Image by Paul du Châtel­li­er, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 1900, the French pre­his­to­ri­an Paul du Châtel­li­er dug up from a bur­ial ground a fair­ly siz­able stone, bro­ken but cov­ered with engraved mark­ings. Even after he put it back togeth­er, nei­ther he nor any­one else could work out what the mark­ings rep­re­sent­ed. “Some see a human form, oth­ers an ani­mal one,” he wrote in a report. “Let’s not let our imag­i­na­tion get the bet­ter of us and let us wait for a Cham­pol­lion to tell us what it says.” Cham­pol­lion, as Big Think’s Frank Jacobs explains, was “the Egyp­tol­o­gist who in 1822 deci­phered the hiero­glyph­ics” — which he did with the aid of a more famous inscrip­tion-bear­ing piece of rock, the Roset­ta Stone.

Still, the Saint-Bélec slab, as Châtel­lier’s dis­cov­ery is now known, has attained a great deal of recog­ni­tion in the more than 120 years since he unearthed it. But it did so rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly, after a long peri­od of rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty.

“In 1994, researchers revis­it­ing du Châtellier’s orig­i­nal draw­ing found that the intri­cate mark­ings on the stone looked a lot like a map,” writes Jacobs. “The stone itself, how­ev­er, had gone miss­ing.” Only in 2014 was it redis­cov­ered in a cel­lar below the moat of the chateau in Saint-Ger­main-en-Laye once owned by du Châtel­li­er, by which time it could be sub­ject­ed to the kind of high-tech analy­sis unimag­ined in his life­time.

Oper­at­ing on the the­o­ry that the arti­fact was indeed cre­at­ed as a map, France’s INRAP (the Nation­al Insti­tute for Pre­ven­tive Archae­o­log­i­cal Research) “found that the mark­ings on the slab cor­re­spond­ed to the land­scape of the Odet Val­ley” in mod­ern-day Brit­tany. Then, “using geolo­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy, the researchers estab­lished that the ter­ri­to­ry rep­re­sent­ed on the slab bears an 80 per­cent accu­rate resem­blance to an area around a 29-km (18-mi) stretch of the Odet riv­er,” which seems to have been a small king­dom or prin­ci­pal­i­ty back in the ear­ly Bronze Age, between 2150 BC and 1600 BC. This makes the Saint-Bélec slab Europe’s old­est map, and quite pos­si­bly the ear­li­est map of any known ter­ri­to­ry — and cer­tain­ly the ear­li­est known map of a pop­u­lar kayak­ing des­ti­na­tion.

Draw­ing by Paul du Chatel­li­er, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

via Big Think

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Explore the Here­ford Map­pa Mun­di, the Largest Medieval Map Still in Exis­tence (Cir­ca 1300)

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

Ancient Maps that Changed the World: See World Maps from Ancient Greece, Baby­lon, Rome, and the Islam­ic World

Bronze Age Britons Turned Bones of Dead Rel­a­tives into Musi­cal Instru­ments & Orna­ments

What the Roset­ta Stone Actu­al­ly Says

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

If you want­ed to see a map of the world in the four­teenth cen­tu­ry, you could hard­ly just pull up Google Earth. But you could, pro­vid­ed you lived some­where in or near the British Isles, make a pil­grim­age to Here­ford Cathe­dral. There you would find the shrine of St. Thomas Can­tilupe, the main attrac­tion for the true believ­er, but also what we now know as the Here­ford Map­pa Mun­di, a large-scale (64″ x 52″) depic­tion of the entire world — or at least entire world as con­ceived in the pious Eng­lish mind of the Mid­dle Ages, which turns out to be almost unrec­og­niz­able at first glance today.

Cre­at­ed around 1300, the Here­ford Map­pa Mun­di “serves as a sort of visu­al ency­clo­pe­dia of the peri­od, with draw­ings inspired by Bib­li­cal times through the Mid­dle Ages,” write Chris Grif­fiths and Thomas But­tery at BBC Trav­el.

“In addi­tion to illus­trat­ing events mark­ing the his­to­ry of humankind and 420 cities and geo­graph­i­cal fea­tures, the map shows plants, ani­mals, birds and strange or unknown crea­tures, and peo­ple.” These include one “ ‘Blem­mye’ — a war-like crea­ture with no head, but with facial fea­tures in its chest,” two “Sci­apods,” “men with one large foot,” and “four cave-dwelling Troglodites,” one of whom feasts on a snake.

Amid geog­ra­phy we would now con­sid­er severe­ly lim­it­ed as well as fair­ly man­gled — Europe is labeled as Asia, and vice ver­sa, to name only the most obvi­ous mis­take — the map also includes “super­nat­ur­al scenes from clas­si­cal Greek and Roman mythol­o­gy, Bib­li­cal tales and a col­lec­tion of pop­u­lar leg­ends and sto­ries.” As such, this reflects less about the world itself than about human­i­ty’s world­view in an era that drew few­er lines of demar­ca­tion between fact and leg­end. You can learn more about what it has to tell us in the Mod­ern His­to­ry TV video below, as well as in the video fur­ther down from Youtu­ber ShūBa̱ck, which asks, “Why are Medieval Maps so Weird?”

The intent of the Here­ford Map­pa Mun­di, ShūBa̱ck says, is to show that “the Bible is right.” To that end, “east is on top, as that’s where they said Jesus would come from on the day of judg­ment. Jerusalem is, of course, at the cen­ter.” Oth­er points of inter­est include the site of the cru­ci­fix­ion, the Tow­er of Babel, and the Gar­den of Eden — not to men­tion the loca­tions of the Gold­en Fleece and Mount Olym­pus. You can exam­ine all of these up close at the Here­ford Cathe­dral’s site, which offers a detailed 3D scan of the map, view­able from every angle, embed­ded with expla­na­tions of all its major fea­tures: in oth­er words, a kind of Google Medieval Earth.

via Aeon

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of the World Map: An Inven­tive Info­graph­ic Shows How Our Pic­ture of the World Changed Over 1,800 Years

The Largest Ear­ly Map of the World Gets Assem­bled for the First Time: See the Huge, Detailed & Fan­tas­ti­cal World Map from 1587

40,000 Ear­ly Mod­ern Maps Are Now Freely Avail­able Online (Cour­tesy of the British Library)

The First Tran­sit Map: a Close Look at the Sub­way-Style Tab­u­la Peutin­ge­ri­ana of the 5th-Cen­tu­ry Roman Empire

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

The Biggest Mis­takes in Map­mak­ing His­to­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Youtu­ber “Emper­or­Tiger­star” spe­cial­izes in doc­u­ment­ing the unfold­ing of world his­tor­i­cal events by stitch­ing togeth­er hun­dreds of maps into time­lapse films. In years past, we’ve fea­tured his “map ani­ma­tions” of the U.S. Civ­il War (1861–1865), World War I (1914–1918), and World War II (1939–1945). Today, we’re high­light­ing a more ambi­tious project, an attempt to visu­al­ly doc­u­ment the rise and fall of the Romans. The video cov­ers 2,000 years of his­to­ry, in just ten min­utes.

Mov­ing from 753 BC  to 1479 AD, the ani­mat­ed map shows Rome’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al bound­aries chang­ing as the Roman King­dom morphs into the Roman Repub­lic and lat­er the Roman Empire. Then the grav­i­ty of his­to­ry takes over and we expe­ri­ence the grad­ual decline of Roman civ­i­liza­tion. We see the bifur­ca­tion that splits the Empire into West­ern and East­ern (Byzan­tine) parts, until only a lit­tle piece remains.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Min­utes: A Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

The Splen­did Book Design of the 1946 Edi­tion of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

An 8‑Minute Ani­mat­ed Flight Over Ancient Rome

How to Make Roman Con­crete, One of Human Civilization’s Longest-Last­ing Build­ing Mate­ri­als

The His­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire (or East Roman Empire): An Ani­mat­ed Time­line Cov­er­ing 1,100 Years of His­to­ry

In the open­ing of John Car­pen­ter’s Escape from L.A., an earth­quake sep­a­rates Los Ange­les from the main­land, and the city is repur­posed into “the depor­ta­tion point for all peo­ple found unde­sir­able or unfit to live in a new, moral Amer­i­ca.” The film’s premise (like that of Escape from New York, which it fol­lows) taps into a deeply held sen­ti­ment about its set­ting. Los Ange­les has long been seen as an absurd con­cen­tra­tion of all the qual­i­ties that make Cal­i­for­nia unlike the rest of the Unit­ed States. Cal­i­for­nia remains a state apart in a metaphor­i­cal sense, but there was a time when it was also thought to be a state apart, lit­er­al­ly: that is to say, an island.

The word Cal­i­for­nia orig­i­nates in a nov­el, pub­lished in 1510, called Ser­gas de Esp­landián. In that book it refers to “an island pop­u­lat­ed by black women with­out any men exist­ing there. On the entire island, there was no met­al oth­er than gold.” Author Gar­ci Rodríguez de Mon­talvo’s tan­ta­liz­ing descrip­tion of Cal­i­for­nia — as well as of the “beau­ti­ful and robust bod­ies” of its women — got Span­ish sea­far­ers curi­ous about the extent to which it could have been based in real­i­ty.

(At that time, the mass-print­ed nov­el was still an enrap­tur­ing new devel­op­ment.) This account comes from Youtu­ber John­ny Har­ris’ video above, “The Biggest Map­ping Mis­take of All Time,” which con­nects this fan­tas­ti­cal lit­er­ary inven­tion to cen­turies of geo­graph­i­cal mis­con­cep­tion.

The con­quis­ta­dor Hernán Cortés seems to have been the first promi­nent fig­ure to feel the pull of Cal­i­for­nia. And he cer­tain­ly was­n’t the last, despite nev­er quite hav­ing man­aged to pin the place down. Spain’s most ardent Cal­i­for­nia enthu­si­asts held so fast to the notion of its being an island that it spread else­where in Europe, and even­tu­al­ly to Lon­don. With the per­cep­tion thus legit­imized, Cal­i­for­nia appeared dis­con­nect­ed from the North Amer­i­can coast on maps print­ed as far away as Japan. Har­ris cred­its Cal­i­for­ni­a’s “myth­i­cal pull,” then as now, with mak­ing it “a place where peo­ple go to dream big” — and often “to chase dreams that aren’t ground­ed in any sense of real­i­ty.” For­tu­nate­ly, he him­self lives in Wash­ing­ton D.C., where delu­sions are whol­ly unknown.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

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

The Largest Ear­ly Map of the World Gets Assem­bled for the First Time: See the Huge, Detailed & Fan­tas­ti­cal World Map from 1587

Why Every World Map Is Wrong

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The first sub­way train, as we know such things today, entered ser­vice in 1890. Its path is now part of the North­ern line of the Lon­don Under­ground, itself the first urban metro sys­tem. The suc­cess of the Tube, as it’s com­mon­ly known, did­n’t come right away; the whole thing was on the brink of fail­ure, in fact, before cre­ations like 1914’s Won­der­ground Map of Lon­don Town aid­ed its pub­lic under­stand­ing and bol­stered its pub­lic image.

At the time, Britain still com­mand­ed a great empire with Lon­don as its cap­i­tal; the Won­der­ground Map placed the Lon­don Under­ground in the con­text of the city, mak­ing leg­i­ble the still fair­ly nov­el con­cept of an under­ground train sys­tem with copi­ous whim­si­cal detail.

Nor was the Roman Empire any­thing to sneeze at, even dur­ing the fourth and fifth cen­turies after its decline had set in. Though it came up with some still-impres­sive inven­tions, includ­ing long-last­ing con­crete and mon­u­men­tal aque­ducts, the tech­nol­o­gy to build and oper­ate a sub­way sys­tem still lay some way off.

But that did­n’t stop Mar­cus Vip­sa­nius Agrip­pa, a gen­er­al, archi­tect, and friend of emper­or Augus­tus, from com­mis­sion­ing a map of the empire that read more or less like Mas­si­mo Vignel­li’s 1972 map of the New York sub­way. That ambi­tious work of car­tog­ra­phy, his­to­ri­ans now believe, inspired the Tab­u­la Peutin­ge­ri­ana, which sur­vives today as the only large world map from antiq­ui­ty. The video above from Youtu­ber Jere­my Shuback approach­es the Tab­u­la Peutin­ge­ri­ana as “the first tran­sit map,” despite its dat­ing from the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, and even then prob­a­bly being a copy of a fourth- or fifth-cen­tu­ry orig­i­nal.

While the Roman Empire did­n’t have elec­tric trains and pay­ment cards, they did, of course, have tran­sit: the word descends from the Latin tran­sire, “go across.” Many a Roman had to go across, if not the whole empire, then at least large stretch­es of it. In the­o­ry, they would have found a map like Tab­u­la use­ful, with its sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of geog­ra­phy in order to empha­size city-to-city con­nec­tions. But that was­n’t its pri­ma­ry pur­pose: as Shuback puts it, this over­sized map of all lands dom­i­nat­ed by the Romans was “made to brag.” Who­ev­er owned it sure­ly want­ed to imply that they pos­sessed not just a map, but the world itself.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

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

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

Ani­mat­ed GIFs Show How Sub­way Maps of Berlin, New York, Tokyo & Lon­don Com­pare to the Real Geog­ra­phy of Those Great Cities

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.