­der­ing steeds and Tri­tons blow­ing their horns about him, and twen­ty oth­er arti­fi­cial fan­tasies, which the calm moon­light soothed into bet­ter taste than was native to them. And, after all, it was as mag­nif­i­cent a piece of work as ever human skill con­trived. At the foot of the pala­tial façade was strown, with care­ful art and ordered irreg­u­lar­i­ty, a broad and bro­ken heap of mas­sive rock, look­ing as if it might have lain there since the del­uge. Over a cen­tral precipice fell the water, in a semi­cir­cu­lar cas­cade; and from a hun­dred crevices, on all sides, snowy jets gushed up, and streams spout­ed out of the mouths and nos­trils of stone mon­sters, and fell in glis­ten­ing drops; while oth­er rivulets, that had run wild, came leap­ing from one rude step to anoth­er, over stones that were mossy, slimy, and green with sedge, because in a cen­tu­ry of their wild play, Nature had adopt­ed the Foun­tain of Tre­vi, with all its elab­o­rate devices, for her own.

The human stat­ues garbed as glad­i­a­tors and char­i­o­teers spend hours in the blaz­ing sun at the foot of the Span­ish Steps—the heirs to the artists and mod­els who pop­u­lat­ed William Wet­more Sto­ry’s Roba di Roma:

All day long, these steps are flood­ed with sun­shine in which, stretched at length, or gath­ered in pic­turesque groups, mod­els of every age and both sex­es bask away the hours when they are free from employ­ment in the stu­dios. … Some­times a group of artists, pass­ing by, will pause and steadi­ly exam­ine one of these mod­els, turn him about, pose him, point out his defects and excel­lences, give him a baioc­co, and pass on. It is, in fact, a mod­els’ exchange.

The Medici Vil­la hous­es the Académie de France, and its gar­dens remain a pleas­ant respite, even in 2017. Vis­i­tors who aren’t whol­ly con­sumed with find­ing a wifi sig­nal may find them­selves fan­ta­siz­ing about a dif­fer­ent life, much as Hen­ry James did in his Ital­ian Hours:

Such a dim light as of a fabled, haunt­ed place, such a soft suf­fu­sion of ten­der grey-green tones, such a com­pa­ny of gnarled and twist­ed lit­tle minia­ture trunks—dwarfs play­ing with each oth­er at being giants—and such a show­er of gold­en sparkles drift­ing in from the vivid West! … I should name for my own first wish that one didn’t have to be a French­man to come and live and dream and work at the Académie de France. Can there be for a while a hap­pi­er des­tiny than that of a young artist con­scious of tal­ent and of no errand but to edu­cate, pol­ish and per­fect it, trans­plant­ed to these sacred shades?…What morn­ings and after­noons one might spend there, brush in hand, unpre­oc­cu­pied, untor­ment­ed, pen­sioned, satisfied—either per­suad­ing one’s self that one would be “doing some­thing” in con­se­quence or not car­ing if one shouldn’t be.

The inter­ac­tive map was cre­at­ed to accom­pa­ny the Morgan’s 2016 exhi­bi­tion City of the Soul: Rome and the Roman­tics. Oth­er pit­stops include St. Peter’s, the Roman Forum, and The Eques­tri­an Mon­u­ment of Mar­cus Aure­lius on the Capi­tol. Begin your explo­rations here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Dig­i­tal Archive Puts Online 4,000 His­toric Images of Rome: The Eter­nal City from the 16th to 20th Cen­turies

Ancient Rome’s Sys­tem of Roads Visu­al­ized in the Style of Mod­ern Sub­way Maps

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The 38 States of America: Geography Professor Creates a Bold Modern Map of America (1973)

in Maps | September 5th, 2017

Unless you belong to an old­er gen­er­a­tion, you prob­a­bly can’t remem­ber the last time the map of the Unit­ed States under­went any major change. For decades, the bound­aries have remained pret­ty fixed. And yet the map, as we know it, should­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly be con­sid­ered set in stone.

If bil­lion­aire Tim Drap­er has his way, Cal­i­for­nia vot­ers will decide in 2018 whether Cal­i­for­nia, the home to near­ly 40 mil­lion peo­ple, should be divid­ed into three states called “North­ern Cal­i­for­nia,” “South­ern Cal­i­for­nia,” and plain “Cal­i­for­nia.” His argu­ment being that Cal­i­for­nia has become too large to gov­ern, and that pow­er should be moved toward small­er, more local­ly gov­erned enti­ties. Mean­while, on a par­al­lel track, anoth­er group is push­ing for Cal­i­for­nia to leave the union alto­geth­er. Right there, we have two ini­tia­tives that could change the map as we know it.

And then there was the time when, back in 1973, George Etzel Pearcy, a Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty geog­ra­phy pro­fes­sor, pro­posed re-draw­ing the map of the nation, reduc­ing the num­ber of states to 38, and giv­ing each state a dif­fer­ent name. In his cre­ative rework­ing of things, Cal­i­for­nia would be split into two states–“El Dora­do” and “San Gabriel”. Texas would divide into “Alamo” and also “Shawnee” (along with rem­nants of Okla­homa). And the Dako­tas would fuse into one big “Dako­ta.” In case you’re won­der­ing, Pearcy chose the names by polling geog­ra­phy stu­dents.

The log­ic behind the new map was explained in a 1975 edi­tion of The Peo­ple’s Almanac.

Why the need for a new map? Pearcy states that many of the ear­ly sur­veys that drew up our bound­aries were done while the areas were scarce­ly pop­u­lat­ed. Thus, it was con­ve­nient to deter­mine bound­aries by using the land’s phys­i­cal fea­tures, such as rivers and moun­tain ranges, or by using a sim­ple sys­tem of lat­i­tude and lon­gi­tude.… The prac­ti­cal­i­ty of old estab­lished State lines is ques­tion­able in light of Amer­i­ca’s ever-grow­ing cities and the increas­ing mobil­i­ty of its cit­i­zens. Met­ro­pol­i­tan New York, for exam­ple, stretch­es into 2 adja­cent States. Oth­er city pop­u­la­tions which cross State lines are Wash­ing­ton, D.C., St. Louis, Chica­go, and Kansas City. The “strad­dling” of State lines caus­es eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal prob­lems. Who should pay for a rapid tran­sit sys­tem in St. Louis? Only those cit­i­zens with­in the bound­aries of Mis­souri, or all res­i­dents of St. Louis’s met­ro­pol­i­tan area, includ­ing those who reach over into the State of Illi­nois?…

When Pearcy realigned the U.S., he gave high pri­or­i­ty to pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty, loca­tion of cities, lines of trans­porta­tion, land relief, and size and shape of indi­vid­ual States.  When­ev­er pos­si­ble lines are locat­ed in less pop­u­lat­ed areas. In the West, the desert, semi­desert, or moun­tain­ous areas pro­vid­ed an easy method for divi­sion. In the East, how­ev­er, where areas of scarce pop­u­la­tion are hard­er to deter­mine, Pearcy drew lines “try­ing to avoid the thick­er clus­ters of set­tle­ment.”  Each major city which fell into the “strad­dling” cat­e­go­ry is neat­ly tucked with­in the bound­aries of a new State. Pearcy tried to place a major met­ro­pol­i­tan area in the cen­ter of each State. St. Louis is in the cen­ter of the State of Osage, Chica­go is cen­tered in the State of Dear­born. When this method proved impos­si­ble, as with coastal Los Ange­les, the city is still locat­ed so as to be eas­i­ly acces­si­ble from all parts of the State…

Accord­ing to Rob Lamm­le, writ­ing in Men­tal Floss, Pearcy ini­tial­ly got sup­port from “econ­o­mists, geo­g­ra­phers, and even a few politi­cians.” But the proposal–mainly out­lined in a book called A 38 State U.S.A.–even­tu­al­ly with­ered in Wash­ing­ton, the place where ideas, both good and bad, go to die.

Below you can watch an ani­ma­tion show­ing how US map has changed in 200 years.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Lets You Down­load Thou­sands of Maps from the Unit­ed States Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, the “Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever,” Now Free Online

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Roman Roads of Britain Visualized as a Subway Map

in History, Maps | August 28th, 2017

Walk around Lon­don with some­one who knows its deep his­to­ry — not hard to arrange, giv­en the way Lon­don enthu­si­asts treat his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge as a hyper­com­pet­i­tive sport — and you’ll have more than a few paths of “Roman roads” point­ed out to you. Even in the city of Big Ben and Buck­ing­ham Palace, the Shard and the Gherkin, chick­en shops and cur­ry hous­es, there remain frag­ments and traces of the 2,000 miles of roads the Roman Army built between British towns and cities between 43 and 410 AD, Britain’s cen­turies as a province of the Roman Empire.

Though some of Britain’s Roman Roads have become mod­ern motor­ways, most no longer exist in any form but those bits and pieces his­to­ry buffs like to spot. This makes it dif­fi­cult to get a sense of how they all ran and where — or at least it did until Sasha Tru­bet­skoy made a Roman Roads of Britain Net­work Map in the graph­ic-design style of the sub­way maps you’ll find in Lon­don or any oth­er major city today. Tru­bet­skoy, an under­grad­u­ate sta­tis­tics major at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, first found car­to­graph­i­cal fame a few months ago with his “sub­way map” of roads across the entire Roman Empire cir­ca 125 AD.

“Pop­u­lar request,” he writes, demand­ed a Britain-spe­cif­ic fol­low up, a project he describes as “far more com­pli­cat­ed than I had ini­tial­ly antic­i­pat­ed.” The chal­lenges includ­ed not just the sheer num­ber of Roman Roads in Britain but a lack of clar­i­ty about their exact loca­tion and extents. As in his pre­vi­ous map, Tru­bet­skoy admits, “I had to do some sim­pli­fy­ing and make some tough choic­es on which cities to include.” While this clos­er-up view demand­ed a more geo­graph­i­cal faith­ful­ness, he nev­er­the­less “had to get rather cre­ative with the his­tor­i­cal evi­dence” in places, to the point of using such “not exact­ly Latin-sound­ing” names as “Watling Street” and “Ermin Way.”

Still, bar­ring a rev­o­lu­tion­ary dis­cov­ery in Roman his­to­ry, you’re unlike­ly to find a more rig­or­ous exam­ple of sub­way-mapped Roman Roads in Britain than this one. And for $9 USD you can have it as a “crisp PDF” suit­able for print­ing as a poster and giv­ing to any­one pas­sion­ate about the his­to­ry of Britain — or the his­to­ry of Rome, or graph­ic design, or maps that aren’t what they might seem at first glance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ancient Rome’s Sys­tem of Roads Visu­al­ized in the Style of Mod­ern Sub­way Maps

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

How Did the Romans Make Con­crete That Lasts Longer Than Mod­ern Con­crete? The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved

The Rise & Fall of the Romans: Every Year Shown in a Time­lapse Map Ani­ma­tion (753 BC ‑1479 AD)

A Won­der­ful Archive of His­toric Tran­sit Maps: Expres­sive Art Meets Pre­cise Graph­ic Design

“The Won­der­ground Map of Lon­don Town,” the Icon­ic 1914 Map That Saved the World’s First Sub­way Sys­tem

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Colorful Map Visualizes the Lexical Distances Between Europe’s Languages: 54 Languages Spoken by 670 Million People

in Maps | August 28th, 2017

Stephen F. Stein­bach, a res­i­dent of Vien­na and a “car­tog­ra­phy, lan­guage and trav­el enthu­si­ast, with an engi­neer­ing back­ground,” is not a lin­guist. Stein­bach, who runs the site Alter­na­tive Trans­port, seems much more inter­est­ed in map­ping and trans­porta­tion than mor­phol­o­gy and ety­mol­o­gy. But he has made a con­tri­bu­tion to a lin­guis­tic con­cept called “lex­i­cal dif­fer­ence” with the map you see above, a col­or­ful 2015 visu­al­iza­tion of Euro­pean lan­guages, grouped togeth­er in clus­ters accord­ing to their sub­fam­i­lies (Ital­ic-Romance, Baltic, Slav­ic, Ger­man­ic, etc.—see a much larg­er ver­sion here).

Straight and arc­ing lines span the rel­a­tive dis­tance these lan­guages have pre­sum­ably trav­eled from each oth­er. Sol­id lines between lan­guages rep­re­sent a very close prox­im­i­ty, dashed lines of dif­fer­ent thick­ness­es show more dis­tance, and thin dot­ted lines tra­verse the great­est expans­es.

Hun­gar­i­an and Ukrain­ian, for exam­ple, have a lex­i­cal dis­tance score of 90, where Pol­ish and Ukrain­ian, both Slav­ic lan­guages, are only 30 degrees from each oth­er. “The map shows the lan­guage fam­i­lies that cov­er the con­ti­nent,” writes Big Think, “large, famil­iar ones like Ger­man­ic, Ital­ic-Romance and Slav­ic, small­er ones like Celtic, Baltic and Ural­ic; out­liers like Semit­ic and Tur­kic; and isolates—orphan lan­guages, with­out a fam­i­ly: Alban­ian and Greek.”  (Tech­ni­cal­ly, mod­ern Greek does have a family—Hellenic—though it is the only sur­viv­ing mem­ber.)

As we might expect from this sub­set of the durable Indo-Euro­pean schema, the lan­guages with­in each clus­tered group occu­py the short­est dis­tance from each oth­er, with some excep­tions. Roman­ian, for exam­ple, is slight­ly clos­er to Alban­ian than it is to French, its Romance cousin. The Slav­ic lan­guages Russ­ian and Pol­ish seem to have trav­eled a bit fur­ther apart than Pol­ish has from the Baltic lan­guage of Lithuan­ian. What does this mean, exact­ly? Accord­ing to the mea­sure of “lex­i­cal dis­tance” pro­posed by Ukrain­ian lin­guist Kon­stan­tin Tishchenko, it means that clos­er lan­guages might be more mutu­al­ly intel­li­gi­ble, at least from a lex­i­cal stand­point, since they may share more cog­nates (sim­i­lar-sound­ing and mean­ing words) and bor­row­ings.

Gas­ton Ümlaut, the han­dle of a lin­guist on the Stack Exchange Lin­guis­tics beta, cau­tions that the con­cept of “lex­i­cal dis­tance” may be “pret­ty use­less” giv­en that the com­par­isons also include false cognates—words that sound or look sim­i­lar but have no rela­tion­ship to each oth­er. These could account for some seem­ing incon­sis­ten­cies. (Ümlaut admits he has not read the orig­i­nal arti­cle, writ­ten in Russ­ian. If you are able, you can find it online in the book Metathe­o­ry of Lin­guis­tics, here.) Stein­bach has respond­ed in the same thread.

The idea received a much more tren­chant cri­tique more recent­ly. Stein­bach clar­i­fied that the the­o­ry, and the map, only com­pare writ­ten words and not syn­tax or speech. “It has noth­ing to do with gram­mar, syn­tax, rhythm or oth­er impor­tant fea­tures that are impor­tant for intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty,” he writes. “It also com­pares a small list of words and not the entire vocab­u­lary of one lan­guage to anoth­er.” This expla­na­tion does cast doubt on whether “lex­i­cal dis­tance” is a mean­ing­ful con­cept. I’ll leave it to the lin­guists to decide. (Stein­bach reached out to Tis­chchenko but has yet to receive a reply.)

Tischchenko’s orig­i­nal “lex­i­cal dis­tance” map, fur­ther up, drawn in 1997, gets the idea across with min­i­mal fuss, but it leaves much to be desired graph­i­cal­ly. (A large, hand-drawn col­or ver­sion improves upon the print­ed map.) Stein­bach took his ver­sion from a 2008 Eng­lish-lan­guage adap­ta­tion made by Tere­sa Elms in 2008 (above). In his blog post here, he explains all of the changes he made to Elms and Tischchenko’s designs. These include adjust­ing the size of the “bub­bles” to pro­por­tion­al­ly rep­re­sent the num­ber of speak­ers of each lan­guage. Stein­bach also added sev­er­al lan­guages, as well as “grave­stones” for the dead Ana­to­lian and Tochar­i­an branch­es. In all, his map shows “54 lan­guages, rep­re­sent­ing 670 mil­lion peo­ple.” He adds, vague­ly, that “it checks out.”

 

After post­ing his Lex­i­cal Dis­tance Map, Stein­bach pro­posed a “3D” ver­sion, with the added dimen­sion of time. (See his pre­lim­i­nary sketch above.) The maps are intrigu­ing, the the­o­ry of “lex­i­cal dis­tance” an inter­est­ing one, but we should bear in mind, as Stein­bach writes, that he is “no lin­guist,” and that this idea is hard­ly an ortho­dox one with­in the dis­ci­pline.

via Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tree of Lan­guages Illus­trat­ed in a Big, Beau­ti­ful Info­graph­ic

How Lan­guages Evolve: Explained in a Win­ning TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

Speak­ing in Whis­tles: The Whis­tled Lan­guage of Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co       

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 13 ) |

Artistic Maps of Pakistan & India Show the Embroidery Techniques of Their Different Regions

in Art, Maps | August 19th, 2017

Jour­nal­ist Saima Mir post­ed to Twit­ter this “map of Pak­istan show­ing the embroi­dery tech­niques of its regions.” And, sure enough, it led to some­one sur­fac­ing a cor­re­spond­ing map of Pak­istan’s neigh­bor, India. The under­ly­ing mes­sage of the maps? It’s to show, as @AlmostLived not­ed, “how diverse ele­ments come togeth­er to make beau­ti­ful things.” The map above was orig­i­nal­ly pro­duced by Gen­er­a­tion, a Pak­istani fash­ion com­pa­ny. We’re not clear on the ori­gin of the India map, unfor­tu­nate­ly.

via Boing Boing

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New BBC Drama­ti­za­tion of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Chil­dren Now Stream­ing Free for a Lim­it­ed Time

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play an Enchant­i­ng Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Pak­istani Immi­grant Goes to a Led Zep­pelin Con­cert, Gets Inspired to Become a Musi­cian & Then Sells 30 Mil­lion Albums

Intro­duc­tion to Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course

India’s Answer to M.I.T. Presents 268 Free Online Cours­es (in Eng­lish)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 13 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.