Geography and Maps

Ever since I can remember (long before I could read), I had a strong sense of geography. For some reason, it always seemed to be an important matter to know exactly where I was. And when I knew where I was in a lot of different places, I built up a large storehouse of geographical points in my head and made up an internal map, with the cardinal directions (north-south-east-west) all pointing in the conventional directions. Even when I was two or three years old, I would follow attentively whichever route we took to get anywhere. Around my home town of Opa-Locka, Florida, I was then attuned to the location of places like the library, my sister’s elementary school, the house where some elderly friends of my parents lived, a little store that my sister and I would walk to (past a ferocious dog), the giant billboard with a giant on it on NW 27th Avenue, and an airport lying west of our home, which was at one end of a string of small apartments. Whenever we went to the beach (usually Haulover Beach, almost directly east of Opa-Locka), I would watch the landmarks out of the rear car window, carefully holding on to a small looped strap hanging down in front of me (to be safe in case of an accident!) with no seat belts, of course, in our ’55 Chevy family car. Once we took a long road trip to Albany, Georgia, where many of our relatives lived (I was three then). Although it was hard staying awake for long stretches, I was very much interested in seeing the Suwannee River when we crossed it.

This extensive orientation toward geography made me a natural at reading maps. One thing I liked to do as a little kid was to get the family U.S. road atlas and follow a particular numbered highway route from one end to another. It was no big jump to go on to the world atlas, so at a very early age, I was intimately acquainted with the names of the states, capitals, and world nations and territories. There was only one problem. The world atlas we had then reflected the world at the end of World War II, with large sections of Africa and Asia colored off as colonies of European countries (mainly Great Britain, France, and Portugal). So when Lyndon Johnson announced the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964 (in almost Pearl Harbor-like tones of outrage), I was concerned, even at seven years old. But what was this “North Vietnam” that our President was referring to as the bad guys? The only maps I had showed a place called “French Indochina”. But that was the way it was with many places. After World War II, Britain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, and (later) Portugal granted independence to an overwhelming majority of their old colonies and more recent trusteeships, causing much turmoil in some regions (especially Indochina, India/Pakistan, Congo, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine). A plethora of new, independent nations popped into existence over a span of the subsequent few decades, necessitating that I radically update my picture of the world.

In 1970, when I was in the eighth grade, my picture of the world was radically changed again when I checked out a book titled Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings by Charles Hapgood. In it was revealed the astonishing record of very old, accurate maps that often showed areas in the world before they were discovered! Many of these maps were based on portalanos, which were maps used by seafarers and which often were much more accurate than the maps seen often in academia. There were two old maps which showed Antarctica, the earliest being from 1512 (Antarctica wasn’t officially discovered until the nineteenth century!). And there was another old map that appeared to record a glacial advance into northern Europe, something that would go back thousands of years ago! Now the author theorized that features like this were probably copied from previous maps without the copier actually knowing what they signified. Hapgood believed that in ancient times, there was a great seagoing culture, typified by the Phoenicians, that explored and documented much of the world that we currently believe was only discovered during the last six centuries or so. That certainly seems to me to be more plausible than talking about lost continents or ancient astronauts to account for perceived historical discrepancies (although Hapgood was interested in Atlantis and Mu, as well as the notion that shifts in the Earth’s axis caused cataclysmic changes in the past).

My proclivity toward maps also made learning about the constellations and how to use celestial maps to find them relatively easy. I also heard a few years ago that there was a planetarium (I believe it was in Atlanta) that could show the night sky from the point of view of other known stars. I must have been mistaken about this, though, because the factors of the speed of light with the associated enormous distances, along with fainter stars closer and visible to the “target” star that are invisible to us (and which therefore could not be included), would seemingly have made this an incredibly complicated task. Actually, the idea of having a viable “three-dimensional” map of space, encompassing stars up to a galactic level, is something that the late science fiction writer Isaac Asimov had already revealed in his wonderful Foundation series about humankind’s “future” history on a galactic level. But it showed all of the stars with a “simultaneous” point of reference that disregarded the speed of light, faster-than-light travel having been made possible in Asimov’s fictional realm.

Finally, a discussion of maps would be incomplete without reference to the great advances in map access and quality we have through the Internet. I use MapMyRun.com to look for and measure, at my computer, running courses. My Works program has a map section as well. But it’s GoogleEarth that is totally amazing! I love to check out different spots in Florida, the U.S., and the world that interest me. Looking down on where I live from space, I can actually make out the two doghouses that are in my back yard! Some places, mainly the rural ones, don’t have very good resolution, but GoogleEarth is an ongoing work in progress. As is Google’s similar project to map the Moon in pictures!