Great freaking work. Have been waiting for someone to do something like this for years.
We also would have some inputs on some of the short-lived territories in the U.S. West that were important and had a role in later regional development. How much do we need to substantiate the addition of a specific territory to the project?
Aside from the "lost state of Franklin", there were territories like Jefferson/Colona, Huron, Lincoln, Shoshone and a number of others that pop up from the late 1850's up to the 1890's.
Yes, Tufte did much to popularize the Minard map related to Napoleon, but there were map dealers that had been intrigued by it and discussing it for quite a while prior to that. Those discussions can leak into academia and pollinate a whole new batch of discussions.
Virality as part of the ebb and flow of popular culture is interesting. But, we find it as interesting when an old map will somehow drift through the pace layers of culture and become a discussion point. That resurfacing of an older map could allude to deeper issues and mechanisms that are ongoing.
You see those dwindling circles of Bison population and it hits you that not only could this be reoccurring, but perhaps the disappearance of other species could have similar cascading reactions. Some have pointed out that with the loss of the primary food source of the Bison, friction with settlers escalated quickly. It also had huge impacts in the soil of the West. Maybe the dust bowl wouldn't have been as cataclysmic.
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Unfortunately we're concerned that even viral maps can be lost over time. They become dead links. And somehow even the wonderful people at Internet Archive can't save everything.
This is part of why we push cartographers we know to print something they've done at the end of each year. Paper is astoundingly enduring. If there was one map that you did and it resonates with you, please print it out. Build a small portfolio of hard copies over the next few years. Your work is worth printing!
Was tremendously intrigued to see Marcou's name and position on the topic that came up in this discussion. He's a titan in historical geology.
But I can't think of any early maps that identify this people group or mountain range. Especially early on (16th -17th century). Solid, reliable depictions of the Central American interior come late, many in the late 18th and early 19th century.
Identifying people groups was pretty darned important. Think to those early maps for New England, identifying people groups were as abundant as placenames and detailed landform. Take the Blaeu for New England, abundant in native peoples...
https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~3...
I appreciate Marcou's map (1890) being a historical recreation of that region of Nicaragua, but I would have expected this tribal name to be an anchoring notation throughout early maps of the region from the beginning. But maybe I'm missing something.
Just wanted to put your fears and concerns at ease, if I could.
Have interacted with Mr Rumsey for at least thirty years, and have always admired his humility, scholarship and efforts. Genuinely he's had an interest in cartography and history that has always had both breadth and depth. Have always been impressed by his desire to learn and to also invite people into the discussion. I think his efforts online have provided invaluable resources, by making high resolution scans available for free, without a catch (no need for an email, or account to use). Have met plenty of teachers that download his maps for class discussion and decoration too.
As for "create/alter" online data... that would be incredible, and the only instances I've bumped into of misattributed or faked maps have been a few things on r/mapporn years ago, which could easily be debunked with some research.
Should say too, if you ever want to truly experience the maps and all the resources available, if you find yourself in the Bay Area, take time to wander down to Stanford, there are thousands upon thousands of these maps available for you to review in person. And the staff are just as nice and smart as Mr Rumsey.
I would say that I know lots of people, for a long time - but that doesn't mean I know what they think/intend or do. I don't know that I can vouch for anyone else.
If someone joins a secret society, how do I know what that means to them? Being charitable towards these people (and there are valid reasons not to be) we can say that they may believe that it is perfectly acceptable to withhold information and mislead others, because there is a 'greater good' objective being met in doing so. Ie they think it is perfectly acceptable that I am kept in the dark (for my own good), with no ability to discern things for myself. People in elite positions, with say control of historical artifacts etc, are especially able/liable to take this position. And that is fine.
But it is also fine for me to refuse to accept their information, to refuse to trust whatever they are pushing. When I know they are 'bonesmen', I know that I am unable to discern the reality or truth of what they propose - there can be no trust. What oaths have they taken? Why would they join such a society? Its not just a bit of fun. When they admit they are members of a secret society - and skull and bones is deeply involved in the management of society, counting presidents as members - we can conclude that it is most likely that there are covert reasons for what is done.
Sorry to be crude, but whatever-it-is they they can stick it up their a**. Why trust evidence from people who are untrustworthy?
Mastodon has been the social media experience we've been hoping to someday find. Much more content rich than twitter, and discussions that go somewhere interesting.
There are too many bright people on Mastodon, and it's wonderful... just a few...
Rob Carlson (author of "Biology is Technology...")
@rob_carlson@mastodon.world
George Dyson (great for history of science posts)
@gdyson@sciencemastodon.com
We come at this from a strange perspective, as we dealt in old maps for the last thirty years or so, mostly paper, but on occasion things on silk, cotton or rayon.
It's an amazing non-proprietary technology, paper. Even things that are water damaged over the centuries, or obscured by foxing (a kind of staining), many times can be reversed and brought back to a clean state(we've worked some near miracles ourselves on some 18th century maps just recently). Without vulnerability to bit-flip, or cosmic rays compromising the data and rendering a work useless and corrupt, paper is lo-tech and easily enduring.
The paper map also enables a comprehensive view of the subject at many different scales, without having to move a cursor, pinch or expand... none of that, your eyes just take in and adjust. The benefit is an understanding of context and relationship. When we do presentations at schools it always interests us that there is a fragmented understanding of how things relate for some students, which almost feels like an artifact of digital cartography. In a digital world the constant zooming in an out, first to find the greater region, and then to reach down into the detail of a street or land feature. The problem is at that tight detailed scale, it's hard to see how it relates to much of its surroundings. You can push around at that detailed level and form some understanding, but it feels abstract, especially for those that don't have the best visual memory. The paper map affords a certain level of pattern recognition at different scales of detail without constant enlarging and reorienting.
We have maps going as far back as the late 15th century with the matrix of the paper being made of nothing more than cotton fiber, not gold or titanium, just simple cotton. When we read of the challenge of preserving the digital world and the technological progress of our species, it does concern us that even the best storage technologies available might reach 100 years or so.
Timothy O'Reilly in a talk a few years ago mentioned the danger of how technology can be lost. He mentioned how the great church, Hagia Sophia was the largest building on earth for about 1000 years, but then there was a long pause before anything came close to its stature again, almost as if the technical understanding of how to build at that scale was lost. In an era where almost everything is developed, distributed and saved in a digital format, perhaps we should print more hard copies, not just for backup purposes, but maybe for the unique perspective that that simple 2 dimensional surface can supply.
We also would have some inputs on some of the short-lived territories in the U.S. West that were important and had a role in later regional development. How much do we need to substantiate the addition of a specific territory to the project? Aside from the "lost state of Franklin", there were territories like Jefferson/Colona, Huron, Lincoln, Shoshone and a number of others that pop up from the late 1850's up to the 1890's.