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Complete Scans of the Penguin Atlas of Medieval History (1961)
- mhurron 11y agoIs it missing some labeling or a legend or are there just marked areas that don't really have a name? I mean areas like that around the Avar Khanate or the large area where modern Russia is in the A.D. 650 map.
- benbreen 11y agoEach map in the actual book has a page of text accompanying it and it usually explains what the shaded areas refer to. As I recall, the absence of a name is meant to imply a pre-state, tribal zone, and the different patterns indicate the basic cultural-linguistic group involved (i.e., diagonal lines = eastern European Slavic tribes, etc).
- contingencies 11y agoOn the subject of historic maps of trade routes... I'm very interested in Asian history. One thing I've noticed is that, when viewing the 'Maritime Silk Road' maps in various countries' museums and throughout various sources, then ports and paths are completely different. Sure, there's some similarity, but the fact is these things are vague as all hell and represent some seriously dangerous implied semantics ("route was there, route was not there" sort of binary logic). The reality is that we know next to nothing about early human trade, much of which was conducted the the years BC by water. This is well backed up by archaeology, which places things like Roman coins in Vietnam, Indian silver and minerals in Melanesia, or even (for a later example) coins from 15th century Zanzibar in remote parts of northern Australia. People should bare these realities in mind when viewing this sort of thing, which essentially amounts to 1960s era fantasy-maps of the popular past. We can do better - but not much better - today; historical cartography still has a long way to go.