Ptolemy's Map of Germania

[Ursus]

A group of classical philologists, mathematical historians and surveying experts at Berlin Technical University's Department for Geodesy and Geoinformation Science has produced an astonishing map of central Europe as it was 2,000 years ago.

 

The map shows that both the North and Baltic Seas were known as the "Germanic Ocean" and the Franconian Forest in northern Bavaria was "Sudeti Montes." The map indicates three "Saxons' islands" off the Frisian coast in northwestern Germany -- known today as Amrum, F

[Centurion-Macro]

Good find. And he got it accurate to within minutes of distance between cities? That is skillful work indeed.

[GhostOfClayton]

This is an excellent find, Ursus. I'm new to Ptolomy, but when I recently started to look at what he'd done with Britian, it blew me away that he was using a Lat / Long system (proabaly of his own making) as early as the second century. And to find he was using fixed refernce points to tie maps together (to help with errors caused by the curvature of the Earth) underlines the man's genius.

 

It's interesting to see the map. Although it's a copy, it's clear the original was aligned North upwards. North must have gained it's cardinal significance to early cartographers like Ptolomy purely because of the earth's axis of rotation, the Pole Star, and the presence of Rome (and maybe Greece) on the relevant hemisphere. This was before the introduction of the magnetic compass for navigation, remember.

 

Lovely topic!

Edited September 13, 2011 by GhostOfClayton

[Melvadius]

This topic has already been discussed here.

[Ursus]

Oops. Must have missed that one.