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38 Comments
- bmcnally, on 08/19/2009, -0/+28I've always been amazed at how well many of the coastlines are drawn on these maps and how well proportioned everything is.
I know that it's feasible to do it by basically tracing the path of the ship and estimating distances via travel time, but it's tough to get into that mindset when we just snap a picture from space. - chadsmith729, on 08/19/2009, -0/+18Monsters eating ships, this is why we can't have nice things.
- incd, on 08/19/2009, -0/+15Here Be Dragons
- bubba9999, on 08/19/2009, -2/+12I'm pretty sure I took one of those to the prom. I wonder how she's doing now - there aren't as many ships to eat these days, so she probably lost some weight.
- Portagine, on 08/19/2009, -0/+7If you like maps, check out:
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/
Interesting content with cool maps. - Stevethegreat, on 08/19/2009, -0/+7Funnily enough, Tolkien had in mind the real -historic- Europe whilst he was writing about Middle-Earth. In fact -in his mind- Minas Tirith was/*is* the Medieval Constantinople holding off Europe -for centuries- the hordes of "uncivilized" Turks. Mordor *does* look like modern day Turkey because that was the equivalent of what Tolkien was thinking about. Also Gondor was the Roman Empire (or what's left of it, just the Eastern part) and Rohan (it) was "Germania". By having in LotR the nobleman of Gondor (Faramir) marrying the princess of Rohan was Tolkien's way of showing how the two civilizations (Germanic people with Romans) "married" each other creating modern Europe...
Interesting stuff when you keep in mind that Tolkien was a scholar more than he was a fantasy author... - geoman2k, on 08/19/2009, -0/+7dark roasted blend is actually a pretty cool site, even though from a design standpoint it is kind of a mess.
cheers for putting all the images on one page. bravo - sock2828, on 08/19/2009, -0/+7Notice the date on that picture, "1872" Pretty sure we had a few pterodactyl fossils lying around by then.
- jeremymccurdy, on 08/19/2009, -0/+5"The first pterosaur fossil was described by the Italian naturalist Cosimo Collini in 1784. Collini misinterpreted his specimen as a seagoing creature that used its long front limbs as paddles.[19] A few scientists continued to support the aquatic interpretation even until 1830, when the German zoologist Johann Georg Wagler suggested that Pterodactylus used its wings as flippers.[20] Georges Cuvier first suggested that pterosaurs were flying creatures in 1801,[21] and coined the name "Ptero-dactyle" 1809 for the specimen recovered in Germany; however, due to the standardization of scientific names, the official name for this genus became Pterodactylus, though the name "pterodactyl" continued to be popularly applied to all members of this first specimen's order.
Since the first pterosaur fossil was discovered in the Late Jurassic Solnhofen limestone in 1784, twenty-nine kinds of pterosaurs have been found in those deposits alone. A famous early UK find was an example of Dimorphodon by Mary Anning, at Lyme Regis in 1828. The name Pterosauria was coined by Johann Jakob Kaup in 1834, though the name Ornithosauria (or "bird lizards", Bonaparte, 1838) was sometimes used in the early literature.[2]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterodactyls#History_ ...
And now you know. - Probatus, on 08/19/2009, -0/+4I love these. I saw a replica of an old globe in a shop once. Had all kinds of cool stuff on it. Looking back I wish I would have purchased it.
- jeremymccurdy, on 08/19/2009, -0/+4Finally a website with lots of pictures that doesn't spread it out over a billion pages. More designers need to get in on this "vertical scrolling" thing. I'd digg it for that alone, but the info and maps are ***** awesome too.
- inactive, on 08/19/2009, -0/+4Has Google Maps ever produce anything that as cool as these? Nope.
***** you, Google, medieval map makers FTW! - jeremymccurdy, on 08/19/2009, -0/+4Cool story bro.
- silverchrysalis, on 08/19/2009, -5/+8pterodactyls? how could they have such accurate drawings of them when they've not been around for so many years? could there have been a few leftover?
- FKnight, on 08/19/2009, -0/+3And knowing is half the battle.
- asspants, on 08/19/2009, -0/+3"The first dinosaur to be described scientifically was Megalosaurus. This genus was named in 1824, by William Buckland"
"People have been finding dinosaur fossils for hundreds of years, probably even thousands of years. The Greeks and Romans may have found fossils, giving rise to their many ogre and griffin legends. There are references to "dragon" bones found in Wucheng, Sichuan, China (written by Chang Qu) over 2,000 years ago; these were probably dinosaur fossils"
source: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaur ... - jeremymccurdy, on 08/19/2009, -0/+2She liked old ships like that eh? Guess she loves a mouth full of wood.
- JoeHague, on 08/19/2009, -0/+2Most of the 'monsters' in those pictures are probably drawings of real animals/
- JoeHague, on 08/19/2009, -0/+2The drawing is dated 1872- not exactly outside of recorded history and well after the discovery of pterodactyl skeletons/
- jdames1980, on 08/19/2009, -3/+5I was thinking the same thing. Maybe they were still around and we killed them off. And it could be, there is so much information that has been lost over time, you never know.
- silverchrysalis, on 08/19/2009, -0/+2why, thank you, kind sir.
- banheiro, on 08/20/2009, -0/+2Two of my favorites:
The Indian Nations map from 1500. What if America was never colonized? Would it look like this today?
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/national_atlas_1970 ...
The Atlas of True Names. This one just makes me happy because I'm a language nerd.
http://www.robincamille.com/blogimages/atlas_of_tr ... - jander86, on 08/19/2009, -0/+2Those got real ugly, real fast. (The modern ones)
- Hardataq, on 08/19/2009, -0/+2I didn't see one shrieking eel in those maps...inconcievable.
- ninzo09, on 08/19/2009, -0/+1I almost forgot about dark roasted blend until I clicked on this article.
- boerema, on 08/21/2009, -0/+1You are a moron. The maps are like that because it is impossible to create a map of such enormous scale with precision when you can't get more than 30 feet off the ground. The continents move at an incredibly slow rate; about the rate of a normal human fingernail. So with a little math we can discover that even in the last 10000 years the continents have shifted only 0.62 MILES.
- opie66, on 08/20/2009, -0/+1The Viking's Vinland Map (circa 1400s) was recently proven to be the first map ever to show the western hemisphere (specifically Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada). This pre-dates both the Waldseemüller Map and the Cantino planisphere mentioned in the above article.
Map: http://www.canadahistory.com/sections/Eras/2worlds ...
Reuters article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE ... - lydiasky, on 08/19/2009, -0/+1Pretty awesome. I love seeing the development of the maps as time passes by.
- fredriks91, on 08/19/2009, -0/+1Are you kidding me? one of those drawings looked EXACTLY like dinosaurs, ( they're hand drawn so don't be judgemental)
Now I'm actually starting to belive that dinos and humas co-existed - Kyan, on 08/20/2009, -0/+1Was I the only one who when seeing the reference to the map called "America's birth certificate" just knew there would be a map of Africa with Kenya labelled America?????
- IKORKYI, on 08/20/2009, -0/+1when you plot courses on charts, it doesn't seem that unrealistic.
- Rokman, on 08/20/2009, -0/+1Geez, people could get away with anything back in the day. "There's monsters out there, I lost 7 good men to them."
- humperdeath, on 08/20/2009, -0/+1These old maps prove the continental drift theory, as they don't look at all the way things are today!
- conniemblack, on 08/19/2009, -2/+2intersting, very interesting...
- vishadomini, on 08/20/2009, -0/+0As time passed on, our maps became more plain and boring. I wish I lived during the time when people had more amazing imagination.
- Dunpite, on 08/19/2009, -2/+1Amazing but tl;dr
- CanadianCheese, on 08/19/2009, -3/+1I KNEW NASA was lying to us!
- chadsmith729, on 08/19/2009, -5/+1She should switch to a diet of pirates. I heard that it maintains the weight and there's plenty out there now.
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