I get that this is intended to be funny, but just so people are aware the Bunting map (on the left) is not intended to be cartographically useful. It is intended to show a theological conception of the world, where Jerusalem is the center, and to make a visual reference to the three leafed clover on the arms of Hanover, Bunting's home. It's art, not a serious map.
A serious cartographic map from the era looked more like this:
Don't get me started on late medieval/Renaissance nautical maps. DO FUCKING NOT. You're all lucky that my external HDD on which I had a collection of about 500 of those decided to die as a Christmas present and now I have to search for images online instead of uploading them directly, so this will be a quick and short post. Sorry if it's not very ordered.
So, @socialmaya (because if I don't tag people, no one will read this).
Yes, in the early to high middle ages, Christian European maps were very schematic. There were the so-called T-O maps, with the internal seas (Black and Mediterranean) in a T shape, dividing Europe, Africa and Asia, and surrounded by the O-shaped world ocean:
Then, a bit more detailed, Beatus maps, depicting the known world still as a more or less monolithic island in the world ocean:
Until eventually, in ca. 1000-1100 AD they became highly complex, if very inaccurate maps of the old world, like the Ebstorf map:
Those maps were simplified, since as per Christian canon the mortal world was sinful and not worth depicting in detail, from earlier maps like the 700 AD Ravenna cosmography:
which was itself based on maps from Antiquity such as the one by Anaximander:
The map by Muhammad Al-Idrisi, also known as Tabula Rogeriana (made for King Roger II of Sicily) did lay the foundation for later mapmaking and it itself is the result of Islamic cartography having evolved directly from Ancient Greek cartographers like Anaximander and Ptolemy because the Islamic golden age was a time when classical works were preserved, examined and built upon in the Muslim world, unlike in the Christian one.
And then came the 1200s and European sailors started demanding more accurate maps for navigating the seas for trade and war. At that point, mostly the Mediterranean and Black seas, to trade with the Levant and the Golden Horde. Thus came to be the portolan maps, made specifically for seafaring.
The earliest known map of this type is the so called Carte Pisane, or the map from Pisa:
As you can see, it encompasses the Mediterranean and Black seas, which would be true for most such maps for centuries to come. It is also covered in numerous, intersecting lines - the so-called "rhumblines" radiating from several central points on the map which were used for navigation before map projection was a thing.
Portolans drew on Arabic cartography and there was some back-and-forth exchange of cartographic knowledge around the Mediterranean. First, there was the Genoese cartographic school, product of which were the Carta Pisana and the earliest example of an illuminated portolan map, such as the Lucca chart, again from ca. 1300-1320:
Early Genoese cartographers this codified the portolan map as the principal map type of the age, which was to yield important navigational and political information (well not really, flags were often obsolete by hundreds of years, I've seen Byzantine eagles over Constantinople on maps made 100+ years after the city fell, etc.)
Those flags, btw, are why I became so fascinated with portolan maps in the first place and why they're still my passion.
Maps encompassing the whole then-known world, also known as *mappae mundi* (literally "maps of the world"), evolved independently from portolans, although often by the same cartographers: from the T-O and Beatus maps, through Arabic world maps, to accompany portolan maps and atlases. A shining example are the maps (ca. 1320) by Genoese cartographer Pietro Vesconte:
And then the ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE of Fra Maro, a Franciscan monk, from ca. 1450:
(image limit hit so link)
The practice then went to the kingdom of Aragon where (mostly Jewish) cartographers would spread from Genoa to Mallorca and Barcelona, founding the Catalan map school:
1375, Abraham Cresques (the so-called Catalan atlas):
Venetians, Portuguese, French and others soon followed, founding their own portolan making traditions.
Diogo Homem (Portugal), 1563:
Muslim (Arab and later Ottoman) cartographers also would make portolans sometimes:
1461, Ibrahim Al-Mursi from Tunis (sorry, lost my good copy):
Then, in the 1480s, a copy of the Cosmpgraphia, an atlas by the Ancient Greco-Roman cartographer Claudius Ptolemaus was discovered, leading to the rediscovery of polar projection:
(13th century Byzantine Greek copy)
Thus cartographers like Sebastian Münster (early 1500s) and Gerhard Mercator (late 1500s) were able to build on those foundations.
Sebastian Münster, Cosmpgraphia, 1550:
Abraham Ortelius, Typus Orbis Terrarum, 1572:
So yeah, the "BLERGH STOOPID YUROPIAN MAPP" is bullshit. That one is a very symbolic map no one at the time believed was true. There are other allegorical maps, such as Münster's "Europe as Queen":
Okayokayokayokaybut "My hand will wear out but the inscription will remain" is kind of a power line BEFORE you factor in that it is, in fact, over a thousand years old.
It’s also a lot easier to do research in a library; sure, it’s one thing to have internet access, but it’s another to have wifi access to databases and books on the topic an approximate two minute walk away.
Had an idea you might be able to use for something: Klingon Soap Operas.
(sigh)
Thanks for the thought. I appreciate your kindness!
But unfortunately, because you've sent me the idea and I've read it, I can now not use it, ever. No matter how much I might like to.
This isn't about you, you understand. And in its way it probably seems like a cruel paradox. You were only trying to be helpful! But if I was working on something for Trek and this concept came up even in casual discussion, I would be honor-bound (and contractually required) to inform them that the idea had come to me from a reader or fan. And then—rightly, from their point of view—they would forbid me to use it, because the idea's originator might some day, despite all their friendly intentions now, sue them over it. And the evidence that I was at fault would be easy to obtain. Sending a DM on any major platform generates an electronic "paper trail" that will confirm its target has opened and read the message in question. And that electronic record can be subpoenaed and submitted as evidence, and would stand up in court.
"Oh, come on, who'd do a thing like that, what are the odds...?" people will say. But it's not generally known that I've already been involved in a high-stakes lawsuit in which someone tried to sue Mattel over material I wrote when developing the initial form of the "Barbie: Fairytopia" universe (and the first Fairytopia film) for them. I'd never so much as met or communicated with the person suing them, had never read even a word of their work... but they still went to great trouble and expense attempting to prove that I'd had access to their material and used it without permission.
Mattel won the suit (as I'd frankly been expecting: the attorney handling their defense was one of the most expert IP lawyers in the US). But it gave me the chills... and made it clear how very wrong things could go, and the kind of damage that could be done to my career and my personal life, if I even accidentally used ideas from unauthorized sources.
Seriously, folks. I know you all mean well! But please don't make me tap the sign. DO NOT SEND ME STORY IDEAS, no matter how vague or general or unformed they may be. To do so is to absolutely guarantee that they will never, ever happen.* (And in my own universes, your innocently-meant suggestion could mean that neither you or anyone else will ever see that particular Young Wizards or Middle Kingdoms plot, no matter how much you'd like to... because I take this stuff seriously.)
...Thanks, all.
*This is also why I don't read fanfic set in my universes. Which you also shouldn't send me: please and thank you.
The French president Macron is trying to raise their retirement age from 62 to 64 (and 67 for some?). French people have protested peacefully for 2 months but yesterday his government went ahead and invoked an article in their constitution that allows them to force the bill past the National Assembly without letting its deputies vote on it. Now Paris is burning ☺️
The trash collectors have gone on strike and so 7000+ tons of garbage has been piling up in the streets, then they get set on fire by protestors at night ☺️
(Source)
(Source)
If you’re wondering - “Retirement age at just 64 and they’re burning shit down? In my country I can’t retire until 65/67/70+!!”
French people have kept it low BECAUSE they burn shit down if it’s threatened ☺️
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