1.
Cartogram
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A cartogram is a map in which some thematic mapping variable – such as travel time, population, or Gross National Product – is substituted for land area or distance. The geometry or space of the map is distorted in order to convey the information of this alternate variable and they are primarily used to display emphasis and for analysis as nomographs. Two common types of cartograms, area and distance cartograms, Cartograms have a fairly long history, with examples from the mid-1800s. Other synonyms in use are anamorphic map, density-equalizing map and Gastner map, area cartograms may be contiguous or noncontiguous. The area cartograms shown on this page are all contiguous, while an example of a noncontiguous cartogram was published in The New York Times. This method of creation is sometimes referred to as the projector method or scaled-down regions. Cartograms may be classified also by the properties of shape and topology preservation, classical area cartograms are typically distorting the shape of spatial units to some degree, but they are strict at preserving correct neighborhood relationships between them. Another branch of cartograms introduced by Dorling, replaces actual shapes with circles scaled according to the mapped feature, circles are distributed to resemble the original topology. Demers cartogram is a variation of Dorling cartogram, but it uses rectangles instead of circles, schematic maps based on quad trees can be seen as non shape-preserving cartograms with some degree of neighborhood preservation. A collection of about 700 contiguous area cartograms is available at Worldmapper, one of the first cartographers to generate cartograms with the aid of computer visualization was Waldo Tobler of UC Santa Barbara in the 1960s. Prior to Toblers work, cartograms were created by hand, the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis located on the UCSB campus maintains an online Cartogram Central with resources regarding cartograms. A number of software packages generate cartograms, examples of cartogram software include ScapeToad, Cart, and the Cartogram Processing Tool, which all use the Gastner-Newman algorithm. An alternative algorithm, Carto3F, is implemented as an independent program for non-commercial use on Windows platforms. This program also provides an optimization to the original Dougenik rubber-sheet algorithm, choropleth map Contour map Thematic map Campbell, John. Area cartograms, Their use and creation, concepts and Techniques in Modern Geography series no.59. Norwich, University of East Anglia,1996, Gastner, Michael T. and Mark E. J. Newman, Diffusion-based method for producing density-equalizing maps. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2004,101, 7499–7504, places in the News, The Use of Cartograms in Introductory Geography Courses. Hennig, Benjamin D. Rediscovering the World, Map Transformations of Human, house, Donald H. and Christopher Kocmoud, Continuous Cartogram Construction
2.
Ecumene
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The ecumene or oecumene was an ancient Greek term for the known world, the inhabited world, or the habitable world. Under the Roman Empire, it came to refer to civilization, in present usage, it is used as the noun form of ecumenical and describes the Christian Church as a unified whole or the unified modern world civilization. It is also used in cartography to describe a type of map used in late Antiquity. The Greek term cited above is the present middle participle of the verb οἰκέω and is a clipped form of οἰκουμένη γῆ. Eratosthenes of Cyrene deduced the circumference of the Earth with remarkable accuracy, the Greek cartographer Crates created a globe about 150 BC. Claudius Ptolemy calculated the Earths surface in his Geography and described the inhabited portion as spanning 180 degrees of longitude and about 80 degrees of latitude. Ptolemy was well aware that the Romans knew only about a quarter of the globe, in fact, symmetry led him to expect that there should be three other continents to balance the ecumene, Perioeci, Antoeci and the Antipodes. The cameo Gemma Augustea includes a Roman artistic personification of Oikoumene as she crowns an emperor, probably Augustus, the word was adopted within Christianity after Constantine the Greats assembly of a synod of bishops from all over the world at the First Council of Nicaea in 325. By that time, the Greek term had come to more specifically to the civilized world. This usage continued after the Diocletian Reforms and the Byzantine emperors used it to refer to their imperial administration, Constantinople was the Ecumenical City and, after 586, the Patriarch of Constantinople was known as the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Pope Gregory I objected to the adoption of this style by John IV of Constantinople, the name continues to be borne by the Greek Orthodox patriarchs, although with the more restricted sense that they are the bishops of the former imperial capital. The movement is not accepted by many Christian groups, relevant issues include Baptism, the Eucharist and Ministry. In the context of history, the term was first used in an academic sense by Lewis Mumford in his work, Technics and Civilization. McNeill suggested that a single global ecumene was created through the dominance of European political institutions, science, technology and it was the Spanish conquistadores that fused this second ecumene to the first to create a single integrated world system. The term is used in cartography and the historical cartography to describe a type of symbolic, schematic world map made in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The author J. R. R. Tolkien described his Middle-earth setting for his fiction as equivalent to the Greek ecumene, in the Demon Princes series of science fiction novels by Jack Vance, the Oikumene is the term used for the human-inhabited worlds of the galaxy. In Hainish Cycle of fiction novels and stories by Ursula K, le Guin, the Ekumen is a loose confederation of inhabited worlds, linked by instantaneous communication, but separated by slower-than-light travel. In the science fiction trilogy The Golden Oecumene, by John C, wright, a polity called the Golden Oecumene spans all of the Solar System
3.
Geography (Ptolemy)
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Its translation into Arabic in the 9th century and Latin in 1406 was highly influential on the geographical knowledge and cartographic traditions of the medieval Caliphate and Renaissance Europe. Versions of Ptolemys work in antiquity were probably proper atlases with attached maps, no Greek manuscript of the Geography survives from earlier than the 13th century. In Europe, maps were sometimes made using the coordinates provided by the text. Later scribes and publishers could then copy these new maps, as Athanasius did for the emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus, the three earliest surviving texts with maps are those from Constantinople based on Planudess work. The first Latin translation of texts was made in 1406 or 1407 by Jacobus Angelus in Florence, Italy. It is not thought that his edition had maps, although Manuel Chrysoloras had given Palla Strozzi a Greek copy of Planudess maps in Florence in 1397, the Geography consists of three sections, divided among 8 books. Book I is a treatise on cartography, describing the methods used to assemble, from Book II through the beginning of Book VII, a gazetteer provides longitude and latitude values for the world known to the ancient Romans. The rest of Book VII provides details on three projections to be used for the construction of a map of the world, varying in complexity and fidelity, Book VIII constitutes an atlas of regional maps. The maps include a recapitulation of some of the values given earlier in the work, Maps based on scientific principles had been made in Europe since the time of Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC. Ptolemy improved the treatment of map projections and he provided instructions on how to create his maps in the first section of the work. The gazetteer section of Ptolemys work provided latitude and longitude coördinates for all the places and his Prime Meridian ran through the Fortunate Isles, the westernmost land recorded, at around the position of El Hierro in the Canary Islands. The maps spanned 180 degrees of longitude from the Fortunate Isles in the Atlantic to China, Ptolemy was aware that Europe knew only about a quarter of the globe. Ptolemys work included a large and less detailed world map and then separate. As early as the 1420s, these maps were complemented by extra-Ptolemaic regional maps depicting. The original treatise by Marinus of Tyre that formed the basis of Ptolemys Geography has been completely lost, a world map based on Ptolemy was displayed in Augustodunum in late Roman times. Pappus, writing at Alexandria in the 4th century, produced a commentary on Ptolemys Geography, for instance, Grant Parker argues that it would be highly implausible for them to have constructed the Bay of Bengal as precisely as they did without the accounts of sailors. Muslim cartographers were using copies of Ptolemys Almagest and Geography by the 9th century, a 1037 copy of these are the earliest extant maps from Islamic lands. Nallino suggests that the work was not based on Ptolemy but on a world map
4.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
5.
Map
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A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, although the earliest maps known are of the heavens, geographic maps of territory have a very long tradition and exist from ancient times. The word map comes from the medieval Latin Mappa mundi, wherein mappa meant napkin or cloth, thus, map became the shortened term referring to a two-dimensional representation of the surface of the world. Cartography or map-making is the study and practice of crafting representations of the Earth upon a flat surface, in addition to location information maps may also be used to portray contour lines indicating constant values of elevation, temperature, rainfall, etc. The orientation of a map is the relationship between the directions on the map and the compass directions in reality. The word orient is derived from Latin oriens, meaning East, in the Middle Ages many maps, including the T and O maps, were drawn with East at the top. Today, the most common – but far from universal – cartographic convention is that North is at the top of a map, several kinds of maps are often traditionally not oriented with North at the top, Maps from non-Western traditions are oriented a variety of ways. Old maps of Edo show the Japanese imperial palace as the top, labels on the map are oriented in such a way that you cannot read them properly unless you put the imperial palace above your head. Medieval European T and O maps such as the Hereford Mappa Mundi were centred on Jerusalem with East at the top, indeed, prior to the reintroduction of Ptolemys Geography to Europe around 1400, there was no single convention in the West. Portolan charts, for example, are oriented to the shores they describe, Maps of cities bordering a sea are often conventionally oriented with the sea at the top. Route and channel maps have traditionally been oriented to the road or waterway they describe, polar maps of the Arctic or Antarctic regions are conventionally centred on the pole, the direction North would be towards or away from the centre of the map, respectively. Typical maps of the Arctic have 0° meridian towards the bottom of the page, reversed maps, also known as Upside-Down maps or South-Up maps, reverse the North is up convention and have south at the top. Buckminster Fullers Dymaxion maps are based on a projection of the Earths sphere onto an icosahedron, the resulting triangular pieces may be arranged in any order or orientation. Modern digital GIS maps such as ArcMap typically project north at the top of the map, compass decimal degrees can be converted to math degrees by subtracting them from 450, if the answer is greater than 360, subtract 360. The scale statement may be taken as exact when the region mapped is small enough for the curvature of the Earth to be neglected, over larger regions where the curvature cannot be ignored we must use map projections from the curved surface of the Earth to the plane. Thus for map projections we must introduce the concept of point scale, which is a function of position, although the scale statement is nominal it is usually accurate enough for all but the most precise of measurements. Large scale maps, say 1,10,000, cover relatively small regions in detail and small scale maps, say 1,10,000,000, cover large regions such as nations, continents. The large/small terminology arose from the practice of writing scales as numerical fractions, there is no exact dividing line between large and small but 1/100,000 might well be considered as a medium scale
6.
Science
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Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. The formal sciences are often excluded as they do not depend on empirical observations, disciplines which use science, like engineering and medicine, may also be considered to be applied sciences. However, during the Islamic Golden Age foundations for the method were laid by Ibn al-Haytham in his Book of Optics. In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of physical laws, over the course of the 19th century, the word science became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself as a disciplined way to study the natural world. It was during this time that scientific disciplines such as biology, chemistry, Science in a broad sense existed before the modern era and in many historical civilizations. Modern science is distinct in its approach and successful in its results, Science in its original sense was a word for a type of knowledge rather than a specialized word for the pursuit of such knowledge. In particular, it was the type of knowledge which people can communicate to each other, for example, knowledge about the working of natural things was gathered long before recorded history and led to the development of complex abstract thought. This is shown by the construction of calendars, techniques for making poisonous plants edible. For this reason, it is claimed these men were the first philosophers in the strict sense and they were mainly speculators or theorists, particularly interested in astronomy. In contrast, trying to use knowledge of nature to imitate nature was seen by scientists as a more appropriate interest for lower class artisans. A clear-cut distinction between formal and empirical science was made by the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides, although his work Peri Physeos is a poem, it may be viewed as an epistemological essay on method in natural science. Parmenides ἐὸν may refer to a system or calculus which can describe nature more precisely than natural languages. Physis may be identical to ἐὸν and he criticized the older type of study of physics as too purely speculative and lacking in self-criticism. He was particularly concerned that some of the early physicists treated nature as if it could be assumed that it had no intelligent order, explaining things merely in terms of motion and matter. The study of things had been the realm of mythology and tradition, however. Aristotle later created a less controversial systematic programme of Socratic philosophy which was teleological and he rejected many of the conclusions of earlier scientists. For example, in his physics, the sun goes around the earth, each thing has a formal cause and final cause and a role in the rational cosmic order. Motion and change is described as the actualization of potentials already in things, while the Socratics insisted that philosophy should be used to consider the practical question of the best way to live for a human being, they did not argue for any other types of applied science
7.
Aesthetics
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Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that explores the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgements of sentiment. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as critical reflection on art, in modern English, the term aesthetic can also refer to a set of principles underlying the works of a particular art movement or theory, one speaks, for example, of the Cubist aesthetic. The word aesthetic is derived from the Greek αἰσθητικός, which in turn was derived from αἰσθάνομαι, for some, aesthetics is considered a synonym for the philosophy of art since Hegel, while others insist that there is a significant distinction between these closely related fields. In practice, aesthetic judgement refers to the sensory contemplation or appreciation of an object, philosophical aesthetics has not only to speak about art and to produce judgments about art works, but has also to give a definition of what art is. Art is an entity for philosophy, because art deals with the senses. Hence, there are two different conceptions of art in aesthetics, art as knowledge or art as action, any aesthetic doctrines that guided the production and interpretation of prehistoric art are mostly unknown. Western aesthetics usually refers to Greek philosophers as the earliest source of aesthetic considerations. Plato believed in beauty as a form in which beautiful objects partake and he felt that beautiful objects incorporated proportion, harmony, and unity among their parts. Similarly, in the Metaphysics, Aristotle found that the elements of beauty were order, symmetry. From the late 17th to the early 20th century Western aesthetics underwent a revolution into what is often called modernism. German and British thinkers emphasized beauty as the key component of art and of the aesthetic experience, and saw art as necessarily aiming at absolute beauty. For Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten aesthetics is the science of the experiences, a younger sister of logic. For Immanuel Kant the aesthetic experience of beauty is a judgment of a subjective but similar human truth, however, beauty cannot be reduced to any more basic set of features. For Friedrich Schiller aesthetic appreciation of beauty is the most perfect reconciliation of the sensual and rational parts of human nature, for Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, the philosophy of art is the organon of philosophy concerning the relation between man and nature. So aesthetics began now to be the name for the philosophy of art, Friedrich von Schlegel, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel also gave lectures on aesthetics as philosophy of art after 1800. For Hegel, all culture is a matter of absolute spirit coming to be manifest to itself, stage by stage, Art is the first stage in which the absolute spirit is manifest immediately to sense-perception, and is thus an objective rather than subjective revelation of beauty. It is thus for Schopenhauer one way to fight the suffering, the British were largely divided into intuitionist and analytic camps
8.
Map projection
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A map projection is a systematic transformation of the latitudes and longitudes of locations on the surface of a sphere or an ellipsoid into locations on a plane. Map projections are necessary for creating maps, all map projections distort the surface in some fashion. There is no limit to the number of map projections. More generally, the surfaces of bodies can be mapped even if they are too irregular to be modeled well with a sphere or ellipsoid. Even more generally, projections are the subject of several mathematical fields, including differential geometry. However, map projection refers specifically to a cartographic projection and these useful traits of maps motivate the development of map projections. However, Carl Friedrich Gausss Theorema Egregium proved that a spheres surface cannot be represented on a plane without distortion, the same applies to other reference surfaces used as models for the Earth. Since any map projection is a representation of one of surfaces on a plane. Every distinct map projection distorts in a distinct way, the study of map projections is the characterization of these distortions. Projection is not limited to perspective projections, such as those resulting from casting a shadow on a screen, rather, any mathematical function transforming coordinates from the curved surface to the plane is a projection. Few projections in actual use are perspective, for simplicity, most of this article assumes that the surface to be mapped is that of a sphere. In reality, the Earth and other celestial bodies are generally better modeled as oblate spheroids. These other surfaces can be mapped as well, therefore, more generally, a map projection is any method of flattening a continuous curved surface onto a plane. Many properties can be measured on the Earths surface independent of its geography, some of these properties are, Area Shape Direction Bearing Distance Scale Map projections can be constructed to preserve at least one of these properties, though only in a limited way for most. Each projection preserves or compromises or approximates basic metric properties in different ways, the purpose of the map determines which projection should form the base for the map. Because many purposes exist for maps, a diversity of projections have been created to suit those purposes, another consideration in the configuration of a projection is its compatibility with data sets to be used on the map. Data sets are geographic information, their collection depends on the datum of the Earth. Different datums assign slightly different coordinates to the location, so in large scale maps, such as those from national mapping systems
9.
Geographic information system
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A geographic information system is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographic data. What goes beyond a GIS is a spatial data infrastructure, a concept that has no such restrictive boundaries, in general, the term describes any information system that integrates, stores, edits, analyzes, shares, and displays geographic information. GIS applications are tools that allow users to create interactive queries, analyze spatial information, edit data in maps, Geographic information science is the science underlying geographic concepts, applications, and systems. GIS is a term that can refer to a number of different technologies, processes. It is attached to operations and has many applications related to engineering, planning, management, transport/logistics, insurance, telecommunications. For that reason, GIS and location intelligence applications can be the foundation for many location-enabled services that rely on analysis, GIS can relate unrelated information by using location as the key index variable. Locations or extents in the Earth space–time may be recorded as dates/times of occurrence, and x, y, and z coordinates representing, longitude, latitude, all Earth-based spatial–temporal location and extent references should be relatable to one another and ultimately to a real physical location or extent. This key characteristic of GIS has begun to open new avenues of scientific inquiry, the first known use of the term geographic information system was by Roger Tomlinson in the year 1968 in his paper A Geographic Information System for Regional Planning. Tomlinson is also acknowledged as the father of GIS, previously, one of the first applications of spatial analysis in epidemiology is the 1832 Rapport sur la marche et les effets du choléra dans Paris et le département de la Seine. The French geographer Charles Picquet represented the 48 districts of the city of Paris by halftone color gradient according to the number of deaths by cholera per 1,000 inhabitants and this was one of the earliest successful uses of a geographic methodology in epidemiology. The early 20th century saw the development of photozincography, which allowed maps to be split into layers, for one layer for vegetation. This work was drawn on glass plates but later plastic film was introduced, with the advantages of being lighter, using less storage space and being less brittle. When all the layers were finished, they were combined into one using a large process camera. Once color printing came in, the idea was also used for creating separate printing plates for each color. Computer hardware development spurred by nuclear weapon research led to general-purpose computer mapping applications by the early 1960s, the year 1960 saw the development of the worlds first true operational GIS in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada by the federal Department of Forestry and Rural Development. A rating classification factor was added to permit analysis. CGIS was an improvement over computer mapping applications as it provided capabilities for overlay, measurement and it supported a national coordinate system that spanned the continent, coded lines as arcs having a true embedded topology and it stored the attribute and locational information in separate files. As a result of this, Tomlinson has become known as the father of GIS, CGIS lasted into the 1990s and built a large digital land resource database in Canada
10.
History of cartography
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Cartography, or mapmaking, has been an integral part of the human history for thousands of years. Maps began as drawings but can also adopt three-dimensional shapes. The term cartography is modern, loaned into English from French cartographie in the 1840s, the earliest known maps are of the stars, not the earth. Dots dating to 16,500 BC found on the walls of the Lascaux caves map out part of the night sky, the Cuevas de El Castillo in Spain contain a dot map of the Corona Borealis constellation dating from 12,000 BC. Cave painting and rock carvings used simple visual elements that may have aided in recognizing landscape features, another ancient picture that resembles a map was created in the late 7th millennium BC in Çatalhöyük, Anatolia, modern Turkey. This wall painting may represent a plan of this Neolithic village, however, Maps in Ancient Babylonia were made by using accurate surveying techniques. For example, a 7.6 ×6.8 cm clay tablet found in 1930 at Ga-Sur, near contemporary Kirkuk, cuneiform inscriptions label the features on the map, including a plot of land described as 354 iku that was owned by a person called Azala. Most scholars date the tablet to the 25th to 24th century BC, Leo Bagrow dissents with a date of 7000 BC. Hills are shown by overlapping semicircles, rivers by lines, the map also is marked to show the cardinal directions. An engraved map from the Kassite period of Babylonian history shows walls, in contrast, the Babylonian World Map, the earliest surviving map of the world, is a symbolic, not a literal representation. It deliberately omits peoples such as the Persians and Egyptians, who were known to the Babylonians. The area shown is depicted as a circular shape surrounded by water, examples of maps from ancient Egypt are quite rare. Its originality can be seen in the inscriptions, its precise orientation. In reviewing the literature of early geography and early conceptions of the earth, all lead to Homer. Regardless of the doubts about Homers existence, one thing is certain, Homers knowledge of the Earth was very limited. He and his Greek contemporaries knew very little of the Earth beyond Egypt as far south as the Libyan desert, the south-west coast of Asia Minor, furthermore, the coast of the Black Sea was only known through myths and legends that circulated during his time. In his poems there is no mention of Europe and Asia as geographical concepts and that is why the big part of Homers world that is portrayed on this interpretive map represents lands that border on the Aegean Sea. Additional statements about ancient geography may be found in Hesiods poems, through the lyrics of Works and Days and Theogony he shows to his contemporaries some definite geographical knowledge. He introduces the names of rivers as Nile, Ister, the shores of the Bosporus, and the Euxine, the coast of Gaul, the island of Sicily
11.
Surveying
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Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, and science of determining the terrestrial or three-dimensional position of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is called a land surveyor, Surveyors work with elements of geometry, trigonometry, regression analysis, physics, engineering, metrology, programming languages and the law. Surveying has been an element in the development of the environment since the beginning of recorded history. The planning and execution of most forms of construction require it and it is also used in transport, communications, mapping, and the definition of legal boundaries for land ownership. It is an important tool for research in other scientific disciplines. Basic surveyance has occurred since humans built the first large structures, the prehistoric monument at Stonehenge was set out by prehistoric surveyors using peg and rope geometry. In ancient Egypt, a rope stretcher would use simple geometry to re-establish boundaries after the floods of the Nile River. The almost perfect squareness and north-south orientation of the Great Pyramid of Giza, built c.2700 BC, the Groma instrument originated in Mesopotamia. The mathematician Liu Hui described ways of measuring distant objects in his work Haidao Suanjing or The Sea Island Mathematical Manual, the Romans recognized land surveyors as a profession. They established the basic measurements under which the Roman Empire was divided, Roman surveyors were known as Gromatici. In medieval Europe, beating the bounds maintained the boundaries of a village or parish and this was the practice of gathering a group of residents and walking around the parish or village to establish a communal memory of the boundaries. Young boys were included to ensure the memory lasted as long as possible, in England, William the Conqueror commissioned the Domesday Book in 1086. It recorded the names of all the owners, the area of land they owned, the quality of the land. It did not include maps showing exact locations, abel Foullon described a plane table in 1551, but it is thought that the instrument was in use earlier as his description is of a developed instrument. Gunters chain was introduced in 1620 by English mathematician Edmund Gunter and it enabled plots of land to be accurately surveyed and plotted for legal and commercial purposes. Leonard Digges described a Theodolite that measured horizontal angles in his book A geometric practice named Pantometria, joshua Habermel created a theodolite with a compass and tripod in 1576. Johnathon Sission was the first to incorporate a telescope on a theodolite in 1725, in the 18th century, modern techniques and instruments for surveying began to be used. Jesse Ramsden introduced the first precision theodolite in 1787 and it was an instrument for measuring angles in the horizontal and vertical planes
12.
Cadastre
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A cadastre, using a cadastral survey or cadastral map, is a comprehensive register of the real estate or real propertys metes-and-bounds of a country. In most countries, legal systems have developed around the administrative systems and use the cadastre to define the dimensions. The cadastre is a source of data in disputes and lawsuits between landowners. In the United States, Cadastral Survey within the Bureau of Land Management maintains records of all public lands, such surveys often require detailed investigation of the history of land use, legal accounts, and other documents. A cadastre commonly includes details of the ownership, the tenure, the location, the dimensions, the cultivations if rural. Cadastres are used by nations around the world, some in conjunction with other records. The International Federation of Surveyors defines cadastre as follows, A Cadastre is normally a parcel based, the word forms the adjective cadastral, used in public administration, primarily for ownership and taxation purposes. The terminology for cadastral divisions may include counties, parishes, ridings, hundreds, sections, lots, blocks, other languages have kept the original t sound in the second syllable. In modern Greek, though, it has replaced by κτηματολόγιο /ktimatologio/. Some of the earliest cadasters were ordered by Roman Emperors to recover state owned lands that had appropriated by private individuals. In this way Vespasian was able to reimpose taxation formerly uncollected on these lands, with the fall of Rome the use of cadastral maps effectively discontinued. Medieval practice used written descriptions of the extent of land rather than using more precise surveys, only in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries did the use of cadastral maps resume, beginning in the Netherlands. With the emergence of capitalism in Renaissance Europe the need for cadastral maps reemerged as a tool to determine and this took place first privately in land disputes and later spread to governmental practice as a means of more precise tax assessment. Cadastral surveys document the boundaries of land ownership, by the production of documents, diagrams, sketches, plans, charts and they were originally used to ensure reliable facts for land valuation and taxation. An example from early England is the Domesday Book in 1086, napoleon established a comprehensive cadastral system for France that is regarded as the forerunner of most modern versions. The Public Lands Survey System is a survey of the United States originating in legislation from 1785. The Dominion Land Survey is a cadastral survey conducted in Western Canada begun in 1871 after the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867. Both cadastral surveys are made relative to principal meridian and baselines and these cadastral surveys divided the surveyed areas into townships, square land areas of approximately 36 square miles
13.
Topographic map
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Traditional definitions require a topographic map to show both natural and man-made features. A topographic map is published as a map series, made up of two or more map sheets that combine to form the whole map. A contour line is a line connecting places of equal elevation, however, in the vernacular and day to day world, the representation of relief is popularly held to define the genre, such that even small-scale maps showing relief are commonly called topographic. The study or discipline of topography is a broader field of study. Topographic maps are based on topographical surveys, performed at large scales, these surveys are called topographical in the old sense of topography, showing a variety of elevations and landforms. This is in contrast to older cadastral surveys, which primarily show property, the first multi-sheet topographic map series of an entire country, the Carte géométrique de la France, was completed in 1789. Topographic surveys were prepared by the military to assist in planning for battle, as such, elevation information was of vital importance. As they evolved, topographic map series became a resource in modern nations in planning infrastructure. Excluding borders, each sheet was 44 cm high and up to 66 cm wide, although the project eventually foundered, it left an indexing system that remains in use. TIGER was developed in the 1980s and used in the 1990, digital elevation models were also compiled, initially from topographic maps and stereographic interpretation of aerial photographs and then from satellite photography and radar data. Since all these were government projects funded with taxes and not classified for security reasons. Initial applications were mostly professionalized forms such as innovative surveying instruments, by the mid-1990s, increasingly user-friendly resources such as online mapping in two and three dimensions, integration of GPS with mobile phones and automotive navigation systems appeared. As of 2011, the future of standardized, centrally printed topographical maps is left somewhat in doubt, the various features shown on the map are represented by conventional signs or symbols. For example, colors can be used to indicate a classification of roads and these signs are usually explained in the margin of the map, or on a separately published characteristic sheet. Topographic maps are commonly called contour maps or topo maps. In the United States, where the national series is organized by a strict 7. 5-minute grid. Topographic maps conventionally show topography, or land contours, by means of contour lines, contour lines are curves that connect contiguous points of the same altitude. In other words, every point on the line of 100 m elevation is 100 m above mean sea level
14.
Rock Drawings in Valcamonica
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The stone carvings of Val Camonica are located in the Province of Brescia, Italy, and constitute the largest collections of prehistoric petroglyphs in the world. The collection was recognized by Unesco in 1979 and was Italys first recognized World Heritage Site, Unesco has formally recognized more than 140,000 figures and symbols, but new discoveries have increased the number of catalogued incisions to between 200,000 and 300,000. The petroglyphs are spread on all surfaces of the valley, but concentrated in the areas of Darfo Boario Terme, Capo di Ponte, Nadro, Cimbergo, the petroglyph tradition does not end abruptly. Engravings have been identified from the Roman period, medieval period and are possibly even contemporary, most of the cuts have been made using the martellina technique and lesser numbers obtained through graffiti. The figures are simply superimposed without apparent order. Others instead appear to have a relationship between them, for example, a picture of a religious rite or a hunting scene or fight. This approach explains the scheme of images, each of which is an ideogram that is not the real object, among the most-famous symbols found in Valcamonica is the so-called Rosa camuna, which was adopted as the official symbol of the region of Lombardy. In the 1960s, the archaeologist Emmanuel Anati, among the first to study the area. It compared the style and types of the symbols to identify possible correlations with the traditional historical periodization, the earliest rock carvings date back to epipaleolithic, several millennia after the retreat of the glacier that covered the Val Camonica. Those carvings were the work of passing nomadic hunters, following the migrations of their prey, the figures represented in fact depict large animals such as deer and elk, which are the typical prey of that period. Similar representations are present in the town park stone carvings of Luine, during the Neolithic period, agricultural practices spread in Val Camonica, correlated with the formation of the first sedentary settlements. Similar carvings are present in the Regional Reserve of Rock Engravings of Ceto, Cimbergo, the pertaining to the Neolithic of the schematic anthropomorphic figures, so called oranti, is questioned, as some scholars refer them to the Bronze Age. During the Copper Age, new symbols appeared, documenting the emergence of the wheel, the wagon, rocks were stained with celestial symbols, animals, weapons, depictions of plowing, chains of human-beings and other signs. These monuments, preserved mainly in the Archaeological Park of National Massi Cemmo and in that of Asinino-Anvòia, during the Bronze Age, engravings on rock outcrops took on the issue of weapons, reflecting the greater emphasis given them by the warriors in the camunian society of the time. Continuing emphasis was given to geometric shapes, in continuity with engravings from earlier eras, the engravings of the Iron Age are attributed to the people of Camunni and constitute about 70-80% of all census figures. These works manifest their ideals of masculinity and superiority. Dominant themes include representations of duels and human figures, even ones, flaunting their weapons, their muscles. There are also figures of cabins, labyrinths, footprints, hunting scenes, during the Roman domination of Val Camonica petroglyph activity suffered a sharp contraction, entering a phase of latency
15.
Bedolina Map
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The Rock 1 of Bedolina, the so-called Bedolina Map, is a famous engraved prehistoric rock which is part of the Camonica valley petroglyph complex. It is known as being one of the most ancient topographic maps, interpreted as the depiction of cultivated plots, mountain paths, the locality of Bedolina pertains to the Capo di Ponte municipality, near the hamlet of Pescarzo. The area is included in the Seradina-Bedolina Archaeologic park, lying on a prominent terrace on the slope of the Camonica valley. The rock, a surface of Permian sandstone polished by the Pleistocene glacier, is 9 m long and 4 m wide. A total number of 109 figures were carved during the late Bronze Age and the Iron Age, mainly the so-called topographic patterns, warriors, animals, wooden huts, cup-marks and a Camunnian Rose. The rock has been recorded and studied by Miguel Beltrán Llorís and more recently by Cristina Turconi. Rock Drawings in Valcamonica Valcamonica, Mappa di Bedolina, EuroPreArt record
16.
Isidore of Seville
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He was influential in the inner circle of Sisebut, Visigothic king of Hispania. Like Leander, he played a prominent role in the Councils of Toledo, the Visigothic legislation that resulted from these councils influenced the beginnings of representative government. His fame after his death was based on his Etymologiae, an encyclopedia which assembled extracts of many books from classical antiquity that would have otherwise been lost. Isidore was probably born in Cartagena, Spain, a former Carthaginian colony, to Severianus, both Severianus and Theodora belonged to notable Hispano-Roman families of high social rank. His parents were members of a family who were instrumental in the political-religious manoeuvring that converted the Visigothic kings from Arianism to Catholicism. A younger brother, Saint Fulgentius of Cartagena, served as the Bishop of Astigi at the start of the new reign of the Catholic King Reccared and his sister, Saint Florentina, served God as a nun and allegedly ruled over forty convents and one thousand consecrated religious. This claim seems unlikely, however, given the few functioning monastic institutions in Iberia during her lifetime, Isidore received his elementary education in the Cathedral school of Seville. In this institution, the first of its kind in Iberia, a body of learned men including Archbishop Saint Leander of Seville taught the trivium and quadrivium, Saint Isidore applied himself to study diligently enough that he quickly mastered Latin, and acquired some Greek, and Hebrew. Two centuries of Gothic control of Iberia incrementally suppressed the ancient institutions, classic learning, the associated culture entered a period of long-term decline. The ruling Visigoths nevertheless showed some respect for the trappings of Roman culture. Arianism meanwhile took deep root among the Visigoths as the form of Christianity that they received, scholars may debate whether Isidore ever personally embraced monastic life or affiliated with any religious order, but he undoubtedly esteemed the monks highly. After the death of Saint Leander of Seville on 13 March 600 or 601, on his elevation to the episcopate, he immediately constituted himself as protector of monks. He used all available religious resources toward this end and succeeded, Isidore practically eradicated the heresy of Arianism and completely stifled the new heresy of Acephali at its very outset. Archbishop Isidore strengthened religious discipline throughout his See, Archbishop Isidore also used resources of education to counteract increasingly influential Gothic barbarism throughout his episcopal jurisdiction. His quickening spirit animated the educational movement centered on Seville, Saint Isidore introduced Aristotle to his countrymen long before the Arabs studied Greek philosophy extensively. In 619, Saint Isidore of Seville pronounced anathema against any ecclesiastic who in any way should molest the monasteries, through the enlightened statecraft of his two brothers, the Councils of Seville and Toledo emanated Visigothic legislation which influenced the beginnings of representative government. The Acts of the Council fully set forth the nature of Christ, countering the conceptions of Gregory, based on a few surviving canons found in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, Saint Isidore is known to have presided over an additional provincial council around 624. The council dealt with a conflict over the see of Ecija, and wrongfully stripped bishop Martianus of his see and it also addressed a concern over Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity by Sisebut failing to present their children for baptism
17.
T and O map
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The map appeared in the prologue to his twelve books of commentaries on the Apocalypse. Divisus est autem trifarie, e quibus una pars Asia, altera Europa, although Isidore taught in the Etymologiae that the Earth was round, his meaning was ambiguous and some writers think he referred to a disc-shaped Earth. However, other writings by Isidore make it clear that he considered the Earth to be globular, the T and O map represents only the one half of the spherical Earth. It was presumably considered a convenient projection of known-inhabited parts, the northern half of the globe. Since the southern temperate clime was considered uninhabited, or unattainable and it was then believed that no one could cross the torrid equatorial clime and reach the unknown lands on the other half of the globe. These imagined lands were called antipodes, the T is the Mediterranean, the Nile, and the Don dividing the three continents, Asia, Europe and Africa, and the O is the encircling ocean. Jerusalem was generally represented in the center of the map, Asia was typically the size of the other two continents combined. Because the sun rose in the east, Paradise was generally depicted as being in Asia and this qualitative and conceptual type of medieval cartography could yield extremely detailed maps in addition to simple representations. The earliest maps had only a few cities and the most important bodies of water noted, the four sacred rivers of the Holy Land were always present. More useful tools for the traveler were the itinerary, which listed in order the names of towns between two points, and the periplus that did the same for harbors and landmarks along a seacoast. Later maps of this same conceptual format featured many rivers and cities of Eastern as well as Western Europe, decorative illustrations were also added in addition to the new geographic features. The most important cities would be represented by distinct fortifications and towers in addition to their names, flat Earth Mappa Mundi Babylonian Map of the World Crosby, Alfred W. The Measure of Reality, Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600, the fourth part of the world, the race to the ends of the Earth, and the epic story of the map that gave America its name. Carlo Zaccagnini, ‘Maps of the World’, in Giovanni B, studies Presented to Frederick Mario Fales on the occasion of his 65th birthday, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz Verlag,2012, pp. 865–874. The History and Academic Literature of Persuasive Cartography, Persuasive Cartography, The PJ Mode Collection. Die Weltsicht in den Mappae mundi des frühen und hohen Mittelalters
18.
Minoan civilization
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The Minoan civilization was an Aegean Bronze Age civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean islands which flourished from about 2600 to 1100 BC. It preceded the Mycenaean civilization of Ancient Greece, the civilization was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of British archaeologist Arthur Evans. It has been described as the earliest of its kind in Europe, the term Minoan, which refers to the mythical King Minos, originally described the pottery of the period. Minos was associated in Greek mythology with the labyrinth and the Minotaur, according to Homer, Crete once had 90 cities. The Minoan period saw trade between Crete and Aegean and Mediterranean settlements, particularly the Near East, traders and artists, the Minoan cultural influence reached beyond Crete to the Cyclades, Egypts Old Kingdom, copper-bearing Cyprus, Canaan and the Levantine coast, and Anatolia. Some of its best art is preserved in the city of Akrotiri on the island of Santorini, although the Minoan language and writing systems remain undecipherable and are subjects of academic dispute, they apparently conveyed a language entirely different from the later Greek. The reason for the end of the Minoan period is unclear, theories include Mycenaean invasions from mainland Greece, the term Minoan refers to the mythical King Minos of Knossos. Its origin is debated, but it is attributed to archeologist Arthur Evans. Minos was associated in Greek mythology with the labyrinth, which Evans identified with the site at Knossos. However, Karl Hoeck had already used the title Das Minoische Kreta in 1825 for volume two of his Kreta, this appears to be the first known use of the word Minoan to mean ancient Cretan, Evans said that applied it, not invented it. Hoeck, with no idea that the archaeological Crete had existed, had in mind the Crete of mythology, although Evans 1931 claim that the term was unminted before he used it was called a brazen suggestion by Karadimas and Momigliano, he coined its archaeological meaning. Instead of dating the Minoan period, archaeologists use two systems of relative chronology, the first, created by Evans and modified by later archaeologists, is based on pottery styles and imported Egyptian artifacts. Evans system divides the Minoan period into three eras, early, middle and late. These eras are subdivided—for example, Early Minoan I, II and III, another dating system, proposed by Greek archaeologist Nicolas Platon, is based on the development of architectural complexes known as palaces at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia and Kato Zakros. Platon divides the Minoan period into pre-, proto-, neo-, the relationship between the systems in the table includes approximate calendar dates from Warren and Hankey. The Thera eruption occurred during a phase of the LM IA period. Efforts to establish the volcanic eruptions date have been controversial, the eruption is identified as a natural event catastrophic for the culture, leading to its rapid collapse. Although stone-tool evidence exists that hominins may have reached Crete as early as 130,000 years ago, evidence for the first anatomically-modern human presence dates to 10, the oldest evidence of modern human habitation on Crete are pre-ceramic Neolithic farming-community remains which date to about 7000 BC
19.
Babylonia
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Babylonia was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in central-southern Mesopotamia. A small Amorite-ruled state emerged in 1894 BC, which contained at this time the city of Babylon. Babylon greatly expanded during the reign of Hammurabi in the first half of the 18th century BC, during the reign of Hammurabi and afterwards, Babylonia was called Māt Akkadī the country of Akkad in the Akkadian language. It was often involved in rivalry with its older fellow Akkadian-speaking state of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia and it retained the Sumerian language for religious use, but by the time Babylon was founded, this was no longer a spoken language, having been wholly subsumed by Akkadian. The earliest mention of the city of Babylon can be found in a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad. During the 3rd millennium BC, a cultural symbiosis occurred between Sumerian and Akkadian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian and vice versa is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the millennium as a sprachbund. Traditionally, the religious center of all Mesopotamia was the city of Nippur. The empire eventually disintegrated due to decline, climate change and civil war. Sumer rose up again with the Third Dynasty of Ur in the late 22nd century BC and they also seem to have gained ascendancy over most of the territory of the Akkadian kings of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia for a time. The states of the south were unable to stem the Amorite advance, King Ilu-shuma of the Old Assyrian Empire in a known inscription describes his exploits to the south as follows, The freedom of the Akkadians and their children I established. I established their freedom from the border of the marshes and Ur and Nippur, Awal, past scholars originally extrapolated from this text that it means he defeated the invading Amorites to the south, but there is no explicit record of that. More recently, the text has been taken to mean that Asshur supplied the south with copper from Anatolia and these policies were continued by his successors Erishum I and Ikunum. During the first centuries of what is called the Amorite period and his reign was concerned with establishing statehood amongst a sea of other minor city states and kingdoms in the region. However Sumuabum appears never to have bothered to give himself the title of King of Babylon, suggesting that Babylon itself was only a minor town or city. He was followed by Sumu-la-El, Sabium, Apil-Sin, each of whom ruled in the same manner as Sumuabum. Sin-Muballit was the first of these Amorite rulers to be regarded officially as a king of Babylon, the Elamites occupied huge swathes of southern Mesopotamia, and the early Amorite rulers were largely held in vassalage to Elam
20.
Nippur
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Nippur was among the most ancient of Sumerian cities. It was the seat of the worship of the Sumerian god Enlil. Nippur was located in modern Nuffar in Afak, Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate, Nippur never enjoyed political hegemony in its own right, but its control was crucial, as it was considered capable of conferring the overall kingship on monarchs from other city-states. It was distinctively a sacred city, important from the possession of the shrine of Enlil. According to the Tummal Chronicle, Enmebaragesi, a ruler of Kish, was the first to build up this temple by kish His influence over Nippur has also been detected archaeologically. It also indicates that the practice was revived in Neo-Sumerian times by Ur-Nammu of Ur, on their votive offerings, some of these rulers designate themselves as ensis, or governors. Originally a village of reed huts in the marshes, Nippur was especially prone to devastation by flooding or fire. For some reason, settlement persisted at the spot, and gradually the site rose above the marshes - partly from the accumulation of debris. As the inhabitants began to develop in civilization, they substituted, at least in the case of their shrine, there is evidence of the succession on the site of different peoples, varying somewhat in their degrees of civilization. This people gave way in time to another, markedly inferior in the manufacture of pottery, in one of these earlier strata, of very great antiquity, there was discovered, in connection with the shrine, a conduit built of bricks in the form of an arch. At some point, Sumerian inscriptions began to be written on clay, the shrine at this time stood on a raised platform, and apparently contained a ziggurat. Naram-Sin rebuilt both the temple and the city walls, and in the accumulation of debris now marking the ancient site, his remains are found about half way from the top to the bottom. One of the few instances of Nippur being recorded as having its own ruler comes from a tablet depicting a revolt of several Mesopotamian cities against Naram-Sin, the tablet goes on to relate that Naram-Sin defeated these rebel cities in nine battles, and brought them back under his control. The Weidner tablet suggests that the Akkadian Empire fell as divine retribution, Ur-Nammu gave the temple its final characteristic form. Partly razing the constructions of his predecessors, he erected a terrace of bricks, some 12 m high, near the northwestern edge, towards the western corner, he built a ziggurat of three stages of dry brick, faced with kiln-fired bricks laid in bitumen. On the summit stood, as at Ur and Eridu, a small chamber, access to the stages of the ziggurat, from the court beneath, was by an inclined plane on the south-east side. To the north-east of the ziggurat stood, apparently, the House of Bel, and in the courts below the ziggurat stood various other buildings, shrines, treasure chambers, the whole structure was oriented with the corners toward the cardinal points of the compass. Ur-Nammu also rebuilt the walls of the city on the line of Naram-Sins walls, the restoration of the general features of the temple of this, and the immediately succeeding periods, has been greatly facilitated by the discovery of a sketch map on a fragment of a clay tablet
21.
Kassites
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The Kassites were a people of the ancient Near East, who controlled Babylonia after the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire c.1531 BC and until c.1155 BC. The endonym of the Kassites was probably Galzu, although they have also referred to by the names Kaššu. They gained control of Babylonia after the Hittite sack of the city in 1595 BC, the horse, which the Kassites worshipped, first came into use in Babylonia at this time. The Kassite language has not been classified, however, several Kassite leaders bore Indo-European names, and they might have had an Indo-European elite similar to the Mitanni, who ruled over the Hurro-Urartian-speaking Hurrians of Asia Minor. The original homeland of the Kassites is not well known, but appears to have located in the Zagros Mountains. However the Kassites were – like the Elamites, Gutians and Manneans who preceded them – linguistically unrelated to the Iranian-speaking peoples who came to dominate the region a millennium later. They first appeared in the annals of history in the 18th century BC when they attacked Babylonia in the 9th year of the reign of Samsu-iluna, the son of Hammurabi. The Hittites had carried off the idol of the god Marduk, but the Kassite rulers regained possession, returned Marduk to Babylon, the circumstances of their rise to power are unknown, due to a lack of documentation from this so-called Dark Age period of widespread dislocation. No inscription or document in the Kassite language has been preserved, Babylon under Kassite rulers, who renamed the city Karanduniash, re-emerged as a political and military power in Mesopotamia. A newly built capital city Dur-Kurigalzu was named in honour of Kurigalzu I and their success was built upon the relative political stability that the Kassite monarchs achieved. They ruled Babylonia practically without interruption for almost four hundred years— the longest rule by any dynasty in Babylonian history, Kassite kings established trade and diplomacy with Assyria. Egypt, Elam, and the Hittites, and the Kassite royal house intermarried with their royal families, There were foreign merchants in Babylon and other cities, and Babylonian merchants were active from Egypt to Assyria and Anatolia. A further treaty between Kurigalzu I and Ashur-bel-nisheshu of Assyria was agreed in the mid 15th century, Babylon was sacked by the Assyrian king Ashur-uballit I ) in the 1360s after the Kassite king in Babylon who was married to the daughter of Ashur-uballit was murdered. Ashur-uballit promptly marched into Babylonia and avenged his son-in-law, deposing the king and installing Kurigalzu II of the royal Kassite line as king there and his successor Enlil-nirari also attacked Babylonia and his great grandson Adad-nirari I annexed Babylonian territory when he became king. Tukulti-Ninurta I not content with merely dominating Babylonia went further, conquering Babylonia, deposing Kashtiliash IV, the Kassite kings maintained control of their realm through a network of provinces administered by governors. Almost equal with the cities of Babylon and Dur-Kurigalzu, the revived city of Nippur was the most important provincial center. Nippur, the great city, which had been virtually abandoned c.1730 BC, was rebuilt in the Kassite period. In fact, under the Kassite government, the governor of Nippur, the prestige of Nippur was enough for a series of 13th century BC Kassite kings to reassume the title governor of Nippur for themselves
22.
Babylonian Map of the World
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The Babylonian Map of the World is a labeled depiction of the known world from the perspective of the Babylonians. The map is incised on a tablet, showing the city of Babylon somewhat to the north of its center, the clay tablet is damaged. It is usually dated to the 5th century BC and it was discovered at Sippar, southern Iraq,60 miles north of Babylon on the east bank of the Euphrates River, and published in 1899. The clay tablet resides at the British Museum and it is conjectured that the island locations, though possibly referring to real areas, may also represent a mythological interpretation of the world. Carlo Zaccagnini has argued that the Babylonian map of the world may have lived on in the T and O map of the European Middle Ages, the map is circular with two outer defined circles. Cuneiform script labels all locations inside the map, as well as a few regions outside. The two outer circles represent water in between and is labelled as river of water, the salt sea. Babylon is in the center of the map, parallel lines at the bottom seem to represent the marshes. There are seven small interior circles at the areas within the circle. Seven triangular sections on the circle represent named islands
23.
Babylon
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Babylon was a major city of ancient Mesopotamia in the fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The city was built upon the Euphrates and divided in parts along its left and right banks. Babylon was originally a small Semitic Akkadian city dating from the period of the Akkadian Empire c.2300 BC, the town attained independence as part of a small city-state with the rise of the First Amorite Babylonian Dynasty in 1894 BC. Babylon grew and South Mesopotamia came to be known as Babylonia, the empire quickly dissolved after Hammurabis death and Babylon spent long periods under Assyrian, Kassite and Elamite domination. After being destroyed and then rebuilt by the Assyrians, Babylon became the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 609 to 539 BC, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. After the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the city came under the rule of the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Roman, and Sassanid empires. It has been estimated that Babylon was the largest city in the world from c.1770 to 1670 BC and it was perhaps the first city to reach a population above 200,000. Estimates for the extent of its area range from 890 to 900 hectares. The remains of the city are in present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about 85 kilometres south of Baghdad, comprising a large tell of broken mud-brick buildings, the English Babylon comes from Greek Babylṓn, a transliteration of the Akkadian Babili. The Babylonian name in the early 2nd millennium BC had been Babilli or Babilla, by the 1st millennium BC, it had changed to Babili under the influence of the folk etymology which traced it to bāb-ili. The Gate of God or Gate of El being from the Aramaic Hebrew Bab for Gate and El for God and this being similar to the Hebrew word for confusion Balal. In the Bible, the name appears as Babel, interpreted in the Hebrew Scriptures Book of Genesis to mean confusion, the modern English verb, to babble, or to speak meaningless words, is popularly thought to derive from this name, but there is no direct connection. The remains of the city are in present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad, comprising a large tell of broken mud-brick buildings and debris. The site at Babylon consists of a number of mounds covering an area of about 2 by 1 kilometer, oriented north to south, along the Euphrates to the west. Originally, the river roughly bisected the city, but the course of the river has since shifted so that most of the remains of the western part of the city are now inundated. Some portions of the city wall to the west of the river also remain, remains of the city include, Kasr—also called Palace or Castle, it is the location of the Neo-Babylonian ziggurat Etemenanki and lies in the center of the site. Amran Ibn Ali—the highest of the mounds at 25 meters, to the south and it is the site of Esagila, a temple of Marduk which also contained shrines to Ea and Nabu. Homera—a reddish colored mound on the west side, most of the Hellenistic remains are here
24.
Euphrates
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The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia, originating in eastern Turkey, the Euphrates flows through Syria and Iraq to join the Tigris in the Shatt al-Arab, which empties into the Persian Gulf. The Ancient Greek form Euphrátēs was borrowed from Old Persian Ufrātu, the Elamite name is ultimately derived from the Sumerian Buranuna, possibly through the Akkadian name. In Akkadian the river was similarly called Purattu, which has been perpetuated in Semitic languages, the Elamite, Akkadian, and possibly Sumerian forms are suggested to be from an unrecorded substrate language. The earliest references to the Euphrates come from texts found in Shuruppak and pre-Sargonic Nippur in southern Iraq. In these texts, written in Sumerian, the Euphrates is called Buranuna, the name could also be written KIB. NUN. or dKIB. NUN, with the prefix d indicating that the river was a divinity. In Sumerian, the name of the city of Sippar in modern-day Iraq was also a written UD. KIB. NUN, the Euphrates is the longest river of Western Asia. It emerges from the confluence of the Kara Su or Western Euphrates, the same figures are given by Isaev and Mikhailova. The length of the Shatt al-Arab, which connects the Euphrates, both the Kara Su and the Murat Su rise northwest from Lake Van at elevations of 3,290 metres and 3,520 metres amsl, respectively. At the location of the Keban Dam, the two rivers, now combined into the Euphrates, have dropped to an elevation of 693 metres amsl, from Keban to the Syrian–Turkish border, the river drops another 368 metres over a distance of less than 600 kilometres. The Euphrates receives most of its water in the form of rainfall and melting snow, discharge in these two months accounts for 36 percent of the total annual discharge of the Euphrates, or even 60–70 percent according to one source, while low runoff occurs in summer and autumn. The discharge regime of the Euphrates has changed dramatically since the construction of the first dams in the 1970s, data on Euphrates discharge collected after 1990 show the impact of the construction of the numerous dams in the Euphrates and of the increased withdrawal of water for irrigation. Average discharge at Hīt after 1990 has dropped to 356 cubic metres per second, the seasonal variability has equally changed. The pre-1990 peak volume recorded at Hīt was 7,510 cubic metres per second, the minimum volume at Hīt remained relatively unchanged, rising from 55 cubic metres per second before 1990 to 58 cubic metres per second afterward. In Syria, three rivers add their water to the Euphrates, the Sajur, the Balikh and the Khabur and these rivers rise in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains along the Syro–Turkish border and add comparatively little water to the Euphrates. The Sajur is the smallest of these tributaries, emerging from two streams near Gaziantep and draining the plain around Manbij before emptying into the reservoir of the Tishrin Dam. The Balikh receives most of its water from a spring near Ayn al-Arus. In terms of length, drainage basin and discharge, the Khabur is the largest of these three and its main karstic springs are located around Ras al-Ayn, from where the Khabur flows southeast past Al-Hasakah, where the river turns south and drains into the Euphrates near Busayrah
25.
Assyria
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Assyria was a major Mesopotamian East Semitic-speaking kingdom and empire of the ancient Near East and the Levant. Centered on the Tigris in Upper Mesopotamia, the Assyrians came to rule powerful empires at several times. Assyria is named after its capital, the ancient city of Aššur. In the 25th and 24th centuries BC, Assyrian kings were pastoral leaders, Assyria can also refer to the geographic region or heartland where Assyria, its empires and the Assyrian people were centered. The indigenous modern Eastern Aramaic-speaking Assyrian Christian ethnic minority in northern Iraq, north east Syria, southeast Turkey, in prehistoric times, the region that was to become known as Assyria was home to a Neanderthal culture such as has been found at the Shanidar Cave. The earliest Neolithic sites in Assyria were the Jarmo culture c.7100 BC and Tell Hassuna, during the 3rd millennium BC, a very intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Akkadians throughout Mesopotamia, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian, and vice versa, is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium BC as a sprachbund and it is highly likely that the city was named in honour of its patron Assyrian god with the same name. The city of Aššur, together with a number of other Assyrian cities, however it is likely that they were initially Sumerian-dominated administrative centres. In the late 26th century BC, Eannatum of Lagash, then the dominant Sumerian ruler in Mesopotamia, similarly, in c. the early 25th century BC, Lugal-Anne-Mundu the king of the Sumerian state of Adab lists Subartu as paying tribute to him. Of the early history of the kingdom of Assyria, little is known, in the Assyrian King List, the earliest king recorded was Tudiya. According to Georges Roux he would have lived in the mid 25th century BC, Tudiya was succeeded on the list by Adamu, the first known reference to the Semitic name Adam and then a further thirteen rulers. The earliest kings, such as Tudiya, who are recorded as kings who lived in tents, were independent semi-nomadic pastoralist rulers and these kings at some point became fully urbanised and founded the city state of Ashur in the mid 21st century BC. During the Akkadian Empire, the Assyrians, like all the Mesopotamian Semites, became subject to the dynasty of the city state of Akkad, the Akkadian Empire founded by Sargon the Great claimed to encompass the surrounding four quarters. Assyrian rulers were subject to Sargon and his successors, and the city of Ashur became an administrative center of the Empire. On those tablets, Assyrian traders in Burushanda implored the help of their ruler, Sargon the Great, the name Hatti itself even appears in later accounts of his grandson, Naram-Sin, campaigning in Anatolia. Assyrian and Akkadian traders spread the use of writing in the form of the Mesopotamian cuneiform script to Asia Minor, the Akkadian Empire was destroyed by economic decline and internal civil war, followed by attacks from barbarian Gutian people in 2154 BC. The rulers of Assyria during the period between c.2154 BC and 2112 BC once again fully independent, as the Gutians are only known to have administered southern Mesopotamia
26.
Urartu
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Urartu, also known as Kingdom of Van, was an Iron Age kingdom centred on Lake Van in the Armenian Highlands. It corresponds to the biblical Kingdom of Ararat, the language appears in cuneiform inscriptions. It is argued on linguistic evidence that came in contact with Urartian at an early date. That a distinction should be made between the geographical and the entity was already pointed out by König. The landscape corresponds to the plateau between Anatolia, Mesopotamia, the Iranian Plateau, and the Caucasus Mountains, later known as the Armenian Highlands. The kingdom rose to power in the mid-ninth century BC, the heirs of Urartu are the Armenians and their successive kingdoms. The name Urartu comes from Assyrian sources, Shalmaneser I recorded a campaign in which he subdued the entire territory of Uruatri, the Shalmaneser text uses the name Urartu to refer to a geographical region, not a kingdom, and names eight lands contained within Urartu. Urartu is cognate with the Biblical Ararat, Akkadian Urashtu and Armenian Ayrarat, the Urartian toponym Biainili was adopted in the Old Armenian as Van, Վան. Hence the names Kingdom of Van or Vannic Kingdom, scholars such as Carl Ferdinand Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt believed that the people of Urartu called themselves Khaldini after the god Ḫaldi. Boris Piotrovsky wrote that the Urartians first appear in history in the 13th century BC as a league of tribes or countries which did not yet constitute a unitary state. In the Assyrian annals the term Uruatri as a name for this league was superseded during a period of years by the term land of Nairi. Scholars believe that Urartu is an Akkadian variation of Ararat of the Old Testament, indeed, Mount Ararat is located in ancient Urartian territory, approximately 120 kilometres north of its former capital. In addition to referring to the famous Biblical mountain, Ararat also appears as the name of a kingdom in Jeremiah 51,27, mentioned together with Minni, in the early sixth century BC, Urartu was replaced by the Armenian Orontid Dynasty. Shupria was part of the Urartu confederation, later, there is reference to a district in the area called Arme or Urme, which some scholars have linked to the name of Armenia. At its apogee, Urartu stretched from the borders of northern Mesopotamia to the southern Caucasus, including present-day Armenia, archaeological sites within its boundaries include Altintepe, Toprakkale, Patnos and Haykaberd. Urartu fortresses included Erebuni, Van Fortress, Argishtihinili, Anzaf, Haykaberd, schulz discovered and copied numerous cuneiform inscriptions, partly in Assyrian and partly in a hitherto unknown language. Schulz also re-discovered the Kelishin stele, bearing an Assyrian-Urartian bilingual inscription, a summary account of his initial discoveries was published in 1828. Schulz and four of his servants were murdered by Kurds in 1829 near Başkale and his notes were later recovered and published in Paris in 1840
27.
Oceanus
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Strictly speaking, Oceanus was the ocean-stream at the Equator in which floated the habitable hemisphere. Thus, the sun rises from the deep-flowing Oceanus in the east, in Greek mythology, this world-ocean was personified as a Titan, the eldest son of Uranus and Gaia. In Hellenistic and Roman mosaics, this Titan was often depicted as having the body of a muscular man with a long beard and horns. In Roman mosaics, such as that from Bardo he might carry a steering-oar, some scholars believe that Oceanus originally represented all bodies of salt water, including the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, the two largest bodies known to the ancient Greeks. Oceanus consort is his sister Tethys, and from their union came the ocean nymphs, also referred to as the three-thousand Oceanids, and all the rivers of the world, fountains, and lakes. In most variations of this myth, Oceanus also refused to side with Cronus in the revolt against their father. R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek proto-form *-kay-an-, when Odysseus and Nestor walk together along the shore of the sounding sea they address their prayers to the great Sea-god who girdles the world. It is to Oceanus, not to Poseidon, that their thoughts are directed, Heracles forced Helios to lend him his golden bowl, in order to cross the wide expanse of the Ocean on his trip to the Hesperides. When Oceanus tossed the bowl about, Heracles threatened him and stilled his waves, the journey of Heracles in the sun-bowl upon Oceanus became a favored theme among painters of Attic pottery. Oceanus appears in Hellenic cosmography as well as myth, cartographers continued to represent the encircling equatorial stream much as it had appeared on Achilles shield. Apollonius of Rhodes calls the lower Danube the Keras Okeanoio in Argonautica, accion in the fourth century Gaulish Latin of Rufus Avienus, Ora maritima, was applied to great lakes. At the end of the Okeanos Potamos, is the island of Alba, sacred to the Pelasgian Apollo. Hecateus of Abdera refers to Apollos island from the region of the Hyperboreans and it was on Leuke, in one version of his legend, that the hero Achilles, in a hilly tumulus, was buried. Leto, the Hyperborean goddess, after nine days and nine nights of labour on the island of Delos gave birth to the god of the antique light. Old Romanian folk songs sing of a monastery on a white island with nine priests, nine singers, nine altars. Oceanid Ogyges Rasā Uranus Aeschylus, Persians, edited and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press,2009, online version at Harvard University Press. Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, London, William Heinemann Ltd.1921
28.
Ancient Greece
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Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th-9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and this was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the end of the Mediterranean Sea. Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a influence on ancient Rome. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Classical Antiquity in the Mediterranean region is considered to have begun in the 8th century BC. Classical Antiquity in Greece is preceded by the Greek Dark Ages and this period is succeeded, around the 8th century BC, by the Orientalizing Period during which a strong influence of Syro-Hittite, Jewish, Assyrian, Phoenician and Egyptian cultures becomes apparent. The end of the Dark Ages is also dated to 776 BC. The Archaic period gives way to the Classical period around 500 BC, Ancient Periods Astronomical year numbering Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details The history of Greece during Classical Antiquity may be subdivided into five major periods. The earliest of these is the Archaic period, in which artists made larger free-standing sculptures in stiff, the Archaic period is often taken to end with the overthrow of the last tyrant of Athens and the start of Athenian Democracy in 508 BC. It was followed by the Classical period, characterized by a style which was considered by observers to be exemplary, i. e. classical, as shown in the Parthenon. This period saw the Greco-Persian Wars and the Rise of Macedon, following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period, during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East. This period begins with the death of Alexander and ends with the Roman conquest, Herodotus is widely known as the father of history, his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato, most of these authors were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than those of many other cities. Their scope is limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic history, ignoring economic. In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. The Lelantine War is the earliest documented war of the ancient Greek period and it was fought between the important poleis of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Both cities seem to have suffered a decline as result of the long war, a mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century BC, shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC
29.
Roman Empire
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Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesars adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavians power was then unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power, the imperial period of Rome lasted approximately 1,500 years compared to the 500 years of the Republican era. The first two centuries of the empires existence were a period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, following Octavians victory, the size of the empire was dramatically increased. After the assassination of Caligula in 41, the senate briefly considered restoring the republic, under Claudius, the empire invaded Britannia, its first major expansion since Augustus. Vespasian emerged triumphant in 69, establishing the Flavian dynasty, before being succeeded by his son Titus and his short reign was followed by the long reign of his brother Domitian, who was eventually assassinated. The senate then appointed the first of the Five Good Emperors, the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, the second in this line. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus, Commodus assassination in 192 triggered the Year of the Five Emperors, of which Septimius Severus emerged victorious. The assassination of Alexander Severus in 235 led to the Crisis of the Third Century in which 26 men were declared emperor by the Roman Senate over a time span. It was not until the reign of Diocletian that the empire was fully stabilized with the introduction of the Tetrarchy, which saw four emperors rule the empire at once. This arrangement was unsuccessful, leading to a civil war that was finally ended by Constantine I. Constantine subsequently shifted the capital to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour and it remained the capital of the east until its demise. Constantine also adopted Christianity which later became the state religion of the empire. However, Augustulus was never recognized by his Eastern colleague, and separate rule in the Western part of the empire ceased to exist upon the death of Julius Nepos. The Eastern Roman Empire endured for another millennium, eventually falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Roman Empire was among the most powerful economic, cultural, political and military forces in the world of its time. It was one of the largest empires in world history, at its height under Trajan, it covered 5 million square kilometres. It held sway over an estimated 70 million people, at that time 21% of the entire population. Throughout the European medieval period, attempts were made to establish successors to the Roman Empire, including the Empire of Romania, a Crusader state. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, then, it was an empire long before it had an emperor
30.
Anaximander
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Anaximander was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia. He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales and he succeeded Thales and became the second master of that school where he counted Anaximenes and, arguably, Pythagoras amongst his pupils. Little of his life and work is known today, according to available historical documents, he is the first philosopher known to have written down his studies, although only one fragment of his work remains. Fragmentary testimonies found in documents after his death provide a portrait of the man, like many thinkers of his time, Anaximanders philosophy included contributions to many disciplines. In astronomy, he attempted to describe the mechanics of celestial bodies in relation to the Earth, in physics, his postulation that the indefinite was the source of all things led Greek philosophy to a new level of conceptual abstraction. His knowledge of geometry allowed him to introduce the gnomon in Greece and he created a map of the world that contributed greatly to the advancement of geography. He was also involved in the politics of Miletus and was sent as a leader to one of its colonies, Anaximander, son of Praxiades, was born in the third year of the 42nd Olympiad. According to Apollodorus of Athens, Greek grammarian of the 2nd century BC, he was years old during the second year of the 58th Olympiad. Establishing a timeline of his work is now impossible, since no document provides chronological references, Themistius, a 4th-century Byzantine rhetorician, mentions that he was the first of the known Greeks to publish a written document on nature. Therefore, his texts would be amongst the earliest written in prose, by the time of Plato, his philosophy was almost forgotten, and Aristotle, his successor Theophrastus and a few doxographers provide us with the little information that remains. However, we know from Aristotle that Thales, also from Miletus and it is debatable whether Thales actually was the teacher of Anaximander, but there is no doubt that Anaximander was influenced by Thales theory that everything is derived from water. 3rd-century Roman rhetorician Aelian depicts him as leader of the Milesian colony to Apollonia on the Black Sea coast, indeed, Various History explains that philosophers sometimes also dealt with political matters. It is very likely that leaders of Miletus sent him there as a legislator to create a constitution or simply to maintain the colony’s allegiance. Anaximanders theories were influenced by the Greek mythical tradition, and by some ideas of Thales – the father of philosophy – as well as by observations made by older civilizations in the East. This was a practice for the Greek philosophers in a society which saw gods everywhere, therefore they could fit their ideas into a tolerably elastic system. Some scholars see a gap between the mythical and the new rational way of thought which is the main characteristic of the archaic period in the Greek city states. This has given rise to the phrase Greek miracle, but if we follow carefully the course of Anaximanders ideas, we will notice that there was not such an abrupt break as initially appears. The basic elements of nature which the first Greek philosophers believed that constituted the universe represent in fact the primordial forces of previous thought and their collision produced what the mythical tradition had called cosmic harmony
31.
Ptolemy
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Claudius Ptolemy was a Greek writer, known as a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in the city of Alexandria in the Roman province of Egypt, wrote in Koine Greek, beyond that, few reliable details of his life are known. His birthplace has been given as Ptolemais Hermiou in the Thebaid in a statement by the 14th-century astronomer Theodore Meliteniotes. This is a very late attestation, however, and there is no reason to suppose that he ever lived elsewhere than Alexandria. Ptolemy wrote several treatises, three of which were of importance to later Byzantine, Islamic and European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest, although it was entitled the Mathematical Treatise. The second is the Geography, which is a discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the treatise in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day. This is sometimes known as the Apotelesmatika but more known as the Tetrabiblos from the Greek meaning Four Books or by the Latin Quadripartitum. The name Claudius is a Roman nomen, the fact that Ptolemy bore it indicates he lived under the Roman rule of Egypt with the privileges and political rights of Roman citizenship. It would have suited custom if the first of Ptolemys family to become a citizen took the nomen from a Roman called Claudius who was responsible for granting citizenship, if, as was common, this was the emperor, citizenship would have been granted between AD41 and 68. The astronomer would also have had a praenomen, which remains unknown and it occurs once in Greek mythology, and is of Homeric form. All the kings after him, until Egypt became a Roman province in 30 BC, were also Ptolemies, abu Mashar recorded a belief that a different member of this royal line composed the book on astrology and attributed it to Ptolemy. The correct answer is not known”, Ptolemy wrote in Greek and can be shown to have utilized Babylonian astronomical data. He was a Roman citizen, but most scholars conclude that Ptolemy was ethnically Greek and he was often known in later Arabic sources as the Upper Egyptian, suggesting he may have had origins in southern Egypt. Later Arabic astronomers, geographers and physicists referred to him by his name in Arabic, Ptolemys Almagest is the only surviving comprehensive ancient treatise on astronomy. Ptolemy presented his models in convenient tables, which could be used to compute the future or past position of the planets. The Almagest also contains a catalogue, which is a version of a catalogue created by Hipparchus
32.
Ptolemy's world map
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The Ptolemy world map is a map of the world known to Hellenistic society in the 2nd century. It is based on the contained in Ptolemys book Geography. Based on an inscription in several of the earliest surviving manuscripts, perhaps the most significant contributions of Ptolemys maps are the first uses of longitudinal and latitudinal lines as well as specifying terrestrial locations by celestial observations. The Geography was translated from Greek into Arabic in the 9th century, the idea of a global coördinate system revolutionized European geographical thought, however, and inspired more mathematical treatment of cartography. Ptolemys work probably came with maps but none has been discovered. Instead, the present form of the map was reconstructed from Ptolemys coördinates by Byzantine monks under the direction of Maximus Planudes shortly after 1295 and it probably was not that of the original text, as it uses the less favored of the two alternate projections offered by Ptolemy. The continents are given as Europe, Asia, and Libya, the World Ocean is only seen to the west. The map distinguishes two large enclosed seas, the Mediterranean and the Indian, India is bound by the Indus and Ganges Rivers, but its peninsula is much shortened. The Malay Peninsula is given as the Golden Chersonese instead of the earlier Golden Island, beyond the Golden Chersonese, the Great Gulf forms a combination of the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea which is bound by the unknown lands thought to enclose the Indian Sea. China is divided into two realms—the Qin and the Land of Silk —owing to the different accounts received from the overland, the Geography and the map derived from it probably played an important role in the expansion of the Roman Empire to the East. Trade throughout the Indian Ocean was extensive from the 2nd century, from these ports, Roman embassies to China are recorded in Chinese historical sources from around 166. The Danish historian Gudmund Schütte attempted to reconstruct the Danish part of Ptolemys world map and this derivative includes several place- and tribe-names, some of which can be interpreted to their contemporary equivalent. Skandia is home to the Goutai in the center, and the Phiraisoi in the east, north of Jutland lies a third archipelago Alokiai Nêsoi. South of the Albis lives the Lakkobardoi and to its north the Saxones, the west coast of Jutland is home to the Sigulônes, the Sabaliggio, the Kobandoi, the Eundusioi and the northernmost Kimbroi. The center and east is home to the Kimbrikê, the Chersonêsos, ptolemaic images at the European Library Nicholas the Germans c
33.
History of China
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Written records of the history of China can be found from as early as 1500 BC under the Shang dynasty. Ancient historical texts such as the Records of the Grand Historian and the Bamboo Annals describe a Xia dynasty, with thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the worlds oldest civilizations, and is regarded as one of the cradles of civilization. Much of Chinese culture, literature and philosophy developed during the Zhou dynasty. This is one of multiple periods of failed statehood in Chinese history, between eras of multiple kingdoms and warlordism, Chinese dynasties have ruled parts or all of China, in some eras control stretched as far as Xinjiang and Tibet, as at present. In 221 BC Qin Shi Huang united the warring kingdoms and created for himself the title of emperor of the Qin dynasty. Successive dynasties developed bureaucratic systems that enabled the emperor to control vast territories directly, in the 21 centuries from 206 BC until AD1912, routine administrative tasks were handled by a special elite, the Scholar-officials. Young men were selected through difficult examinations and were well-versed in calligraphy and philosophy. What is now China was inhabited by Homo erectus more than a million years ago, recent study shows that the stone tools found at Xiaochangliang site are magnetostratigraphically dated to 1.36 million years ago. The archaeological site of Xihoudu in Shanxi Province is the earliest recorded use of fire by Homo erectus, the excavations at Yuanmou and later Lantian show early habitation. Perhaps the most famous specimen of Homo erectus found in China is the so-called Peking Man discovered in 1923–27, fossilised teeth of Homo sapiens dating to 125, 000–80,000 BC have been discovered in Fuyan Cave in Dao County in Hunan. The Neolithic age in China can be traced back to about 10,000 BC, Early evidence for proto-Chinese millet agriculture is radiocarbon-dated to about 7000 BC. The earliest evidence of cultivated rice, found by the Yangtze River, is carbon-dated to 8,000 years ago, farming gave rise to the Jiahu culture. At Damaidi in Ningxia,3,172 cliff carvings dating to 6000–5000 BC have been discovered, featuring 8,453 individual characters such as the sun, moon, stars, gods and these pictographs are reputed to be similar to the earliest characters confirmed to be written Chinese. Chinese proto-writing existed in Jiahu around 7000 BC, Dadiwan from 5800 BC to 5400 BC, Damaidi around 6000 BC, some scholars have suggested that Jiahu symbols were the earliest Chinese writing system. With agriculture came increased population, the ability to store and redistribute crops, Later, Yangshao culture was superseded by the Longshan culture, which was also centered on the Yellow River from about 3000 BC to 2000 BC. Bronze artifacts have been found at the Majiayao culture site, The Bronze Age is also represented at the Lower Xiajiadian culture site in northeast China. Sanxingdui located in what is now Sichuan province is believed to be the site of a ancient city. The site was first discovered in 1929 and then re-discovered in 1986, Chinese archaeologists have identified the Sanxingdui culture to be part of the ancient kingdom of Shu, linking the artifacts found at the site to its early legendary kings
34.
Qin (state)
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Qin was an ancient Chinese state during the Zhou dynasty. Following extensive Legalist reform in the 3rd century BC, Qin emerged as one of the dominant powers of the Seven Warring States, the empire it established was short-lived but greatly influential on later Chinese history. Its courts and bureaus functioned without delays and with such smoothness that it was as if there were no government at all. According to the 2nd century BC historical text Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian, one of his descendents, Boyi, was granted the family name of Ying by King Shun. During the Xia and Shang dynasties, the Ying split in two, a branch in Quanqiu and another branch that lived east of the Yellow River. The latter became the ancestors of the rulers of the Zhao state, the western Ying at Quanqiu were lords over the Xichui, the Western March of the Shang. One, Elai, was killed defending King Zhou during the rebellion that established the Zhou dynasty, the family was allied with the marquesses of Shen, however, and continued to serve under the Zhou. A younger son of line, Feizi, so impressed King Xiao with his horse breeding skills that he was awarded a fief in the valley of Qin. Both lines of the western Ying lived in the midst of the Rong tribes, sometimes fighting their armies and sometimes intermarrying with their kings. In 771 BC, the Marquess of Shen formed an alliance with the Zeng state and Quanrong nomads, Duke Xiang of Qin led his troops to escort King Yous son King Ping of Zhou to Luoyi, where the new capital city of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty was established. In recognition of Duke Xiangs efforts, King Ping formally enfeoffed Duke Xiang as a feudal lord, King Ping further promised to give Qin the land west of Qishan, the former heartland of Zhou, if Qin could expel the Rong tribes that were occupying the land. The Qin viewed the Zhou rulers Wen and Wu as their predecessors, Qins interaction with other states in eastern and central China remained minimal throughout the Spring and Autumn period, except with its neighbour Jin, a large, mainstay vassal of the Zhou. During the early reign of Duke Mu of Qin, the Jin state was a power under the leadership of Duke Xian of Jin. However, after the death of Duke Xian, Jin plunged into a state of conflict as Duke Xians sons fought over the succession. One of them won the contention and became Duke Hui of Jin, Duke Mu of Qin sent relief food supplies and agricultural equipment to Jin. However, Qin was struck by famine later and by then, Jin had recovered, Qin and Jin engaged in several battles over the next few years. During the battles with Jin, Duke Mu heard that one of Duke Xians sons, Chonger, was in exile in the Chu state. After consulting his subjects, Duke Mu sent an emissary to Chu to invite Chonger to Jin, Duke Wen was grateful to Duke Mu and relations between Qin and Jin improved
35.
Warring States period
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The Warring States Period derives its name from the Record of the Warring States, a work compiled early in the Han dynasty. The political geography of the era was dominated by the Seven Warring States, namely, Qin, The State of Qin was in the far west, with its core in the Wei River Valley and Guanzhong. This geographical position offered protection from the states of the Central Plains, the Three Jins, Northeast of Qin, on the Shanxi plateau, were the three successor states of Jin. These were, Han, south, along the Yellow River, Zhao, the northernmost of the three. Qi, located in the east of China, centred on the Shandong Peninsula, described as east of Mount Tai, Chu, located in the south of China, with its core territory around the valleys of the Han River and, later, the Yangtze River. Yan, located in the northeast, centred on modern-day Beijing, late in the period Yan pushed northeast and began to occupy the Liaodong Peninsula Besides these seven major states, some minor states also survived into the period. Yue, On the southeast coast near Shanghai was the State of Yue, Sichuan, In the far southwest were the States of Ba and Shu. These were non-Zhou states that were conquered by Qin late in the period, in the Central Plains comprising much of modern-day Henan Province, many smaller city states survived as satellites of the larger states, though they were eventually to be absorbed as well. Zhongshan, Between the states of Zhao and Yan was the state of Zhongshan, the Spring and Autumn period was initiated by the eastward flight of the Zhou court. There is no one single incident or starting point for the Warring States era, some proposed starting points are as follows,481 BC, Proposed by Song-era historian Lü Zuqian, since it is the end of the Spring and Autumn Annals. 476–475 BC, The author, Sima Qian, of Records of the Grand Historian who chose the year of King Yuan of Zhou. 403 BC, The year when Han, Zhao and Wei were officially recognised as states by the Zhou court, author Sima Guang of Zizhi Tongjian tells us that the symbol of eroded Zhou authority should be taken as the start of the Warring States era. The Spring and Autumn period led to a few states gaining power at the expense of many others, during the Warring States period, many rulers claimed the Mandate of Heaven to justify their conquest of other states and spread their influence. Other major states also existed, such as Wu and Yue in the southeast, the last decades of the Spring and Autumn era were marked by increased stability, as the result of peace negotiations between Jin and Chu which established their respective spheres of influence. This situation ended with the partition of Jin, whereby the state was divided between the houses of Han, Zhao and Wei, and thus enabled the creation of the seven major warring states. This allowed other clans to gain fiefs and military authority, and decades of struggle led to the establishment of four major families. The Battle of Jinyang saw the allied Han, Zhao and Wei destroy the Zhi family, with this, they became the de facto rulers of most of Jins territory, though this situation would not be officially recognised until half a century later. The Jin division created a vacuum that enabled during the first 50 years expansion of Chu and Yue northward
36.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
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Su Song
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Su Song was the engineer of a hydro-mechanical astronomical clock tower in medieval Kaifeng, which employed the use of an early escapement mechanism. Sus clock tower featured the oldest known endless power-transmitting chain drive, called the tian ti, or celestial ladder. The clock tower had 133 different clock jacks to indicate and sound the hours, Su Songs treatise about the clock tower, Xinyi Xiangfayao, has survived since its written form in 1092 and official printed publication in 1094. The book has been analyzed by historians, such as Joseph Needham. The clock itself, however, was dismantled by the invading Jurchen army in AD1127, and although attempts were made to reassemble it, the Xinyi Xiangfayao was Sus best-known treatise, but the polymath compiled other works as well. He completed a large celestial atlas of several maps, several terrestrial maps. The latter discussed related subjects on mineralogy, zoology, botany and they thought that advanced mechanical clockworks were new to China and that these mechanisms were something valuable that Europeans could offer to the Chinese. Su Song was a Hokkien who was born in modern-day Fujian, like a contemporary, Shen Kuo, Su Song was a polymath, a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different interests. From an early age, his interests in astronomy and calendrical science led him onto a path as a state bureaucrat. In his spare time he was fond of writing poetry, which he used to praise the works of such as the painter Li Gonglin. He also was an antiquarian and collector of old artworks from previous dynasties, after serving in the Ministry of Personnel, he became a Minister of Justice in 1086. Eventually, Su rose to the post of Vice President of the Chancellery Secretariat, among many honorable positions and titles conferred upon him, Su Song was also one of the Deputy Tutors of the Heir Apparent. Historian Liu Heping states that Emperor Zhezong of Song sponsored Su Songs clocktower in 1086 in order to compete with the Liao for scientific and national superiority. In 1081, the court instructed Su Song to compile into a book the diplomatic history of Song-Liao relations, with his extensive knowledge of cartography, Su Song was able to settle a heated border dispute between the Song and Liao dynasties. Furthermore, Su Song must have taken advantage of the findings of his political rival. There were many star maps written before Songs book, but the greatest significance of these star maps by Su Song is, that they represent the oldest extant star maps in printed form. In 1070, Su Song and a team of scholars compiled and edited the Bencao Tujing, which was a treatise on pharmaceutical botany, zoology. In compiling information for pharmaceutical knowledge, Su Song worked with such scholars as Zhang Yuxi, Lin Yi, Zhang Dong
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Star chart
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A star chart is another name for a chore chart. A star chart or star map is a map of the night sky, astronomers divide these into grids to use them more easily. They are used to identify and locate objects such as stars, constellations. They have been used for navigation since time immemorial. Note that a star chart differs from a catalog, which is a listing or tabulation of astronomical objects for a particular purpose. Tools utilizing a star chart include the astrolabe and the planisphere, the oldest known star chart may be a carved ivory Mammoth tusk that was discovered in Germany in 1979. This artifact is 32,500 years old and has a carving that resembles the constellation Orion, a drawing on the wall of the Lascaux caves in France has a graphical representation of the Pleiades open cluster of stars. This is dated from 33,000 to 10,000 years ago, another star chart panel, created more than 21,000 years ago, was found in the La Tête du Lion grotto. The bovine in this panel may represent the constellation Taurus, with a representing the Pleiades just above it. The oldest accurately dated star chart appeared in ancient Egyptian astronomy in 1534 BC, the earliest known star catalogues were compiled by the ancient Babylonian astronomers of Mesopotamia in the late 2nd millennium BC, during the Kassite Period. The oldest Chinese astronomy records date to before the Warring States period, the oldest Chinese graphical representation of the sky is a lacquer box dated to 430 BC, although this depiction does not show individual stars. The Farnese Atlas is a 2nd-century copy of a Hellenistic era statue depicting the Titan Atlas holding the sphere on his shoulder. It is the oldest surviving depiction of the ancient Greek constellations, because of precession, the positions of the constellations slowly change over time. By comparing the positions of the 41 constellations against the grid circles, based upon this information, the constellations were catalogued at 125 ±55 BC. This evidence indicates that the catalogue of the Greek astronomer Hipparchus was used. A Roman era example of a representation of the night sky is the Egyptian Dendera zodiac. This is a bas relief sculpting on a ceiling at the Dendera Temple complex and it is a planisphere depicting the zodiac in graphical representations. However, individual stars are not plotted, the oldest surviving manuscript star chart was discovered in the Mogao Caves along the Silk Road – the Dunhuang Star Chart
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Printing
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Printing is a process for reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest examples include Cylinder seals and other such as the Cyrus Cylinder. The earliest known form of printing came from China dating to before 220 A. D. Later developments in printing include the type, first developed by Bi Sheng in China around 1040 AD. Johannes Gutenberg introduced mechanical movable type printing to Europe in the 15th century, modern large-scale printing is typically done using a printing press, while small-scale printing is done free-form with a digital printer. Though paper is the most common material, it is frequently done on metals, plastics, cloth. On paper it is carried out as a large-scale industrial process and is an essential part of publishing. Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns that was used widely throughout East Asia and it originated in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later on paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220 A. D, the earliest surviving woodblock printed fragments are from China. They are of silk printed with flowers in three colours from the Han Dynasty and they are the earliest example of woodblock printing on paper appeared in the mid-seventh century in China. By the ninth century, printing on paper had taken off, by the tenth century,400,000 copies of some sutras and pictures were printed, and the Confucian classics were in print. A skilled printer could print up to 2,000 double-page sheets per day, Printing spread early to Korea and Japan, which also used Chinese logograms, but the technique was also used in Turpan and Vietnam using a number of other scripts. This technique then spread to Persia and Russia and this technique was transmitted to Europe via the Islamic world, and by around 1400 was being used on paper for old master prints and playing cards. However, Arabs never used this to print the Quran because of the limits imposed by Islamic doctrine, block printing, called tarsh in Arabic developed in Arabic Egypt during the ninth-tenth centuries, mostly for prayers and amulets. There is some evidence to suggest that these print blocks made from non-wood materials, possibly tin, lead, the techniques employed are uncertain, however, and they appear to have had very little influence outside of the Muslim world. Though Europe adopted woodblock printing from the Muslim world, initially for fabric, block printing later went out of use in Islamic Central Asia after movable type printing was introduced from China. Block printing first came to Europe as a method for printing on cloth, images printed on cloth for religious purposes could be quite large and elaborate. When paper became relatively easily available, around 1400, the medium transferred very quickly to small religious images
40.
Cartography of India
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The cartography of India begins with early charts for navigation and constructional plans for buildings. Indian traditions influenced Tibetan and Islamic traditions, and in turn, were influenced by the British cartographers who solidified modern concepts into Indias map making. A prominent foreign geographer and cartographer was Hellenistic geographer Ptolemy who researched at the library in Alexandria to produce a detailed record of world geography. During the Middle Ages, India sees some exploration by Chinese and Muslim geographers, a prominent medieval cartographer was Persian geographer Abu Rayhan Biruni who visited India and studied the countrys geography extensively. European maps become more accurate with the Age of Exploration and Portuguese India from the 16th century, the first modern maps were produced by Survey of India, established in 1767 by the British East India Company. Survey of India remains in continued existence as the official mapping authority of the Republic of India, susan Gole comments on the cartographic traditions in early India, Cartography of India as a part of the greater continent of Asia develops in Classical Antiquity. In Greek cartography, India appears as a land on the eastern fringe of Asia in the 5th century BCE. More detailed knowledge becomes available after the conquests of Alexander the Great, by the 1st century, at least the western coast of India is well known to Hellenistic geography, with itineraries such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. Marinus and Ptolemy had some knowledge of the Indian Ocean but their Taprobane was vastly too large and they also had little knowledge of the interior of the country. Native Indian cartographic traditions before the Hellenistic period remain rudimentary, early forms of cartography in India included legendary paintings, maps of locations described in Indian epic poetry, for example the Ramayana. These works contained descriptions of places, and often even described the nature of the mythological inhabitants of a particular location. Early Indian cartography showed little knowledge of scale, the important parts of the map were shown to be larger than others, Indian cartographic traditions also covered the locations of the Pole star, and other constellations of use. These charts may have been in use by the beginning of the Common Era for purposes of navigation, other early maps in India include the Udayagiri wall sculpture—made under the Gupta empire in 400 CE—showing the meeting of the Ganges and the Yamuna. The 8th-century scholar Bhavabhuti conceived paintings which indicated geographical regions, the boundaries of land, granted to the Brahman priests of India by their patrons, were described in detail. The descriptions indicated good geographical knowledge and in one case over 75 details of the land granted have been found, the Chinese records of the Tang dynasty show that a map of the neighboring Indian region was gifted to Wang Hiuen-tse by its king. The Iranian geographers Abū Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdānī and Habash al-Hasib al-Marwazi set the Prime Meridian of their maps at Ujjain, in the early 11th century, the Persian geographer Abu Rayhan Biruni visited India and studied the countrys geography extensively. He was considered the most skilled when it came to mapping cities and he also wrote extensively on the geology of India. In 1154, the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi included a section on the cartography and geography of India and its neighboring countries in his world atlas, italian scholar Francesco Lorenzo Pullè reproduced a number of Indian maps in his magnum opus La Cartografia Antica dellIndia
41.
Pole star
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Pole star or polar star is a name of Polaris in the constellation Ursa Minor, after its property of being the naked-eye star closest to the Earths celestial north pole. Indeed, the name Polaris, introduced in the 18th century, is shortened from New Latin stella polaris, the south celestial pole lacks a bright star like Polaris to mark its position. At present, the star nearest to the celestial south pole is the faint Sigma Octantis. In a more general sense, a star may be any fixed star close to either celestial pole of any given planetary body. It might refer to any star in the Earths remote history or future. The identity of the stars gradually changes over time because the celestial poles exhibit a slow continuous drift through the star field. The primary reason for this is the precession of the Earths rotational axis, precession causes the celestial poles to trace out circles on the celestial sphere approximately once every 26,000 years, passing close to different stars at different times. In classical antiquity, Beta Ursae Minoris was closer to the north pole than Alpha Ursae Minoris. The ancient name of Ursa Minor, anglicized as cynosure, has itself become a term for guiding principle after the constellations use in navigation. α Ursae Minoris was described as ἀειφανής always visible by Stobaeus in the 5th century and it was known as scip-steorra in 10th-century Anglo-Saxon England, reflecting its use in navigation. Nicolaus Lucensis published a collection of Marian poetry under the title Cynosura seu Mariana Stella Polaris in 1655, the name stella polaris was coined in the Renaissance, even though at that time it was still several degrees away from the celestial pole. Gemma Frisius determined this distance as 3°7 in the year 1547, in the Hindu Puranas, the north star is personified under the name of Dhruva. As of October 2012, Polaris had the declination +89°19′8″, the celestial pole will be nearest Polaris in 2100 and will thereafter become more distant. Due to the precession of the equinoxes, the role of North Star has passed from one star to another in the remote past, in 3000 BCE, the faint star Thuban in the constellation Draco was the North Star. At magnitude 3.67 it is only one-fifth as bright as Polaris, in the Roman era, the celestial pole was about equally distant from α Ursae Minoris and β Ursae Minoris. The precession of the equinoxes takes about 25,770 years to complete a cycle, Polaris mean position will reach a maximum declination of +89°3223, which translates to 1657 from the celestial north pole, in February 2102. Its maximum apparent declination will be +89°3250.62, which is 1629 from the north pole. Gamma Cephei will become closer to the celestial pole than Polaris around 3000 CE
42.
Mappa mundi
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A mappa mundi is any medieval European map of the world. Such maps range in size and complexity from simple schematic maps 25 millimetres or less across to elaborate wall maps, the term derives from the Medieval Latin words mappa and mundi. Approximately 1,100 mappae mundi are known to have survived from the Middle Ages, of these some 900 are found illustrating manuscripts and the remainder exist as stand-alone documents. Zonal maps are pictures of the East Hemisphere, because most surviving Zonal maps are found illustrating Macrobius Commentary on Ciceros Dream of Scipio, this type of map is sometimes called Macrobian. In their simplest and most common form, Zonal mappae mundi are merely circles divided into five parallel zones, T-O maps, unlike zonal maps, illustrate only the habitable portion of the world known in Roman and medieval times. The landmass was illustrated as a divided into three portions by a T. These three divisions were the continents of Asia, Africa and Europe, the vast majority of T-O maps place east at the top, hence the term orienting a map from the Latin word oriens for east. The assertion that T-O maps depict a flat earth, while common, is unwarranted, the circle of the lands in a T-O can just as easily be fit onto the sphere of the Earth as onto a flat, disk-shaped Earth. Fourteen large quadripartite maps are found illustrating different manuscripts of Beatus of Liébanas popular Commentary on the Apocalypse of St John and these Beatus maps are believed to derive from a single original which was used to illustrate the missions of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ. The complex or great world maps are the most famous mappae mundi, although most employ a modified T-O scheme, they are considerably more detailed than their smaller T-O cousins. These maps show coastal details, mountains, rivers, cities, towns, some include figures and stories from history, the Bible and classical mythology. Also shown on maps are exotic plants, beasts and races known to Medieval scholars only through Roman. Prior to its destruction in World War II, the Ebstorf map at 3.5 m across was the largest surviving mappa mundi, today that honor is held by the surviving center portion of the Hereford map which is 147 cm across and 175 cm top to bottom. Other important maps in this group are the Cotton or Anglo-Saxon map, the Psalter map, the somewhat later mappae mundi that accompany the popular Polychronicon of Ranulf Higden should probably be viewed as degenerate form of the earlier complex maps. Complex mappae mundi include, To modern eyes, mappae mundi can look superficially primitive, however, mappae mundi were never meant to be used as navigational charts and they make no pretence of showing the relative areas of land and water. Rather, mappae mundi were schematic and were meant to different principles. The simplest mappae mundi were diagrams meant to preserve and illustrate classical learning easily, the zonal maps should be viewed as a kind of teaching aid—easily reproduced and designed to reinforce the idea of the Earths sphericity and climate zones. T-O maps were designed to illustrate the three land masses of the world as it was known to the Romans and their medieval European heirs
43.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
44.
Tabula Rogeriana
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The Nuzhat al-mushtāq fikhtirāq al-āfāq, most often known as the Tabula Rogeriana, is a description of the world and world map created by the Arab geographer, Muhammad al-Idrisi, in 1154. Al-Idrisi worked on the commentaries and illustrations of the map for fifteen years at the court of the Norman King Roger II of Sicily, the map is oriented with the North at the bottom. It remained the most accurate world map for the three centuries. The text incorporates exhaustive descriptions of the physical, cultural, political and socioeconomic conditions of each region, to produce the work, al-Idrisi interviewed experienced travelers individually and in groups on their knowledge of the world and compiled only that part. On which there was complete agreement and seemed credible, excluding what was contradictory, Roger II had his map engraved on a silver disc weighing about 300 pounds. It showed, in words, the seven climatic regions, with their respective countries and districts, coasts and lands, gulfs and seas, watercourses. It was to all available data on the location and climate of the world’s main centers of population. King Roger himself enthusiastically interviewed travelers passing through his kingdom, and agents, in 1154, just a few weeks before the king died, al-Idrisi’s book was finally complete. Written in Arabic and Latin and accompanied by maps, it presented the world as a sphere and it calculated the circumference to be 37,000 kilometres — an error of less than 10 percent — and it hinted at the concept of gravity. This was complemented by a smaller, circular world map in which the south was drawn at the top and Arabia, al-Idrisi’s book came to be known as Kitab Rujar and the circular world map was engraved onto a silver tablet. Sadly, both the book and the map appear to have been destroyed during civil unrest shortly afterward. Thus our understanding today of al-Idrisi’s conclusions is based on a version of a second book that he wrote for Roger’s son. Manuscripts of this so-called “Little Idrisi” are held today in a handful of European libraries, on the work of al-Idrisi, S. P. Scott commented, The compilation of Edrisi marks an era in the history of science. Not only is its historical information most interesting and valuable, for three centuries geographers copied his maps without alteration. The mechanical genius of the author was not inferior to his erudition, ten manuscript copies of the Book of Roger currently survive, five of which have complete text and eight of which have maps. Two are in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, including the oldest, another copy, made in Cairo in 1553, is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The most complete manuscript, which includes the map and all seventy sectional maps, is kept in Istanbul. Bacharach, Jere L. Medieval Islamic Civilization, An Encyclopedia, ISBN 978-0-415-96690-0 Harley, John Brian and Woodward, David
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Muhammad al-Idrisi
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Muhammed al-Idrisi was born in Ceuta, then belonging to the Almoravids. Al-Idrisi was born into the large Hammudid family of North Africa and Al-Andalus, Al-Idrisi was born in the city of Ceuta, where his great-grandfather had been forced to settle after the fall of Hammudid Málaga to the Zirids of Granada. He spent much of his life travelling through North Africa and Al-Andalus. He visited Anatolia when he was barely 16 and his travels took him to many parts of Europe including Portugal, the Pyrenees, the French Atlantic coast, Hungary, and Jórvík. Because of conflict and instability in Al-Andalus al-Idrisi joined contemporaries such as Abu al-Salt in Sicily, for Roger it was inscribed on a massive disc of solid silver, two metres in diameter. On the geographical work of al-Idrisi, S. P. Scott wrote in 1904, not only is its historical information most interesting and valuable, but its descriptions of many parts of the earth are still authoritative. For three centuries geographers copied his maps without alteration, the mechanical genius of the author was not inferior to his erudition. Al-Idrisi inspired Islamic geographers such as Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun and his map also inspired Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama. Al-Idrisi in his famous Tabula Rogeriana mentioned Irlandah-al-Kabirah, according to him, from the extremity of Iceland to that of Great Ireland, the sailing time was one day. Although historians note that both al-Idrisi and the Norse tend to understate distances, the location this reference is thought to have possibly pointed to. Al-Idrisi mentioned that Chinese junks carried leather, swords, iron and he mentions the glassware of the city of Hangzhou and labels Quanzhous silk as the best. As well as the maps, al-Idrisi produced a compendium of information with the title Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq fikhtiraq al-afaq. The title has been translated as The book of pleasant journeys into faraway lands or The pleasure of him who longs to cross the horizons and it has been preserved in nine manuscripts, seven of which contain maps. The translated title of this work attracted favourable comment from the team selecting lists of names for features expected to be discovered by the New Horizons probe reconnoitring the Pluto system, the Al-Idrisi Montes is a geographical feature in that system named after him. This was one of the first Arabic books ever printed, the first translation from the original Arabic was into Latin. The Maronites Gabriel Sionita and Joannes Hesronita translated a version of the text which was published in Paris in 1619 with the rather misleading title of Geographia nubiensis. Not until the middle of the 19th century was a translation of the Arabic text published. This was a translation into French by Pierre Amédée Jaubert, more recently sections of the text have been translated for particular regions
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