Strange Maps

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Lange Lewis: Meat for Murder (Dell #135)

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Alfred Hitchcock: Rope (#262)

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Dashiel Hammett: Nightmare Town (#379)

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Many Thanks to J.B. Post for informing me about the Dell Books. Here is a link to some of the front and back covers of the Dashiel Hammett books (including the ones shown above). The previous covers were taken from here on Marble River’s Ephemera (browse back to find many more map backs). I am also indebted to Gary Lovisi for his article on Dell Map Back Mysteries: They Don’t Make ‘em Like That Anymore! (found here in Mystery Scene Magazine).

(1) among adults; children are almost universally against. Two presidential opinions weighing in on the matter: “Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft!” (Theodore Roosevelt);  ”You do not lead by hitting people over the head-that’s assault, not leadership.” (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

(2) corporal punishment in schools is illegal in almost all European countries (and almost never practised in the few remaining others). In the US and Australia, it is illegal in some states, but remains legal (if generally rather rare) in others. It is also illegal in Canada, Japan, New Zealand, but also in less ‘liberal’ regimes such as North Korea and China.  It remains legal in large parts of Africa and Asia.

(3) submersion as a method of dramatising cartographic information is a popular, if controversial method. Previous examples posted in this blog include Wallonie-sur-Mer (#176) and Palestine’s Island Paradise (#270).

(4) ‘Nordic’ or ‘Scandinavian’? See comments #4, 7 and 9.

Korea as a tiger: what a beautiful map. The peninsula’s shape is rendered in the image of the local big cat , also known as the Siberian, Manchurian or Altaic tiger (Panthera tigris altaica). This is done in a manner reminiscent of the Leo belgicus (see #425).

One obvious difference: tigers were actually endemic in Korea until quite recently, lions haven’t been sighted in northwestern Europe in recorded history. One obvious similarity: the predatory cat depicts a nation divided: in the belgicus case a nation now split between the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, in the Korean case, a nation still divided between the capitalist South and the stalinist North.

This map was brought to my attention by Anselm, who used it to point out the regional rivalry between Korea and Japan (nobody hates anybody like their neighbour) .

A first map shows how Japanese extremists feel about Korea (they’d rather it didn’t exist), a second one shows how Korean extremists might feel about Japan (as the excrement of the aforementioned Korean tiger).

ROSE: Yah it’s a lot of braunschweiger.

[Brenda starts to ring up the braunschweiger]

ROSE: It’s for my dad….. for his….. trip. My dad……. He… is going to……. Wisconsin.

BRENDA: Oh Wisconsin! A real party state.

[...]

BRENDA: Oh yah. He’s goin’ to visit his brother in Wisconsin.

DOROTHY: On a lawnmower?!?!

BRENDA: Yah…

DOROTHY: Great party place, Wisconsin.

[...]

ALVIN: In Wisconsin. Just over the state line.

CRYSTAL: (nodding) Oh….Cheddar Heads.

[Alvin laughs at this and Crystal smiles, too]

ALVIN: Aren’t those just about the dumbest things you ever saw a person put on their head?

[She nods and laughs]

CRYSTAL: I hear that’s a real party place, Wisconsin. Guess I’ll never get to find out.

The repeated insistence in The Straight Story – the slowest road movie ever – that the great, plain state of Wisconsin is a mecca of mirth seemed like a mere running gag, underlining the orneriness of Iowans. Turns out that director David Lynch might not have been joking after all. It seems those Cheddar Heads really do know a thing or two about partying – especially if it involves hanging out in bars.

This map represents localised references in the Google Maps directory to either grocery stores or bars. Yellow shading indicates that there are more references to grocery stores than bars at that particular location. Red indicates more references to bars.

Yellow is generally prevalent in most of the US; one can assume that there are more grocery stores than drinking establishments in those areas. But red dots, where bars outnumber grocery stores, are dominant in a few very particular regions:

• The aforementioned party state, Wisconsin. The dotting corresponds quite closely with the Wisconsin state line, turning yellow again where northwestern Wisconsin transforms into Michigan’s northern peninsula.
• North Dakota is also heavily bar-oriented, as are significant parts of Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Kansas and – ironically – Iowa.
• Illinois is also a mainly ‘red’ state, with the notable exception of Chicagoland, on the southern shore of Lake Michigan.
• Curiously, heavily red areas are almost all found in the Midwest. One exception is a red cluster in Upstate New York and Pennsylvania, overflowing to the coast into a semi-separate Boston cluster.

This strange map was produced by Floating Sheep, a website dedicated to “mapping and analyzing user generated Google Map placemarks”. In this instance, the ovine analysts of cybergeography were so startled by this remarkably differentiated result that they wanted to check it against information a bit more official than the data provided by Google Maps (1) .

According to the 2007 Census, there are on average 1.52 bars (2) for every 10,000 people in the US. Those numbers are a lot higher in the ‘red’ states: Wyoming (3.40), Nebraska (3.68), Iowa (3.73), South Dakota (4.73), Wisconsin (5.88), Montana (6.34) and North Dakota, which, with an average of 6.54 bars per 10,000 inhabitants apparently is the top “party state” in the Union. Next time you want to take your lawnmower to a party, you know in which direction to head.

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Many thanks to all who sent in this map: James Smith, Dan Boucher, Ted B. Gerstein, Mark Hamlin, J.P. Coughlin, Pepijn Hendriks and Matthew Zook (of Floating Sheep; this map on this page of their site. Do check out the rest of the site for more interesting statistical maps).

(1) No offence to Mountain View’s finest – and mightiest!

(2) In Census Speak, not bars but rather ”NACIS code 722410: Drinking places (alcoholic beverages)”.

Is there such a thing as collective guilt? Or if not that, then at least some kind of national responsibility for past state crimes? Was the Nazi period a freak of history, or an inevitable culmination of the revanchist, reactionary forces of German nationalism? And what did grandad do during the War?Those are just some of the issues that are the burden of every German born after 1945 – a peculiar variant on the concept of original sin.

Over six decades now separate us from the end of World War Two, but the conflict will not – will not be allowed to – fade away from German national consciousness. Post-war Germany’s actions on the European and world stage for the most part have been motivated by the responsibility of atonement for the war (1), and the apprehensive avoidance of any international grandstanding. Whether or not it was Helmut Kohl who said that “Europe should not become German, but Germany should become European,” the quote correctly identifies Germany’s exemplary pro-Europeanness as an essential part of its post-1945 identity.

The flipside of Germany’s new, post-war identity is a complete rejection and reversal of its pre-war and wartime Nazi ideology. This might seem like the obvious and only possible course, given the extent of the Nazi regime’s reprehensible belligerence, heinous perfidy and horrid crimes against humanity. However, the quasi-absoluteness of denazification in Germany contrasts markedly with Japan’s reluctant retro- and introspection vis-a-vis its wartime guilt (2).

And yet, despite the official attitude that fascism is not an opinion, but a crime (Faschismus ist keine Meinung, sondern ein Verbrechen), expressly criminalising the outward signs of Nazism (e.g. the swastika, the Nazi salute, denial of the Holocaust, publication of Mein Kampf), mementos of the other, older, evil Germany keep resurfacing. In recent years, several German cities have publicly retracted the honorary citizenship bestowed on Adolf Hitler in tempore suspecto (3): Düsseldorf (2000), Aschersleben (2006), Bad Doberan and Biedenkopf (2007), Kleve (2008), and Forst/Lausitz (2009), among others.

This map shows another clattering of skeletons in Germany’s closet (4). Under the ironic title ‘Germany’s most beautiful school names’, it catalogues German schools bearing the names of Germans with a less than salubrious track record during the Nazi years. The offending names are:

• Ferdinand Sauerbruch: surgeon and personal physician to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi’s chief propagandist. As a high-ranking medical official, he approved funding for medical experiments on concentration camp inmates.
• Klaus Riedel: Rocket scientist, co-developer of the Vergeltungswaffe (‘Retaliation Weapon’) V2, which caused the deaths of 100,000 civilians in Allied countries and of 12,000 forced labourers in Nazi-occupied Europe.
• Wernher von Braun: In charge of the Heeresversuchsanstalt (‘army test organisation’), member of the Nazi party and Sturmbannfuehrer in the SS, developer of the V2 rocket, personally selected forced labourers in the Buchenwald concentration camp (5).
• Rainer Fetscher: Physician, “racial hygienist”, member of the SA. Compiled a database to identify “biologically inferior individuals”, was responsible for at least 65 forced sterilisations. In this light, it is particularly unfortunate, to say the least, that his name is attached to a school for physcially handicapped children.
• Peter Petersen: A teacher, he wrote about “racial superiority” and about “the Jew, [...] who, in everything he touches, has a destructive, flattening, and even poisoning [effect].” As late as 1949, he complained that the German people was “racially polluted”. The large number of schools named after him can be explained by his development in 1927 of the ‘Jena Plan’, an educational concept still followed by quite a few schools in Germany (among which, one imagines, those named after Petersen himself).
• Rudolf Dietz: nostalgic poet, member of the racist Deutschbund (‘German Association’) and of the Nazi party. Wrote about 30 anti-semitic poems, in his poem Reichslied (’song of the Empire’), he wrote approvingly of the “unity under the swastika”.
• Hermann, Herbert and Werner Andert: Hermann was a member of the Nazi party, his sons of the SA and the Nazi teachers’ union. Werner was a contributor to Nazi newspapers.
• Agnes Wiegel: Nazi poet, member of the Nazi party, ardent Hitler-worshipper. Wrote the Ode an den Fuehrer (‘Ode to the Leader’), signatory to the Gelobnis treuester Gefolgschaft (‘Promise of most loyal obedience’) to Hitler.

Many thanks to John D. Boy for sending in this map, found here on Extra 3, a blog associated with the northern German tv station NDR Fernsehen. Germans have, it seems, a bit of a tradition of humourous maps of their country. See also the Deutschlandkarte showing clusters of hair salon names, discussed earlier on this blog (#385).

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(1) whether the First One needs to be included in this exercise in atonement is a whole different can of worms.

(2) for a revealing comparison of the post-war attitudes on responsibility and rememberance, read Ian Buruma’s excellent book on the subject: ‘Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan’).

(3) The retractions were largely symbolic, as honorary citizenship (Ehrenbuergerschaft) is considered voided by the death of the person thus honoured.

(4) If you’ll pardon the expression. Also: what is the correct collective noun for a group of skeletons?

(5) Wernher von Braun of course became a respected member of the American scientific community, contributing to the American space programme. A multipurpose indoor arena in Huntsville, AL was named after him (the Von Braun Civic Center – VBCC).

Even old New York / Was once New Amsterdam / Why they changed it I can’t say / People just liked it better that way

- They Might Be Giants: “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”

This map is doubly strange. It simultaneously depicts the wrong city, and under a previous name – the former error committed on purpose, the latter possibly unwittingly.

Dated 1672, this map by Frenchman Gérard Jollain purports to represent Nowel Amsterdam en Lamerique (New Amsterdam in America) – the inset top left even shows its position relative to other Dutch possessions such as Le Fort d’Orange (present-day Albany, NY) and Fort Nassau (now Gloucester City, NJ), surrounding Indian tribes like the Maquimanes, Capitanasses, Senecas and the Lacs des Iroquois peuples tres cruels (lakes of the Iroquois, very cruel people); and the neighbouring English colony of Massachusets (sic).

But the main map – one of the first bird’s eye views of a North American city – is not of New Amsterdam. This depiction of a hilly metropolis, densely packed with churches and palaces, bears no resemblance to the fledgling city then clinging to Manhattan’s southern tip. It is an almost identical copy of a popular map (1) of Lisbon, the Portuguese capital.

Was it the windmills (2) on the horizon of the original (shown at the bottom of this post) that gave Jollain the idea to transmogrify Old Lisbon into New Amsterdam? The street grid, buildings and topography are copied fairly exactly and in great detail; but however blatant the forgery is, Jollain took pains to infuse it with a Dutch atmosphere.

The ships bobbing on the Mer du Nort (Atlantic Ocean) in the foreground of the forged map are clearly of a different (and doubtlessly more appropriate) type than those on the Tagus, in front of Lisbon. Most city blocks are rendered in similar layouts, but the meticulously drawn individual houses are different.

The larger buildings are visually identical to the originals, but obviously serve a different purpose. Lisbon’s grand cathedral is New Amsterdam’s impressive Maison de Ville (City Hall). Lisbon’s Central Square becomes New Amsterdam’s Amirauté (Admiralty), the castle of São Jorge on one of Lisbon’s hilltops the Chateau de Nassau (Nassau Castle) (3).

Jollain embellishes the original with a few fantastic additions of his own. An unnamed castle on a distant Portuguese hilltop becomes the even more distant French fortress of Quebec. An empty hilltop left of the castle of São Jorge in Lisbon is occupied by a gallows in New Amsterdam, chillingly named La Iustice (Justice). A building at the foot of that hill is the location of het Tuchthuys cesta dire Maison de Dicipline, aussi en icele (?) sont renfermer des Faineans que lon fait trauailler (The prison, where lazy people are also imprisoned and made to work).

Other Dutch-sounding names sprinkeled throughout the city are Wageschot (to the left), ouestkir (Western Church [?]) and the Eglise ou Temple de Bikerque (Church or Temple of Bikerque). Further places named are Magazins des cuirs (leather warehouses), Le bureau des entrées (Customs House), Grand quay, Pelletrie (furriery), Place de la Bourse (Stock Exchange Plaza). The area to the right that is called Campus S. Clarae (St Claire’s Field) on the Lisbon map is unnamed on the New Amsterdam one, but bordered by a Hopital and a Magasin de Castors (warehouse of beaver [pelts]).

Why would a cartographer commit such a gross, and presumably easily traceable forgery? And who was this Gérard Jollain anyway? Not easily traceable himself, the rather obscure Monsieur Jollain (1641-1704) was a map seller and engraver, at some point in his career in the service of the French court, at another working in Cologne (where, one imagines, he picked up the Lisbon map). The reason for his forgery is unknown, but it is not unthinkable that he callously abused the relative ignorance of the times to present a French audience with a map of a city they had very little knowledge of. Dutch city views of New Amsterdam were in existence when Jollain produced his, but were possibly quite rare in France.

I do not know whether this forgery was a one-off, or if Jollain was in the habit of abusing his audience’s lack of access to the latest knowledge. The nomenclature of the map might illustrate how Jollain was beaten at his own game, though. He still calls the city New Amsterdam, and in the legend at the bottom of the map describes it as a Dutch colony. In fact, the city was taken over by the English in 1664 and renamed New York - eight years before he produced his remarkable forgery.

Many thanks to Francisco Feijó Delgado, who brought these maps to my attention. Quite aptly, Mr Delgado is Portuguese, and noticed that Jollain’s map of what he calls Nova Amesterdão “seemed strangely similar to our own city of Lisbon, pre-1755 [the year of the devastating earthquake].” His original entry on these maps here on his blog. Both taken from (and eminently zoomable at) the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library (here for Old Lisbon, here for New Amsterdam).

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1 From the Civitates Orbis Terrarum, published by Braun & Hogenberg in Cologne in 1617.

2 Windmills, deemed iconic attributes of Dutchness (together with clogs and tulips) are quite common and typical elsewhere, also on the Iberian peninsula (Don Quixote famously fought them).

3 Please report any other concordances you might spot.

All French towns of above a certain size, in any of the six corners of the country, have a Place de la République at their centre, and an Avenue Charles de Gaulle in its vicinity. Each of France’s départements is numbered alphabetically – that there are exactly 100 at present may be a coincidence, but there once was a plan to make them all perfectly rectangular (#159).

Two main trends have resulted from the rationalist vein coursing through France’s administrative politics since its revolution in 1789: towards homogeneity and centralization. The latter tendency, also called parisianism, obviously emanates from the republican capital so succulently portrayed in the previous post.

And yet, in some ways, France remains a very unhomogenised country. “These maps illustrate the perdurating cultural diversity of contemporary France, in spite of a long-time process of cultural unification,” writes Olivier, who sent in these maps from Tours (capital of département number 37, Indre-et-Loire).

Even though standard French has by now replaced most of France’s regional languages, that vanished linguistic diversity remains a good marker for cultural variation within France. The southern third of the republic was once the domain of a rival romance language, the so-called Langue d’Oc (or Occitan), so called after its word for ‘yes’ (oc). This area was (and is) more ‘mediterranean’ in outlook than the northern rest of France, where the Langue d’Oïl (i.e. French, or its dialects) was spoken.

To this binary view should be added the other, non-romance language areas of France, in the north (Flemish), east (German), south (Basque) and west (Breton). Another linguistically distinct region is the small area around Perpignan, where another romance language – Catalan – is spoken.

Each of these five maps, taken from the 1997 edition of Géographie Première, a schoolbook by Rémy Knafou, slices up metropolitan France in surprising ways, but also every time reflecting, in some way, the divisions described above.

Map [1] compares the household money spent on butter and oil; with most money spent on butter in the north and west (blue) and most spent on oil in the south (light orange).

Map [2] shows between 90 and 100 litres of beer per inhabitant imbibed in the north and east, with less than half of that in most of the country, but especially in the south. See the entry on Europe’s alcohol belts (#442) for a similar take on regional differences in alcohol consumption.

Map [3] reveals how many members pétanque clubs have per thousand inhabitants. The game was conceived in Provence, and its name derives from the Occitan pès tancats, meaning ‘anchored feet’. In keeping with its southern origin, it is 10 times more popular in the Occitan swathe across the south of France than in the north, northeast and northwest.

Map [5] charts the dominant roof type throughout much of the south (and, surprisingly, in the northeast): flat roofs with curved tiles.

Map [7] details the popularity of bicycle clubs. The sport of the Tour de France is most popular in Brittany, but also adjacent areas inland (darkest red), and quite popular throughout most of central and northern France (orangey red). The areas least likely to cycle are scattered throughout the north, northeast, east, southeast, and south.

Many thanks to Oliver for sending in these maps.

“I have been seeing this image almost every day for years, but only a few days ago did I realize that it was actually a map,” writes Julien Nègre. It’s an ad for Boucherie Chevy, a butcher shop in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. The ad shows a slice of red meat which turns out also to be a map of Paris.

“The Eiffel Tower is of course the main point de repère to get your bearings, but if you look closely you’ll notice that the white piece of fat that runs across the red meat also follows the curve of the Seine River that runs across the city. The two small patches of red meat in the middle correspond to the Île de la Cité and the Île Saint-Louis. And even the parsley leaves on the right and left are vegetal representations of the Bois de Boulogne to the West and the Bois de Vincennes to the East.”

Image sent in by Mr Nègre.

Washington DC as a big, red heart, pumping life-blood through the arteries of the nation’s body? Few Americans will view their oft-reviled capital as favourably as this metaphor suggests. However, the ‘body politic’ is a philosophical trope with a more than respectable pedigree.

Around 500 BC, the Roman consul Menenius Agrippa faced down a seditious band of soldiers with one of Antiquity’s most potent weapons – rhetoric. He convinced the mutinous militiamen to return to the Mother City (at that time still a fledgling backwater rather than a grandiosely Eternal metropolis) with this somatic parable:

“In the days when all the parts of the human body were not as now agreeing together, but each member took its own course and spoke its own speech, the other members, indignant at seeing that everything acquired by their care and labour and ministry went to the belly, whilst it, undisturbed in the middle of them all, did nothing but enjoy the pleasures provided for it, entered into a conspiracy; the hands were not to bring food to the mouth, the mouth was not to accept it when offered, the teeth were not to masticate it.”

“Whilst, in their resentment, they were anxious to coerce the belly by starving it, the members themselves wasted away, and the whole body was reduced to the last stage of exhaustion. Then it became evident that the belly rendered no idle service, and the nourishment it received was no greater than that which it bestowed by returning to all parts of the body this blood by which we live and are strong, equally distributed into the veins, after being matured by the digestion of the food.”

The secessionists got the message. Even though working-class plebeians like themselves disliked the pampered patricians, neither party could survive without the other. This anecdote, related half a millennium later by the Roman historian Livy (1), is one of many examples in western political and philosophical discourse (2) comparing an ideal, ‘organic’ society to the workings of a single (human) body. The earliest instances, albeit less explicit in their analogy than Livy, are to be found in Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Politics and a few other Greek philosophical works; later examples are in Cicero’s De officis, and even in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (3).

The conceit of society as a living body can be seen as a particular subgenre of hylozoism, the idea that all matter is in some way alive. The Middle Ages saw the development of both secular and religious analogies of societies-as-bodies. The basic trichotomy of medieval society was explained thus: the clery were the far-seeing eyes, the nobility the delicate and/or firm hands and the peasants the plodding feet of society. The Church emphasised its role as a mystical body of which all Christians were members, with the pope at its head – and as its head, literally and figuratively. For a long time, kings and popes competed for the honorific epitheton of ‘head’ of Christendom, the European monarchies’ increasing power eventually reclaiming the metaphor from the Church. Corporeal analogies crop up in Milton and Shakespeare (5).

Over the centuries, the advancement of science (particularly biology) progressively undermined the comparison, exposing it as a vain attempt to find analogy where none existed. Also, the ‘organic’ model of governance ceded to the idea of the relation between rulers and their people as subject to a ’social contract’: the state retaining certain natural rights from its citizens (like absolute freedom) in exchange for the dispensation of certain advantages (like security and justice).

If the hylozoic analogy survived, it was in significantly altered form. Hobbes summarised this shifting view of society-as-body in Leviathan (1651), where he described the state as an artificial body, a human construct. He calls this the Body Politique, as opposed to (instead of analogous to) the Body Naturall.

Where kings themselves were once deemed to be the body politic, as literal embodiments of their function’s power, majesty and reach, Hobbes redefines the body politic as a territory with a government. ‘Body politic’ soon becomes an expression devoid of somatic analogy, simply meaning ‘political entity’ – although the phrasing of the metaphor will always imply some sort of organic harmony. Present use in our democratic, all-inclusive era could be said to define the body politic as a representative expression, encompassing all segments of the population and political institutions of a given political entity.

The map shown here is a very recent adaptation of Menenius Agrippa’s metaphor, building on the historical image of the body politic to illustrate a point in the very contemporary debate on the American political agenda – healthcare reform. Leaving aside all the intricacies of the proposed healthcare legislation currently winding its way through the US Congress, this map astutely expands the very somatic aspect of healthcare to the ‘body politic’ of the US, presenting an aspect of healthcare reform – the Public Option – as a necessary medicine for the patient – America itself. All of which combines to an image conveying a message in a very direct manner. No wonder the map won the first prize in a contest organised by Public Option Please, a group advocating that healthcare reform include said Option.

Many thanks to Dean G. Karayanis for sending in this map, found at Public Option Please, a health reform advocacy group.

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(1) Titus Livius (a.k.a. Livy): Ab Urbe Condita (‘From the Founding of the City’), ca. Book 2, Chapter 32. Quote taken from the text at Wikisource.

(2) Similar analogies also surface in Islamic and Hindu philosophy.

(3) “For as the body is one, and hath many members [...] so also is Christ [...] Now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular [...]“

(4) Shakespeare actually re-imagines Menenius Agrippa’s speech to the rebels: “There was a time when all the body’s members Rebell’d against the belly, thus accused it: That only like a gulf it did remain I’ the midst o’ the body, idle and unactive, Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing Like labour with the rest, where the other instruments Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel, And, mutually participate, did minister Unto the appetite and affection common Of the whole body. [...]“

(Coriolanus, Act I, Scene I)

This map is an essential ingredient of a story that has ‘Indiana Jones’ written all over it: secret caves, a lost civilisation and above all, a treasure trove of gold in unimaginable quantities. And all this in the ground below the present-day metropolis of Los Angeles.

Below are two extracts from the LA Times of 29 January 1934, in the first of which reporter Jean Bosquet details the incredible story of G. Warren Shufelt, a mining engineer, who had been told of the underground city and its treasures by a wise old Indian, had consequently located it via ‘radio X-ray’ and was currently sinking shafts into the ground to reach it.

The second extract explains the whereabouts of the putative underground city on the map, and provides the legends for a few photos showing Shufelt hard at work.

Needless to say, no such city has ever been found. Whether fully intentional or not, the hoax did leave us with this strange map of the supposed underground city, its tunnels vaguely laid out in the shape of a lizard.

Interestingly, this article on Skeptoid, a website providing critical analysis of pop phenomena, raises the possibility that Mr Bosquet’s story may be the original source for the later conspiracy theories about humanoid reptilians controlling the world. Indiana Jones has turned into David Icke…

Many thanks to Manuel for sending in this map, found here on Flickr.　

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LIZARD PEOPLE’S CATACOMB CITY HUNTED

Engineer Sinks Shaft Under Fort Moore Hill to Find Maze of Tunnels and Priceless Treasures of Legendary Inhabitants

(LA Times, 29 Jan 1934)

By Jean Bosquet

Busy Los Angeles, although little realizing it in the hustle and bustle of modern existence, stands above a lost city of catacombs filled with incalculable treasure and imperishable records of a race of humans further advanced intellectually and scientifically than even the highest type of present day peoples, in the belief of G. Warren Shufelt, geophysical engineer now engaged in an attempt to wrest from the lost city deep in the earth below Fort Moore Hill the secrets of the Lizard People of legendary fame in the medicine lodges of the American Indian.

So firmly does Shufelt and a little staff of assistants believe that a maze of catacombs and priceless golden tablets are to be found beneath downtown Los Angeles that the engineer and his aides have already driven a shaft 250 feet into the ground, the mouth of the shaft being on the old Banning property on North Hill street overlooking Sunset Boulevard, Spring street and North Broadway.

LEGEND SUPPLIES CLEW (sic)

Shufelt learned of the legend of the Lizard People after his radio X-ray had led him hither and yon, over an area extending from the Public Library on West Fifth street to the Southwest Museum, on Museum Drive, at the foot of Mt. Washington.

“I knew I was over a pattern of tunnels,” the engineer explained yesterday, “and I had mapped out the course of the tunnels, the position of large rooms scattered along the tunnel route, as well as the position of deposits of gold, but I couldn’t understand the meaning of it.”

FIRE DESTROYS ALL

According to the legend as imparted to Shufelt by Macklin, the radio X-ray has revealed the location of one of three lost cities on the Pacific Coast, the local one having been dug by the Lizzard People after the “great catastrophe” which occurred about 5000 years ago. This legendary catastrophe was in the form of a huge tongue of fire which “came out of the Southwest, destroying all life in its path,” the path being “several hundred miles wide.” The city underground was dug as a means of escaping future fires.

The lost city, dug with powerful chemicals by the Lizard People instead of pick and shovel, was drained into the ocean, where its tunnels began, according to the legend. The tide passing daily in and out of the lower tunnel portals and forcing air into the upper tunnels, provided ventilation and “cleansed and sanitized the lower tunnels,” the legend states.

Large rooms in the domes of the hills above the city of labyrinths housed 1000 families “in the manner of tall buildings” and imperishable food supplies of the herb variety were stored in the catacombs to provide sustenance for the lizard folk for great lengths of time as the next fire swept over the earth.

CITY LAID OUT LIKE LIZARD

The Lizard People, the legend has it, regarded the lizard as the symbol of long life. Their city is laid out like a lizard, according to the legend, its tail to the southwest, far below Fifth and Hope streets, its head to the northeast, at Lookout and Marda streets. The city’s key room is situated directly under South Broadway, near Second street, according to Shufelt and the legend.

This key room is the directory to all parts of the city and to all record tablets, the legend states. All records were kept on gold tablets, four feet long and fourteen inches wide. On these tablets of gold, gold having been the symbol of life to the legendary Lizard People, will be found the recorded history of the Mayans on on one particular tablet,the southwest corner of which will be missing, is to be found the “record of the origin of the human race.”

TABLETS PHOTOGRAPHED

Shufelt stated he has taken “X-ray pictures” of thirty-seven such tablets, three of which have their southwest corners cut off.

“My radio X-ray pictures of tunnels and rooms, which are sub-surface voids, and of gold pictures with perfect corners, sides and ends, are scientific proof of their existence,” Shufelt said. “However, the legendary story must remain speculative until unearthed by excavation.”

The Lizard Peoplem according to Macklin, were of a much higher type intellectually than modern human beings. The intellectual accomplishments of their 9-year-old children were the equal of those of present day college graduates, he said. So greatly advanced scientifically were these people that, in addition to perfecting a chemical solution by which they bored underground without removing earth and rock, they also developed a cement far stronger and better than any in use in modern times with which they lined their tunnels and rooms.

HILLS INCLOSE CITY

Macklin said legendary advice to American Indians was to seek the lost city in an area within a chain of hills forming “the frog of a horse’s hoof.” The contour of hills surrounding this region forms such a design, substantiating Shufelt’s findings, he said.

Shufelt’s radio device consists chiefly of a cylindrical glass case inside of which a plummet attached to a copper wire held by the engineer sways continually, pointing, he asserts, toward minerals or tunnels below the surface of the ground, and then revolves when over the mineral or swings in prolongation of the tunnel when above the excavation.

He has used the instrument extensively in mining fields, he said.

——

DID STRANGE PEOPLE LIVE UNDER SITE OF LOS ANGELES 5000 YEARS AGO?

An amazing labyrinth of underground passages and caverns hundreds of feet below the surface of Fort Moore Hill is revealed in maps – all rights to which have been reserved – prepared by G. Warren Shufelt, local mining engineer, who explains his topographical endeavors as being based on results obtained from a radio X-ray perfected by him. In this elaborate system of tunnels and rooms, according to a legend furnished Shufelt by an Indian authority, a tribe of human beings called the Lizard People, lived, 5000 years ago. The network of tunnels formed what Indians call the lost Lizard City, according to Shufelt and the legend. Gold tablets on which are written the origin of the human race and other priceless documents are to be found in the tunnels, according to the legend. Shufelt declares his radio X-ray has located the gold. The engineer has dug a shaft 250 feet deep on North Hill street, overlooking North Broadway, Sunset and Spring streets, and intends to dig to 1000 feet in an effort to strike the lost city. Upper right-hand corner inset is Times Staff Artist Ewing’s conception of the Lizard People at work. Lower left, upper inset shows Shufelt and crew at top of shaft, baling water out of their deep excavation. Lower left inset shows Shufelt operating his radio X-ray device.

It matters where we are, for it helps determine who we are. Or, as the quote often attributed to Napoleon states: Geography is destiny. That destiny extends to drink, as demonstrated by this map. Where we are determines to a statistically significant degree what kind of alcohol we prefer. Or is it the other way around: the kind of alcohol preferred is determined by the place where it is produced?

This map shows Europe dominated by three so-called ‘alcohol belts’, the northernmost one for distilled spirits, a middle one for beer and the southernmost one for wine. Each one’s existence and extension is determined by a mix of culture and agriculture.

The Wine Belt covers the southern parts of Europe, where wine has historically been an important industry and an everyday commodity: the whole of Portugal, Spain, Italy, Montenegro, Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova and Georgia; all but the northwestern zone of France; and significant parts of Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, and Romania.

Either through effects of climate change or renewed viticultural enthusiasm, grapes and wine-making have in recent years been introduced in areas to the north of the traditional Wine Belt, in southern Britain and the Low Countries, creating an overlap between Wine and Beer Belts. That overlap is often ancient rather than recent; the introduction not rarely is a reintroduction. And indeed, southwestern Germany, for example, has an ancient and unbroken tradition of wine-making.

The Beer Belt comprises areas where beer has been the alcoholic beverage of choice since times immemorial: Ireland and the UK, the Low Countries, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Bosnia and Albania; most of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia and Romania; and significant, western parts of Poland. Beer production requires the cultivation of cereals, so this is a climatic-agricultural precondition for the Beer Belt.

An interesting co-explanation for the prevalence of beer in southern parts of this belt is the relatively weak cultural influence of the Roman Empire on these places. The Wine Belt indeed conforms to a large extent with the territory formerly occupied by Rome, with notable exceptions in areas with large Slavic or Germanic migration (the Balkans, southwestern Germany, northern France respectively), where beer predominates (although often overlapping with wine).

The Vodka Belt occupies what’s left of Europe, to the east and north: Scandinavia (except Denmark), Russia, the Baltics, Belarus, Ukraine and central and eastern Poland. There is a climatological imperative to the Vodka Belt: freezing temperatures make grape cultivation impossible (except in southernmost Russia and some areas of Ukraine). So there’s almost no overlap possible between the Vodka and Wine Belts. For cultural reasons, however, the Vodka Belt has been losing ground to the Beer Belt. Scandinavians tend to drink more beer than before (although possibly this doesn’t mean they drink less wodka). Maybe this is due to the perception of beer correlating more with ‘core European’ behaviour (as it is the preferred alcoholic beverage of Britain, Germany and other influential and centrally positioned countries). That might explain the emergence in Poland, some years ago, of a Beer-Lovers’ Party (which actually won seats in the Polish Parliament in the early 1990s). Beer has since surpassed wodka as the most consumed type of alcohol in Poland.

Many thanks for this map (found here) to Leszek Jan Lipinski, who is Polish, studies in Denmark and currently resides in Liechtenstein, and therefore can “confirm from everyday practice that the theory [of alcohol belts] seems quite relevant, not in terms of concrete consumption numbers (Poles currently have 4th highest beer consumption per capita), but in terms of cultural reverence, drinking patterns, festivities and role of pubs in the culture,” even though this map might not be entirely accurate: “[The] Balkan area division is highly disputable and Western Poland does not have the beer culture inherited from the Germans.”

Another version of Europe’s alcohol belts (cf.inf.) is found here; more detailed, but, gathering from anecdotal knowledge, also not entirely accurate.

These maps bring to mind Terry Pratchett’s witty remark that Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it. And grapes, grain and potatoes.

Europe’s alcohol belts are reminiscent (and up to a point co-occurrent) with its religious, cultural and linguistic divides, as discussed earlier on this blog (#12, #24).

Scattered across the centre of San Francisco are almost seventy semi-secret spaces, privately owned but open to the public. Subject to the fine print of a little-known pact between City and Commerce, these so-called POPOS (Privately Owned Public Open Spaces) allow alluring vistas of San Francisco and access to its intimate interiors. However, they are often poorly indicated – perhaps a deliberate tactic by the private companies who own the spaces to prevent the pesky public from using them. Accessing POPOS sometimes even requires walking past security guards, or through unmarked doors. No wonder many are underfrequented.

A concerted effort of concerned citizens – and this map produced by them – is aimed at raising awareness of the existence of these fascinating spaces, 68 in all, both north and south of Market Street, many in existence for decades. This map is part of a guide produced by SPUR (San Francisco Planning & Urban Research Association); the 45 round indicators are POPOS set up between 1959 and 1985, the squares mark the 23 inaugurated after the 1985 Downtown Plan, which stipulated the zoning regulations requiring commercial urban development to be counterbalanced by POPOS.

POPOS come in many guises. They can be either indoor or outdoor – and indeed even on rooftops. They might be the size of a small park, or merely a ’snippet’. There are single-area POPOS, and ones composed of several different spaces. Some are open at all times, others accessible only during office hours. Quite a few are graced with public works or art. POPOS operated under the Downtown Plan need to provide access to restrooms and other amenities.

SPUR lists all 68 POPOS in downtown San Francisco and rates them from poor over good to fair and excellent. For a complete overview, download SPUR’s guide (see below). Or take one of the architectural tours leading you through the network of POPOS in San Francisco’s downtown. Below is a brief legend to the map above.

1. Redwood Park: An urban park at the foot of San Francisco’s most striking skyscraper with redwoods, sculptures and a fountain.
2. 505 Sansome Street: A greenhouse in the lobby of an office building, connecting to Redwood Park.
3. Empire Park: An urban garden on the site of a demolished building.
4. Embarcadero Center West: Three separate open spaces.
5. 456 Montgomery Street: An urban garden cascading into the middle recess of a building.
6. 343 Sansome Street: Two open spaces, one a sun terrace on the 15th floor (with an obelisk), the other a lunchtime mall.
7. 650 California Street:Two “largely barren” plazas.
8. 600 California Street: A ’snippet’ without amenities or seating, but with lots of art pieces.
9. 555 California Street: A “grand, almost forbidding” plaza, with a sculpture, a garden and teak benches.
10. 345 California Street: A “shady snippet” with granite benches and some planters.
11. 200 California Street: A public sitting area in a pedestrian walkway, featuring a bronze sculpture called The Hawaiian.
12. 150 California Street: A sun terrace with tables, chairs, plants an public art – but you have to get past a security guard.
13. 50 California Street: A snippet enlivened by a small café.
14. One California Street: Snippets around the building feature trees and benches, and is partly occupied by the indoor café’s tables and chairs.
15. 101 California: An urban garden within a large plaza, dominated by three stepped pyramids.
16. 100 Pine Street: An urban garden squeezed in between a few skyscrapers, a “gem” but without direct sunlight.
17. 444 Market Street: A plaza leading to the entrance of the Market Street building.
18. One Bush Street: A “beautifully designed and maintained” urban garden surrounding “the first postwar high-rise” in San Francisco.
19. Citygroup Center: A greenhouse in a former bank building.
20. Trinity Alley: A pedestrian walkway with a narrow plaza.
21. Crocker Galleria: Two rooftop sun terraces, one on an historic bank building, the other “accessed from an obscure staircase in the northwest corner of the Galleria”.
22. One Post Street: Snippets with stand-up tables and square concrete blocks at sitting height next to food services.
23. 595 Market Street: Two triangular entryway plazas. One “could become a pleasant public sitting area”.
24. 555/575 Market Street: A “beautifully landscaped” urban garden between two highrises.
25. 525 Market Street: An urban garden with a double granite fountain.
26. 425 Market Street: An urban garden surrounded by highrises that is “shady but nonetheless a jewel”.
27. 14 Fremont Street: A wide sitting area in a pedestrian walkway, furnished with tables and chairs.
28. 333 Market Street: A small plaza with planters.
29. 45 Fremont Street: A narrow plaza with a hedge of Japanese maples and a row of metal benches.
30. 50 Beale Street: A “rather large” urban park full of trees and bushes, and including a railroad car housing a Bechtel Corp. museum.
31. 77 Beale Street: An entry plaza featuring a water wall, granite planters, Gingko trees and sitting ledges.
32. 201 Mission Street: An urban garden in the setbacks on Beale Street.
33. 123 Mission Street: An urban garden in three successive parts, with plenty of vegetation.
34. One Market Street: A plaza oriented to the sunny side of the building.
35. 135 Main Street: An enclosed front courtyard turned into an indoor park with a metal wall water feature.
36. 160 Spear Street: An entrance walkway widening into an urban garden with water feature and aluminium sculpture.
37. 180 Howard Street: A public sitting area in a walkway that is a continuation of (36).
38. 201 Spear Street: A walkway widening into an urban garden, centered on the sculpture of a photographing man.
39. 211 Main Street: A front entry plaza with sunny exposure and the potential to be a “very pleasant space”.
40. 221 Main Street: “Four benches in a sea of paving”.
41. 301 Howard Street: A small urban garden featuring a food truck in an Art Deco building, thus “destroy[ing] the charm of the little pavilion”.
42. 199 Fremont Street: An urban garden that is the result of the collaboration of a sculptor, a poet and an architect.
43. 100 First Street: A popular sun terrace with water spouting from a black granite wall.
44. 25 Jessie Street: A “small but lovely” urban garden with a water wall but without seating.
45. Golden Gate University: A bridge turned into a ’snippet’.

An exhaustive treatment of POPOS history and regulations here at SPUR, which also produced an 8-page guide to San Francisco’s POPOS (including this map) called Secrets of San Francisco. The guide elaborates on the accessibility and overall quality of all POPOS (or rather it would, if it didn’t stop abruptly at page 8, and #45). Even more information on POPOS here at sf.streetsblog.org.

With an army numbering a mere 7,000 soldiers and an official policy of neutrality, the Irish Free State’s attitude at the outbreak of the Second World War was that of a very nervous bystander. While covertly providing the Brits with some intelligence and assistance, the overt goal throughout what was called the Emergency was to remain non-involved enough to prevent both a British and a German invasion. If it could, the Emerald Isle would have taken on, chameleon-like, the colour of the surrounding ocean waves.

This map shows the next best thing: dissuasive cartography. Its actual title is Cautious Cartography, as it appeared in the August 1940 issue of the Irish satirical magazine Dublin Opinion. The map purports to portray Ireland in as unappealing a perspective as possible. The text accompanying the map explains how cartography may be at least partly to blame for Europe’s misfortune:

Feeling that the present unrest in Europe may have been largely caused by the well-intended, but highly mistaken policy pursued by countries of boasting about their natural advantages and attractions, a policy which has had the not unnatural result of exciting the cupidity of other countries, our Grangegorman Cartographer has designed the above map of Ireland, which is calculated to discourage the inhabitants, much less strangers. The trouble is, he feels, that, even as depicted, the country still looks more attractive than the rest of Europe.

Maybe because the rest of Europe was busy going up in flames. But still, who would want to invade a country wracked by rheumatism, plagued by cholera and diphteria belts (not to mention ‘inspectors’ and pipers’ bands)? The interior of Ireland is further disfigured by bog and swamp, alternating with swamp and bog, a great quagmire and a great Meath desert.

The approaches to the island are littered with deadly whirlpools, quicksands, rocks, more rocks and still more rocks. Dublin, the ultimate prize for any invader, is a mere hut. The North, still British, is diplomatically marked as Unexplored. Double dotted lines denote goat tracks, single dotted lines are unreliable trails. Xes mark miasmas, and shaded areas are Almost inhabitable areas.

Ireland’s ploy worked. By remaining as inobtrusive as possible, the Republic was able to remain out of the war (although 50,000 Irish volunteers did take up arms with the British).

Many thanks to Cormac for sending in this map.

We could rattle off some statistics, about size and distance. But sometimes a picture is more eloquent than a thousand words. Here are two postcard maps. That’s two thousand words right there.

Many thanks to Anna Chlebinska, a collector of cartographic postcards, for sending in these beauts.

“China’s internet is open.”

(PRC government spokesperson responding to a question on Google’s announcement to stop filtering its Chinese search engine, citing concerted hacker attacks on the e-mail accounts of political dissidents)

Will Google leave China? Probably so. After the online giant challenged the Chinese government by announcing its intention to stop abiding by the government censorship requirements for google.cn, few expect the offline giant (China, that is) to flinch.

For Google, there must be some relief to end its faustian deal with the Chinese gerontocracy: operating inside the People’s Republic of China was only possible if it agreed to censor the results of its search engine for anti-communist and anti-social content, for example queries for ‘Tiananmen massacre’, ‘Tibetan independence’, ‘underground church’ and, ironically, ‘blocking’.

If Google goes, it will be the last in a long line of internet biggies to fall victim to the Great Firewall of China, others being social websites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (all are completely inaccessible in the PRC; others, like Wikipedia, are viewable, but with large sections blacked out).

This map visualises some of the content blocked in China, with specific search terms shown in red (and forming the shape of the PRC), and blocked or partially blocked websites shown in black.

Many thanks to Guido Smit for suggesting this map, found here on the lovely website Information Is Beautiful.

A look at the discourse of modern defenders of the Square Earth explains why: almost all of their arguments are biblical, which they choose to take literally instead of poetically, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. A lot is explained by the opening quote on the website of the International Square Earth Society:

“After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree.” (Revelation 7:1)

The website rails against ‘lazy Biblical literalists’ who ignore the Good Book’s geodetic information. In the true spirit of factionalism, the first enemy attacked by the square-earthers are the… flat-earthers: “Even the late, great Charles K. Johnson, the valiant fighter for Truth who carried the message of earlier Zetetic Astronomers forward into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by founding the International Flat Earth Society, made the grievous error of assuming that the Earth was shaped like a circular disk. Nothing could be further from the Truth.” (note the capitalisation of truth – making it rarer and more precious).

Square-earthers find support for their theory in biblical quotes referring to “the ends of the Earth” (Job 28:24, 37:3). These ends are interpreted as straight edges. Verse referring to “the four quarters of the Earth” (Isaiah 11:12) necessarily means that those need to be congruent (i.e. identical when superimposed). Which leads to exactly eight possible shapes:

• A square
• A non-square rectangle
• A non-square rhombus (i.e. a “diamond” shape)
• A non-rectangular, non-rhombic parallelogram
• A trapezoid
• A concave quadrilateral
• An isosceles quadrilateral
• A scalene quadrilateral”

These are narrowed down even further by yet another bible verse, plus some logical gymnastics; “Finally, we can look to the mention of the four winds in Revelation 7:1 to give us the last clue. Everybody knows that ‘the four winds’ are the North Wind, the South Wind, the East Wind, and the West Wind. Right? Well, Revelation 7:1 clearly shows four angels holding back these four winds. In order for each angel to ‘hold back’ one of the Four Winds, he would have to be standing at the point on the Earth from whence the Wind originated. Thus, to hold back the North Wind, an angel would have to be standing at the northernmost point on the Earth. To hold back the South Wind, an angel would have to be standing at the southernmost point on the Earth. Et cetera. The four angels would have to have been standing at the northernmost, southernmost, easternmost, and westernmost points on the Earth — in other words, at the extreme ends of the four main compass points.”

“But we already know that they were also standing at the four corners of the Earth. This means that the four corners of the Earth are located at the compass points! A non-square rectangle, a non-rhombic parallelogram, or an isosceles trapezoid cannot be aligned in such a way that their corners are pointing directly at the compass points. Only a rhombic shape can be aligned in such a way.”

In layman’s terms (and I use that expression with some trepidation), that leaves us with only two possible shapes: a square, or a diamond, with each of its corners pointed to each of the main compass points. But since God is perfect, and a square is a more perfect rhombus than a diamond, the Earth must be square! (“Its rectilinear corners perfectly match the rectitude of God.”)

If you’re more into baseball than geometry, here’s a translation of the arguments above: “Of all the nations on Earth today, God most loves the United States of America. (This is evident from songs like ‘God Bless America’, and from the fact that Pat Robertson, God’s chosen spokesman, lives in the US). America’s national pastime is the game of baseball. Baseball is played on a ‘diamond’, which is perfectly square in shape – and which, I might add, has its corners oriented to point toward the four compass points. God would not have made baseball into the national pastime of His favorite nation if He didn’t have a higher purpose in mind for it. Clearly, His higher purpose is to show us the True shape of the Earth. The Earth must be perfecly square, just like the diamond-shaped field in God’s Chosen Sport is square.”

After this lengthy exegesis, the stunned reader is further subjected to a shocking Q&A:

• Q: “Can I believe in the round Earth and still get into heaven?”
• A: “No [...] God won’t let any half-assed believers into heaven.” 

• Q: “What about all those pictures from space, showing that the Earth is round?”
• A: “Just more proof that Hollywood is in league with the devil [...] In fact, the entire NASA space program is a sham. The movie Capricorn One was a documentary about how the Apollo moon mission was faked [...] O.J. Simpson, one of the stars of Capricorn One, was going to come forward with THE TRUTH, but he was silenced by being framed for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.”

• Q: “How come no airline pilots have ever reported seeing the edges of the Earth?”
• A: “Airline pilots are also in league with the devil. This is for your protection. If True Believers were allowed to pilot airliners, many planes would instantly become unmanned during the pre-Tribulation Rapture, thus crashing and killing everybody on board. When crossing the Equator or the Prime Meridian, airline pilots have to make sharp 90-degree turns to follow the square contours of the Earth. They hide this fact by blaming it on ‘turbulence.’”

By this time I think it’s time to share with you our suspicion that Roger M. Wilcox, the author of the International Square Earth Society webpage, has a gift for sarcasm and parody rather than a tendency to literalism (1). But this map of the Square and Stationary Earth is an expression of the latter rather than the former. It was produced in 1893 by professor Orlando Ferguson of Hot Springs, South Dakota, in a time before Hollywood, airline pilots, and indeed sarcasm and parody (at least in South Dakota). Ferguson was an epigone of an obscure subset of modern geocentrism (2), the ‘mainstream’ of which does not insist on rectangular borders for the Earth, but contents itself with it being stationary at the centre of the universe, which revolves around it.

Prof. Ferguson states (quite seriously this time, we assume), that there are “four hundred passages in the Bible that condemn the Globe Theory, or the Flying Earth, and none sustain it. This map is the Bible Map of the world.” His map shows the Earth to be a flat, square disk that, judging by this less than perfect image, has a circular concavity almost touching the edges, out of the middle of which emerges a convexity with the North Pole at its (and the map’s) perfect centre.

Many thanks to Kris Delacourt for sending in this map, found on this Wikipedia page.

(1) also check out the hilarious Praise for the International Square Earth Society section.

(2) those who continue to hold on to the notion that the Sun revolved around the Earth in modern times, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary a disturbingly large proportion of the population; a 1996 Gallup survey put their share at 19% in the UK, 16% in Germany and 18% in the US.

The rapid spread of the Great Fear was one of the weirder episodes in the early, confusing days of the French Revolution. This combination of a riot, a brush fire and a game of Chinese whispers raged from July 20 to August 5 of the revolutionary year 1789 - a year now better remembered for July 14, the date of the storming of the Bastille, which set off the Revolution itself. Quatorze juillet has been the French Fête Nationale ever since.

La Grande Peur followed Bastille Day – as the translation of the Parisian, urban revolt to the countryside. This short-lived peasants’ revolt, sounding the death-knell of the Ancien Regime, occurred in the context of the worsening grain shortage, leading to local militias guarding the dwindling supplies and the new harvest from the swelling ranks of vagrants on the roads. When rumours spread that these brigands were recruited and armed by the despised First Estate (i.e. the nobles, whose monopoly on politics the Revolution would abolish), the peasantry rose up and pre-emptively struck against the nobility, ransacking mansions, destroying feudal records and – also - plundering the grain supplies.

The origin, the raging and the rather swift end to the violence associated with La Grande Peur has been sufficiently documented for it to be mapped. It started in the westerly region of Franche-Comté, whence it spread south through the valley of the Rhône to the Provence, and west towards central France. It was joined by another panic centre south of Poitiers, radiating south towards the Pyrenees, and into the Auvergne. The starting points were mostly relatively small towns, stressing the rural character of the phenomenon: Bram, Ruffec, St-Florentin, Louhans, Romilly, Estrees, La Ferie, Gastines. The episode was so confusing that sometimes armed peasants from one village mistook their equally vigilant neighbours for the feared brigands, with unintended, violent consequences.

While the worst was over by the beginning of August 1789, quelled by military force, outbreaks of Peur on a rather more petite scale continued into 1790, eventually leaving only extremitous regions such as Alsace and Lorraine, Gascogne and Bretagne untouched.

This map found on this page of the Académie d’ Orléans-Tours.

So it’s 2010, and we’re not living on Mars, nor even zipping through the sky in flying cars. But neither do we have to bow to our new insect overlords. The promises (and threats) of the future never quite materialise how we once imagined them.

The current paradigm of futurism is of impending climatological doom – a secular, scientific eschatology with clear religious overtones, in the public’s mind replacing earlier concepts of nuclear Armageddon (and of course competing with the ‘original’, Biblical End Times).

That present-day environmentalist prism through which we view the future is illustrated nicely by this map of London in 2050. This Fantasy Piccadilly Line, by artist Nils Norman, is a variation on posters highlighting the tourist attractions above the actual Underground lines. This way of linking tube stations to the actual street plan of London is an interesting departure from the usual diagrammatic presentation of the Tube lines (i.e. the Harry Beck map).

Mr Norman’s map “shows a mixture of unrealised and fantastical buildings and systems alongside images of other artists’ proposals. The map presents a vision of London as an ecological haven inhabited by Utopian and Dystopian machinery as an alternative to the more typical view of a city dominated by tourist attractions.”

In the background are the North London Turbine Fields. A forest of wind turbines is also collectively known as a wind farm. Such farms are a popular method of creating energy in an environmentally responsible (non-carbon, renewable) way. Popular, that is, except with people near projected farms who often cite the visual impact as an objection to the projects. As of January 2010, UK wind energy capacity topped 4 Gigawatts in over 270 wind farms, equalling over 1.5% of the total electricity generated in the UK.

Four biosphere complexes dominate the map, a luxury residential one in Islington (obviously still posh 40 years from now) near Holloway Road tube station, an art fair and creative one in Regents Park, and two further ones in the City and South Chelsea (just south of Earls Court and Barons Court tube stations). The original ‘biosphere’ is the sum of all the Earth’s habitable zones. Artificial biospheres, like the Eden Project in Cornwall (on which the domes in this picture are modeled) are designed to sustain closed ecosystems in an inhospitable outside environment.

The fancy district of Mayfair seems to have gone down in the world by 2050. North of the Green Park tube station are half a dozen stark, green housing towers, doubling as algae factories. Algae are fast-growing organisms that can turn sunlight into chemical energy while absorbing CO2 from the air, enabling the production of biofuels. Further algae production is taking place in the Chelsea Algae Ponds, just south of South Kensington tube station, and in the West London Algae Ponds to the north of Earls Court Road.

Nearby Hyde Park (and Kensington Gardens) have been turned into Hyde Park Adventure Playground, while across from Hyde Park Corner there is the St James’s Park and Buckingham Palace Gardens Adventure Playground Chain. One has to assume the Royal Family has been persuaded to open up the gardens of its palace to the public – or that the public has decided to do away with them. Towards the river, we have Cedric Price’s Fun Palace, Mike Webb’s Sin Centre and the Westminster Bog and Wetland Chain (again, one has to assume that the Houses of Parliament have been generous with their property, or have been chased off it). Nextdoor, in the still-political village of Westminster, are the orwellian Ministries of Truth, Love, Peace and Plenty.

Further to the south again, just off Gloucester Road tube station, is an impressive, mushroom-shaped water tower dominates the skyline (Others are scattered further west throughout the city). Nearby is the Geothermal Energy, Vegetable Oil Refinery and Entertainment Platform West 2 (next to a round pond named after its postcode, Local Reservoir SW3; others are scattered throughout the city). The Geothermal Energy Platform and Shopping Centre West 1 is located just off Old Brompton Road, towards the South Chelsea Biosphere. In the map’s bottom left corner is the intriguing Hammersmith Mushroom Facility. Mushrooms, while not known for their biofuel-producing capacity, can be consumed for mind-altering purposes (some varieties at least).

Curious monuments grace the city: two tripods astride Earls Court, with tentacles menacingly reaching down to street-level – one imagines to snatch up the last remaining smokers. Rob Herron’s Walking City – a wheeled behemoth astride the West London Algae Ponds rivals the bizarreness of Claes Oldenburg’s London Knees, near the Ministry of Truth. Looking like a stack of sugarcubes, a Super Studio half in Hyde Park is close by Thomas Affleck Greeve’s self-referential Design for a monument to architecture. Weirdest of all, behind the wind farm in the distance, a flying city floats through the air.

Well – maybe we’ll live to see the day…

This map found as a pdf on this page of Thin Cities, a subpage of Transport for London’s website dedicated to the art projects celebrating the Piccadilly Line’s 100th birthday in 2006/2007.

In 1145, the Syrian bishop Hugo of Jabala brought Pope Eugene III the news of the Muslim reconquest of Edessa, an important Crusader stronghold in the Holy Land. The bishop softened the blow – and hoped to encourage the Pope to a new Crusade – with tales of a mighty Christian king attacking the Muslims from behind: Prester John, a descendant of one of the Three Magi and ruler of a Christian Empire beyond the Muslim-ruled lands in India, on the very edge of the world then known to Europe. According to Otto von Freising’s contemporary Chronicles, Hugo spoke of “a certain Prester John who lives in the Far East, beyond Persia and Armenia, King and Priest, Christian but Nestorian (1), having waged war against the Persian and Median dynasty of the Sarmiads, having chased them from their capital Ectabana.” This raised the possibility of a Christian pincer attack on the Muslim world.

Twenty years later, a letter addressed by Prester John to the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus caused a great stirring of hope in all of Christendom. Pope Alexander III sent out an envoy to the Prester, but without result (the fate of the papal diplomat is unknown). The letter, however, remained a powerful tonic to a Europe feeling hemmed in by the Muslim ascendancy in the Middle East and Northern Africa. It was copied (and embellished) for many decades afterwards. The letter described a Christian empire with 72 tributary kingdoms, in an area of the world with a fantastic ecology inhabited, among others, by vampires and dog-headed people. The Fountain of Youth and a river flowing from Paradise itself and filled with precious stones helped complete a picture of thrilling exoticism. And of perfect piety, happiness and wealth: “All Christian values are respected to the letter. Theft, greed and lies are unknown. There is no poverty.”

But the letter was a forgery, Prester John as virtual as he was virtuous, the legend literally too good to be true. All Prester John ever was king of, was Wishful Thinking. Prester John’s fictional empire proved as movable as the imagination of beleaguered Christianity required. First inferred in India, the kingdom was later situated in Central Asia, and eventually assumed to be in Africa. The ease of these huge locational shifts was due not just to Europe’s dim perception of geography at the time, but also to the elasticity of the contemporary concept of ‘India’, which in its broadest interpretation could stretch all the way from Africa to China.

Whatever its location du jour, Prester John’s legend required his kingdom to be beyond Muslim lands, and in a little-known corner of the world. The last, longest and strongest association of the legend was with Abyssinia (2) – mainly because, apart from conforming to the legend’s geographical requirements, it also did happen to be a Christian empire. In his Mirabilia (1323), Jourdain de Séverac identified the Abyssinian Negus (i.e. Emperor and supreme leader of the Abyssinian monophysite church) with Prester John, spurring European expeditions to the African empire. In 1490, the Portuguese explorer Pêro da Covilhã managed to convey a letter from the king of Portugal to the Negus… even though the letter itself was addressed to Prester John. This must have surprised the Negus, but that did not stop Europeans from continuing to the conceit – even though the Ethiopians in their intermittent contacts with European Christendom tried to clarify that their Emperor certainly wasn’t anyone’s “Prester”. Only in the 17th century did Europeans realise their mistake, and Prester John finally faded from maps, and from memory. Prester John might never have been real, but his influence can be felt clearly; in the push of European exploration around Africa towards India and Ethiopia, and in cultural references ranging from William Shakespeare and Umberto Eco to Marvel Comics (3).

This map, dating from the 1570s, still takes Europe’s devout wishes for geopolitical truth. It was produced in Antwerp by Ortelius, entitled A Description of The Empire of Prester John, Also Known as the Abyssinian Empire. It delineates Prester John’s empire as follows: its borders almost reach north to Aswan (noted on the map as Aßuan) on the Nile, then follow the Nile, Niger and Manicongo rivers south to the Mountains of the Moon (Lunae montes, hinc Austrum versus Africa veteribus incognita fuit: The Mountains of the Moon, ‘Africa south from here was unknown to the Ancients’). The kingdom extends from these western and southern borders all the way to Africa’s eastern shores.

Ortelius’ map mixes up familiar and imagined names and locations into an intriguing mess of real and imagined geography.

* In northern Africa are Barbaria (the Barbary Coast) and Egypt, on the western African coast are other place names that still sound familiar: Benin, Biafar (Biafra?), Rio de los Camarones (Cameroon), Manicongo (Congo), Angolia (Angola).

* The Mountains of the Moon in Central Africa were known to Greek geographers as early as Ptolemy (although he might have referred to the Kilimanjaro instead). On this map, they are situated far south of the Equator. Mozambique, named by Portuguese explorers in the late 15th century, possibly after a lokal sheikh called Moussa ibn Mbeki, is on the coast and appears north of the Mountains of the Moon.

* The interior is dominated by a few great lakes, probably a garbled reference to the actual Great Lakes. They are named Zaire lacus (or Zembre lacus), near which amazons live and in which sirens swim, and Zaflan lacus. Zaire, the name of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1971 and 1997, is a Portuguese corruption of the Congolese word nzere, ‘the river that swallows all rivers’.

* In the interior of Prester John’s kingdom is a legend that appears to read: ‘Mount Amara, here the sons of Prester John are held in captivity by [a] governor’.

* On the Arabian peninsula, two cities are referenced: Mecha, patria Mahumetis (‘Mecca, the home of Muhammad’), and Medina Talnabi, ubi Mahumetis sepulcrum magna frequentia visitur (‘Medina Talnabi, where the tomb of Muhammad is visited with great frequency’). Two other cities, Aden and Zibir (possibly Sana’a) are located in (or to)the south of Aiman, quae olim Arabia Felix (‘Yemen, formerly Happy Arabia’).

The Vikings set foot in America just over a millennium ago, but credit for the discovery generally goes to Columbus, who only stumbled upon the New World almost 500 years later. One reason might be that the Norse involvement in North America was brief and inconsequential, whereas Columbus’ rediscovery led to the European conquest of the Americas. Another is that the Norse discoverers didn’t leave behind any maps of the lands they called Markland, Helluland and Vinland (*).

But if the Vikings didn’t map their discoveries, they did relate them in sagas. These later did form the basis for maps, the most famous of which is the Vinland Map. Reputedly a 15th-century copy of a 13th-century original, that map, now in the possession of Yale University, is likely to be a clever, relatively recent forgery (see #57 for a more thorough discussion).

The Skálholt Map, shown here, is less well known, but has the advantage of being authentic. The first version was made in 1570 by Sigurd Stefánsson, a teacher in Skálholt, then an important religious and educational centre on Iceland. Stefánsson attempted to plot the American locations mentioned in the Vinland Saga on a map of the North Atlantic. Stefánsson’s original is lost; this copy dates from 1669, and was included in description of Iceland by Biørn Jonsen of Skarsaa.

The map mixes real, fictional and rumoured geography. In its southeast corner, the map shows Irland and Britannia, and to the north of both the Orcades (Orkney Islands), Hetland (Shetland Islands), Feroe (Faroe Islands), Island (Iceland) and Frisland, a particularly persistent phantom island discussed earlier on this blog (#62).

The northeast part of the map shows the mainland of Norvegia (Norway) and to its north Biarmaland (the semi-mythical Bjarmia, possibly the area of present-day Archangelsk). On the top part of the map are situated the wholly fictional lands of Iotunheimar (Jotunheim, in Norse mythology the home of the giants) and Riseland (another land of titans), with attached to it Gronlandia (Greenland), its flowing coastline resembling the lobed margins of an oak leaf.

In the Mare Glaciale (Ice Sea) in the north is Narve Oe, possibly translatable as the Island of Narfi (the father of Nott, the night). Two place names, both on Greenland, are illegible.

Greenland is of course an island, but was considered by the Vikings to be a huge peninsula of a contiguous northern mainland, that continued to America, where are noted Helleland, Markland and Skraelingeland (after the Viking name for the natives). Marked vertically on the map’s southwestern edge is the name Promontorium Winlandiae (Promontory of Vinland).

In a development that would have pleased Stefánsson, the Skálholt Map has helped determine the actual location of a Norse site in North America. The map indicates that the northern tip of Vinland is on somewhat the same latitude as the southern coast of Ireland (app. 51°N). This encouraged the excavations at L’Anse-aux-Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland, which in 1960 yielded the first archaeological evidence of Viking presence in America.

This map was taken from this page at the Kongelige Bibliothek, the Danish Royal Library. The vignette, in Latin, refers to the original map by Siurdus Stephanius (Sigurd Stefánsson). The numbers on the map match the legends (A to H) next to the map, also in Latin. Can anyone provide a translation?

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(*) Generally translated as Flatstone Land, Wood Land and Grapevine Land, respectively.

Take the length of the equator on this map, double that distance and you have the width of a human hair. For this is the world’s smallest world map, with the 40,000 kilometre-long equator reduced to a mere 40 micrometres.The smallest features on the map, corresponding to 100 kilometres, are about 100 nanometres wide.

The map was created by the Photonics Research Group at Ghent University in Belgium, and embedded in an optical silicon chip. Miniaturisation on this scale (one trillionth [*], to be exact) will enable optical technology with a million times more components than in present-day, glass-based photonics, and opens the door to nanophotonic applications in consumer electronics, medical imaging, and telecommunication.

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This map was taken from the August 2, 1919 edition of the US news magazine Literary Digest, and originally appeared in the London Sphere. It details the projected break-up of the Austro-Hungarian empire, one of the First World War’s defeated Central Powers. That empire would eventually be dismembered, but not quite in the way depicted here. Some of the more obvious anomalies:

• On this map, Austria is even smaller than the state that did emerge from the ashes of its empire: missing the Burgenland (to Hungary), and what looks like the present-day Bundesland of Salzburg (to Germany?) A slightly larger and contiguous Austrian Tyrol connects what otherwise would have been two separate Austrian territories.
• Hungary includes Slovakia, which in the real world joined up with the Czech territories to the west to form Czechoslovakia, and apparently also comprises the Vojvodina, which would go to Serbia/Yugoslavia.
• Italy’s take-away around Trieste and Dalmatia seems larger than it actually was.
• In the world portrayed by this map, Hungary neighbours the state of Czechoslavia (almost identical to present-day Czech Republic, with between them as yet undefined boundaries).

The entire article from the Literay Digest, entitled ‘Austria Paying the Fiddler’, is remarkable as a document of the bitter post-war zeitgeist, and is reproduced here in its entirety:

“LET US TRY to submit to the Entente, entirely unadorned, our great distress,” said Dr. Renner, head of the Austrian Peace Delegation, in his protest against the “unheard-of severity” of the peace terms that were handed to him on July 20, “and so obtain a peace with conditions that will be supportable for our country.” He added, according to Paris dispatches, that he would not sign “engagements which he knew could not be executed.” These remarks remind our editors of the recent German kicking against similar pricks, but there is a general agreement that Austria has better reasons for complaint.

 ”After all, Germany remains a great nation,” observes the New York World, “and will again become a prosperous one. Austria . . . is sunk to the status of a fourth-rate Power, desperately poor, utterly discouraged.” Factories are idle, say recent reports from Vienna, thousands of persons are trying to leave the country, little business is being done, and the American dollar, quoted before the war at five crowns, is now worth thirty-two, so that the crown, formerly worth twenty cents, is now worth three. Austria, as the New York Sun sums up the situation, is paying debts “that have been accumulating for centuries, and she is paying not so much to victors in war as to the peoples she has opprest and misgoverned.”

This phase of the peace terms is well illustrated by the new territorial arrangements in Middle Europe as shown on the accompanying map. The Empire, which had a population of 28,000,000 in 1910, loses three-fourths of its subjects, and even more of its natural resources. By other stipulations of the Treaty, the total amount to be paid in reparation will be announced before May 1, 1921; in the meantime Austria is to pay “a reasonable sum,” also not fixt as yet. The Austrian Army, so “awfully arrayed,” when it “boldly by battery besieged Belgrade,” is reduced to a paltry 30,000 men, including officers.

Austria also agrees to replace as far as possible the animals, machinery, and personal property plundered from Serbia, Roumania and northern Italy, and definite numbers of domestic animals are to be delivered within three months as a beginning. All objects of artistic and scientific value seized in the invasions are to be returned, together with “special objects carried off by the House of Hapsburg or other dynasties,” if the Reparation Commission finds the removal was illegal. The old debt of the Empire, incurred before the war, is to be divided proportionately among the various states, as all the revolutionary Slav leaders have previously agreed; on the war-debt a compromise has been reached which amounts to the repudiation of a large part of it.

“The once proud arch-duchies will appear before the world hereafter as a small and very lean sheep shorn to utter nakedness,” comments the Boston Transcript, which finds a final ironical touch in the fact that “the very existence of Austria is maintained by the Allies in order that she may sustain this burden and make these heavy amends.” According to this authority: “Left to her free will, Austria would renounce her sovereignty and join the German realm. She is kept alive as an independent country in order that she may suffer in her misery the consequences of acts committed in her might. This is indeed a spectacle for all mankind to view and take heart.”

“Utterly humbled by Prussia in 1866, Austria became Prussia’s slave, and her willing slave. Her culminating act of slavishness was the attack on Serbia; the purpose of that act was to open Germany’s road of Empire to Constantinople and Bagdad. It was the Hapsburg’s final gamble. The game was played, and the stakes were death. But even in her agony, Austria is not permitted to die until she has made the fullest reparation for the evil deed done.”

Nevertheless, other commentators point out, Austria will display a natural objection to dying, even when “permitted,” and the future of the country is causing concern, since the natural tendency is toward an alliance with Germany. The test of political defeat or victory in the war, according to the New York Journal of Commerce, is the extent to which the Allies will be able to create in central and southeastern Europe a chain of national states “whose vital interest it will be to resist German hegemony.”

“Left to itself, the new Austria could hardly survive,” says the New York Evening Post. “A population of seven millions can not furnish the economic background for a city like Vienna, with a population of more than two million.” The result, believes the Post, will be the emergence of “an economic group consisting of Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, and Hungary, with an aggregate population of 30,000,000.”

Charles A. Selden cables from Paris to the New York Times, in opposition to this idea, as well as to the general trend of opinion on this side of the Atlantic: “It is relevant that Italy wants Austria annexed to Germany, and that there is a strong opinion among American and English statesmen that under the principles of self-determination the Austrians should be allowed to do as they please in the matter.” The same correspondent quotes “a member of the French Foreign Office” to the effect that “in the meantime, Austria seems to be keeping a level head, despite her lack of food and the other hardships growing out of the war,” and the Nashville Banner agrees with the Chicago Daily News that, “under the egis of the League of Nations,” the future is not so black even for Austria.

A pre-war proposal for the re-arrangement of the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian empire was previously discussed on this blog (see #17). Many thanks to K. McIver for sending in this map. Another map from the Literary Digest, about Anglo-Australia’s fear of its non-white Asian neighbours, was discussed under #380.

Festive cheer is upon us, and some of it is even permeating this blog. But what does Christmas have to do with cartography? Well, there is Christmas Island – three of them, in fact, one of which was discussed here about a year ago (#228). And then there is this Christmas card, made and sent in by Russell Piekarski. It uses a collage of several countries and a few US states to create an image of Santa, his reindeer and sleigh (full of presents), some Christmas stockings and of course a fully trimmed Christmas tree. I will leave it to you, dear reader, to list all the countries and states used to create this image.

Another cartographic approach to Christmas is shown on this second map, sent in by Marc Eno, laying out the probability of a white Christmas for the US’s Lower 48 states. Remarkably, the southern area where snowfall by the 25th of December historically is least likely, is almost perfectly demarcated by the so-called Missouri Compromise Line, the parallel running at 36°30′ north (and forming the border between North Carolina and Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky, Missouri and Arkansas, also running close by the border between Oklahoma and Kansas, New Mexico and Colorado, and Arizona and Utah). South of that line, chances of a white Christmas are mostly below 5%, with a few 5-10% patches thrown in. Only the Rocky Mountain range in New Mexico significantly break this pattern. Those Rockies further north are practically the only areas outside of northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Maine with over 90% likelihood of Christmas snow.

Finally, this Holiday Thematic Toponym Map, devised and sent in by Douglas Caldwell, lists some of Santa’s Favorite Places, as found in the Geographic Names Information System, that lists over 2 million toponyms in the US and its dependencies.

• Almost all of Santa’s reindeer are represented on the US map. Dasher in Georgia, Donner in Florida (others in Louisiana and Canada), Comet in Missouri (and half a dozen other states), Vixen in Louisiana, Dancer Branch in Tennessee, Mount Blitzen in Nevada (there’s a Donner und Blitzen River in Oregon, which has the only other eight Blitzen-related place-names in the US), Cupid Lake in Minnesota, and – even though he is extracanonical – Rudolph in South Dakota (and four other states). The odd one out is Prancer, whose name apparently is yet to be attached to a place in America;
• There is, however, a generic Reindeer Cove, Maine (there’s actually also one in Alaska, near Nome);and a Sleigh Canyon, in Utah;
• There is a Stocking Hill in upstate New York;
• Besides Elf, North Carolina there is also, less cheerfully, an Elf Cemetery in Pennsylvania;
• Santa Claus, Arizona is a former tourist attraction (and currently a ghost town); two other Santa Clauses are located in Indiana (the world’s only Santa Claus with a post office) and Georgia.
• Colorado has a Yule Creek;
• Chimney Mountain in Oklahoma is one of eight throughout the country, and North Pole in Idaho is one of a handful sprinkled across the country (also, no wonder, in Alaska).

Many thanks to Mr Piekarski for the appropriate card, to Mr Eno for the White Christmas Prediction map (taken here from the National Weather Forecast office in St Louis, Missouri), and to Mr Caldwell for producing this map of Santa’s Special Places. And mappy holidays to you all!

Crossing the bridge over the Saint John River from Clair (New Brunswick) into Fort Kent (Maine), you arrive at the northern terminus of US Route 1. Its number reflects the fact that it is the easternmost of the north-south highways that were standardised in the mid-1920s (1). It is not the longest (2), although its southern terminus is at a stone’s throw from Havana, under the palm trees of Key West, a world away from the snows of Canada. Neither is it the most famous – that laurel goes to Route 66, connecting Chicago to Los Angeles.

But if US Route 66 is the Mother Road, then US Route 1 is America’s Main Street. US 1 runs through Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Washington DC, a few blocks from the White House. It skirts battlefields from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Large parts of it consist of shopping centres, strip malls and other sprawl, but it also runs through swamps, wilderness and forests. One of US 1’s longest rural stretches is in northern Maine, where it hugs the Canadian border east to Van Buren and then south to Eastport, before turning west to follow the coast until crossing over into New Hampshire.

Where the sparse, rolling landscape of northern Maine can get a bit monotonous, some relief is provided by the Maine Solar System Model (MSSM). The MSSM, constructed in 2000 by the University of Maine at Presque Isle (UMPI), is the fourth-largest solar system model in the world (3). It is centred at UMPI’s Folsom Hall, which houses the Northern Maine Museum of Science. The scale is 1 to 93 million, which means that one Astronomical Unit (AU) equals one mile (1.6 km). All of our system’s planets are located along US Route 1, in order to present drivers with the opportunity to get a feeling of the scale of our solar system. Its original length was about 40 miles (64 km), all the way to Pluto, at the Tourist Information Centre in Houlton.

• The Sun is located in Folsom Hall, has a diameter of 49′ 6″ (15 m) and is represented by yellow-coloured beams and wall markings.
• Mercury (diameter: 2.1 inches, or 5.3 cm) is located in Burelle’s Garden at UMPI, 0.4 miles (640 metres) from the Sun.
• Venus (5.2 inches, 13.2 cm) is at the Budget Traveler Motor Inn, 0.7 miles (1.2 km) south of the Sun.
• The Earth (5.5 inches, 14 cm) is near Percy’s Auto Sales, 1 mile (1.6 km) from the Sun. A separate Moon (1.5 inch or 3.8 cm) is placed 16 feet (4.9 m) from the Earth’s axis.
• Mars (2.9 inches, 7.4 cm) is right next to the Welcome to Presque Isle sign, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from the Sun.
• While it’s not difficult to miss the smaller rocky planets, the gas giants are easy to spot from the road. Jupiter has a diameter of 61.4 inches (1.52 m), and is located 5.3 miles (8.5 km) from the Sun. Four of its moons (4) are also represented: Io (1.6 inches, 4.1 cm), at 15 feet (4.6 m) from Jupiter’s axis; Europa (diameter 1.3 inches or 3.3 cm; distance 24 feet or 7.32 m); Ganymede (diameter 2.3 inches, 5.8 cm; distance 38 feet, 11.6 m); and Callisto (diameter 2.1 inches, 5.3 cm; distance 67 feet, 20.4 m).
• Just outside of the settlement of Mars Hill, and with its own visitor bench, is the spectacular model of Saturn, with a diameter of 51.9 inches (132 cm) and surrounded by a ring structure with an outer diameter of 117 inches (297 cm). Saturn is 9.7 miles (15.6 km) away from the Sun.
• Uranus is just outside of Bridgewater Town Hall, with a diameter of 22 inches (56 cm) at a distance of 19.5 miles (31.4 km) from the Sun.
• Neptune (21.3 inches, 54 cm) is in a field near Littleton, 30.6 miles (49.2 km) from the Sun.
• Pluto is a tiny single inch large (2.54 cm), accompanied by its even tinier moon Charon (0.5 inch or 1.8 cm, at 8.5 inches or 21.6 cm from Pluto’s axis), both placed at the Houlton Information Centre.

Pluto has, of course, ceased to be a member of the planetary club. At a meeting in 2006, the International Astronomical Union decided to downgrade its status. It is no longer the smallest of the ‘regular’ planets, but the second-largest of the dwarf planets. The reclassification was necessary to avoid swelling the ranks of ‘regular’ planets with continuously discovered objects in the Kuiper belt, beyond Pluto.

Case in point is Eris, discovered in 2005, and 27% more massive than Pluto. Rather than elevating it to the status of planet, the choice was made to place it and Pluto together in a new category of dwarf planets. With its moon Dysnomia, Eris, at 96.7 AU from the Sun, is the most distant know natural object in the solar system – so far.

Rather than remove Pluto from the MSSM, the people at UMPI have chosen a more inclusive approach to the changed circumstances. Pluto stayed, and Eris was added, 54.5 miles south of Pluto, near Topsfield. The MSSM’s job is to place these distances in perspective, but the mind can’t help but be dazzled by the dimensions of the solar system, even if it is reduced to fit into Maine. For example: relative to the scale of the MSSM, light would travel at a speed of 7 mph (11.2 km/h). And the nearest star would still be 250,000 miles (402,336 km) away. That’s just over 100 times the entire length of US Route 1, and roughly the real distance from the Earth to the Moon.

This map was taken here at Astroguyz, a website dedicated to all things astronomical. A (dormant) website for the Maine Solar System Model can be found here on the website for the University of Maine at Presque Isle.

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(1) US Highway 2, for example, runs from Houlton (Maine) to Everett (Washington), from east to west – albeit interrupted by a large slice of southern Canada.

(2) US1 is 2,377 miles (3,825 km) long; US20, from Boston (Massachusetts) to Newport (Oregon), is America’s longest road, at 3,365 miles (5,415 km).

(3) according to Wikipedia. Although that also hinges on the definition of ‘planet’ – the Scottish Solar System lacks Pluto, for example (see discussion in the Comments section).

(4) Jupiter has over 60 moons, some of them quite small. Represented here are the four largest ones, also called ‘Galilean’ moons: Io, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede.