Tag: Pleiades

• Ptolemy’s world, measured

  

  Ptolemy wrote the ancient world down as a table of coordinates. I matched 2,358 of his places to where they really are: shrink his longitudes by 0.72 and the map falls into place, but Scotland is still turned on its side and Sri Lanka is 15 times too big.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  Europe, history, Map accuracy, old maps, Pleiades, Roman, Romans, World, world maps

• The world according to the Hereford Mappa Mundi

  

  I set the largest surviving medieval map of the world beside a modern one. Its directions from Jerusalem are mostly right; its scale is not: the Holy Land is drawn 4.5 times too big, and Britain has 8% of its names.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  history, Map accuracy, medieval, old maps, Pleiades, religion, World, world maps

• By road and by sea: the fastest way from Rome to anywhere in the Roman Empire

  

  By road alone Carthage was 210 days’ walk from Rome. With a ship it was 6. I added the sea to my map of Roman roads, with sailing speeds from ancient voyages and the summer etesian winds.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  Africa, coast and sea, Europe, history, Itiner-e, Pleiades, Roman, Roman roads, Romans, Ships and the sea, Transport

• The High Ones

  

  The Brigantes of northern England and the Brigantium of A Coruña share a name. A data history of the Celtic word for ‘high’, from -briga hillforts to burg, borough and Berg, and what it says about a Galicia–Yorkshire connection.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories

  archaeology, Atlantic Europe, Britain, Celtic, Europe, GeoNames, history, language and dialect, Languages, place names, Pleiades, Roman