Can An Atlas lie?

[MrPresident]

It has always amazed me how damn small Europe really is. It is really wild to think that that small area once controlled most of the world.

Considering that you could fit Britain into Texas with room to spare. I think it is amazing that we (note that I am trying but probably failing to be objective) ruled over a quarter of the globe. On topic, how you seen the map upside down? It looks really weird but there is no reason why it can't be shown that way.

 

[knowltok2]

Originally posted by MrPresident

Considering that you could fit Britain into Texas with room to spare. I think it is amazing that we (note that I am trying but probably failing to be objective) ruled over a quarter of the globe. On topic, how you seen the map upside down? It looks really weird but there is no reason why it can't be shown that way.

I agree. I don't think you are failing to be objective. You simply stated an acknowledged fact.

On topic, what about on it's side? Or at an angle?

 

[willemvanoranje]

It's better to compare India and Greenland. Most atlasses show Greenland as larger, but actually India is. You all should've had this in geography-class, never heard of Mercator-maps, etc.? On most maps the northern part of the world is much larger too.

 

[allan]

I don't think it is geometrically possible to have a two-dimensional world map that depicts both the exact shape AND size of land bodies throughout.

For instance, on Mercator's map the SHAPE of Greenland is accurate, but the size is not. On the equal-area projections shown by Hurricane, the SIZE is accurate, but the shape is not (Greenland is "scrunched up" in the north-south direction compared to the east-west).

To get accuracy for both, refer to a globe. I have one in my apartment, btw....

 

[Magnus]

The beauty of the Miller/Mercator maps are theat they are the only maps that show true north, on the others, the paralells are show as curved, which they are not. Trying to accurately project a sphere onto a flat surface while maintaining accuracy on all points is damn near impossible.

Do you know if you take a piece of string along a globe between two places (say London and SEattle), that is the shortest distance, now trace that same path over any two-dimensional representation of the globe and the route looks ridiculous, yet that is exactly where the planes will fly.

 

[BigBirdZ28]

For those who care enough :

http://www.beanpaste.com/BSG/mercator.html

 

[Pellaken]

I dont know about "can an ATLAS lie" but I know maps can. here are some examples:
get a new map, post-USSR. look at turkey and iran. the boarder. now look at arminea
if your map is a grade F map, thats all you should see. if its better, you should see a little part of azerbaijan between Armenia and part of Iran.
now, heres the catcher... does that part of azerbaijan border Turkey? it should. by 9km so done expect anyhting massive.

this is how you can tell how good your map is.

 

[Hurricane]

Maps are "fixed" for political purposes all the time. One good example is the maps of the Middle East in current Palestinian school books, where there is no Israel at all! All the map says is "Palestine".

 

[Hamlet]

Originally posted by Hurricane
Maps are "fixed" for political purposes all the time.

GREENLAND IS TRYING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FEAR THE PROPOGANDA!!!!!!!!!

 

[Zwelgje]

Originally posted by knowltok2
It has always amazed me how damn small Europe really is. It is really wild to think that that small area once controlled most of the world.

It gets even more absurd when you look what countries actually were controlling such a huge part of the globe: UK, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and The Netherlands (there may have been more with colonies, I never paid that much attention in history class). I mean, it's not that the whole of Europe did it, just a few countries.

 

[Pellaken]

I heard once... the if you were to put the EU {or something the same size of it} in eastern china, that more people would live in the EU cause its so densley populated.

europe is powerful and small... its technoley... imagine how powerful china would be if they were the same tech level as the states...

also note
Italy dident have any colonies untill 1910!

the naitons that did... that I know of, were:
Britain
France
Spain
Protugal
Holland
and for a bit:
Sweden
Germany
Italy
Belgium
and the USA, of course

nations that STILL have colonies:
Britain
France
Protugal
Spain
USA

 

[Magnus]

Russia - Alaska and Fort Ross, California

Denmark - Faroe Islands, Greenland and the Virgin Islands (Danish West Indies)

Brandenburg - forts in West Africa

and who could forget... The Duchy of Courland! who colonized part of Tobago in the 17th century! Here is a link to that juicy little histroical footnote:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Styx/6497/tobago.html

edit: the Courlanders were also busy in Gambia at the same time...
http://www.geocities.com/bcahoon.geo/Gambia.html

 

[Pellaken]

whudda thunk...

updated list:

he naitons that did... that I know of, were:
Britain
France
Spain
Protugal
Holland
Russia
Denmark
and for a bit:
Sweden
Germany/Brandenburg
Italy
Belgium
Latvia {courland} /Poland
and the USA, of course

nations that STILL have colonies:
Britain
France
Protugal
Spain
USA
Denmark


edit-
looking at my records... at that time... courland was a part of...
POLAND!!!!
YEAY!!!!
POLAND!!!!!!!
historical poland {pre 1800} is one of my fav countries

 

[Zwelgje]

Edit again Pell: The Netherlands still have colonies too. The Dutch Antils still belong to The Netherlands.

 

[Juize]

Originally posted by Pellaken
(..)and for a bit:
Sweden(..)

WTH?

 

[Beam]

What strikes me is that the understanding in this thread is that the Mercator projection was developed for political reasons, i.e. show Europe much bigger as is. Now it may be so that it has gone that way, but the real reason is very practical.

On a Mercator projection a course (on a compass) can be drawn as a straight line. Before the age of discoveries this was not much of an issue since travelling distances were relatively short, but it is very important for transatlantic voyages.

The Mercator projection today is still the type used for nautical maps btw.

 

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by Juize


WTH?

The colony "Nya Sverige" (New Sweden) was two villages in Delaware on the American East Coast (17th century). The villagers (about 300 persons) traded peacefully with the Indians before the villages were captured by the Netherlands. One of the few Swedes who fought against the aggressors was a certain Johan Rambo (pronounced ram-bo). They even made a film with two sequels based on him. Holland didn´t keep it long, however, before the English overran them.

The African colony Kobo Corso was the fort "Karlsborg" on the Gold Coast, founded in the middle 17th century. It was eventually captured by the Danish. The ruin of the fort is still to be seen in today´s Ghana.

In the West Indies the Swedes has the island S:t Bartelemy, which was sold back to the French in the middle of the 19th century. Even today, the capital there is called "Gustavia", and the streets have names like "Östra Strandgatan" and there is also one bar called "Systembolaget".

Also, Guadelope was sort of a colony. It was given to Swedish king by England in 1813 as a compensation for the king´s economic losses during the fight against Napoleon. King Carl XIV Johan sold it to the the French in 1814 for 24 million Francs. He borrowed that money to the Swedish state, who payed interest on it until about 1980 (300.000 crowns/year).

I have sources in Swedish (book sources) if anybody is interested.

 

[Padma]

I read the title of this thread, and assumed a different meaning. Silly me. I assumed everyone understood the difficulties of projecting a closed, 3-dimensional surface onto a flat, 2-dimensional sheet of paper.

Then I realized a lot of you are still in school. OK, no problem. After all, you gotta learn somewhere.

What I thought of was the fact that at least some commercial atlases DO lie, and lie deliberately.

While I cannot say for sure that this is still done, atlases would often 'misplace' certain things. Say, move that highway a half-mile north, or that town a mile east. Or more fun: remove that town, or insert a non-existant one!

The reason was copyright. It's easy to demonstrate plagerism with words. But a map is really just a picture. By 'tweaking' the picture a little, they could take rival map-makers to court: "You have the town of St. Plgorski on your map in the same place we do. But it doesn't even exist except on our maps!"

I always thought that was rather silly. People buy maps with the expectation they are reasonably accurate, and without deliberate mistakes.

 

[knowltok2]

I suppose you're one of those people who just picks a town out on a map and decides to go there. I wonder if when you get to the open field where you had planned your weekend getaway if you would have any legal recouse. I would suspect that you could spend quite a bit in gas trying to reach a non-existant town. And if you had made hotel reservations in a nearby town (you know, to lower the cost of staying so near a major attraction) you would have that expense as well. Then there is the mental anguish involved if your wife is in the car and is trying to give you directions for finding said town. If you wound up killing her in a fit of madness, you could probably get the insanity defense (We'll call it the Rand McNally Defense from now on) and might even be able to bring suit against the cartographer in question for wrongful death, or at least contributory negligence.

 

[willemvanoranje]

Yepz, we Dutch still got 5,5 Caribean islands: Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, St.Estasieus and St.Maarten (which we have to share with France).