Map Keys 2006-01-28

More news brief carographical goodness

In this edition: The Chinese World Map of 1418, did they or didn’t they?; Mexican Migrant Maps; and photos that are the next best thing to actually being there.

Columbus: Did he or didn’t he?

On 12 Jan 2006, the magazine The Economist published an article that shook up the world and the world of maps. Well known is the hoary saw “In fourteen hundred ninety two, Columbus sailed the Ocean blue“. It’s a part of Western historical canon that the Spanish-financed Italian mariner is acqnowledged to be the first European to visit what we today call the Americas.

A section of the 1763 copy of the 1418 Chinese world map (copyright The Economist

Over the years many alternative hypotheses have been advanced that place the date of extra-American contact even earlier, none of which seem fully proven. And now the Chinese have revealed another bit of evidence that suggests that it happened even eariler than Columbus; that a Chinese admiral, Zheng He, visited America in the early 1400’s. Of the first Americans, the map records thus:

The map itself is reputed to be not the original but a copy of it executed in 1763. There is considerable controversy surrounding this; some are convinced it proves the claim of historian Gavin Menzies, who, in his 2003 book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World makes the claim that the Chinese circumnavigated the globe before the hallowed European navigators; others aver that it is a forgery (a case which The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins truculently makes here)

This has set off a debate on, as one might expect, more than just “who did it first”, but attitudes about history and race. This looks like this one might be argued for a while to come.

As someone once said to us: “If Beethoven had tragically died in a plane crash at the age of 22 the history of music would have changed beyond recognition. As well as that of aviation.”

Well, It looked good on paper

Humane Borders is a faith-based, humanitarian organization that looks to the need of Mexican immigrants coming over the US-Mexico border in order to find work. Specifically, they place emergency water stations in many locations near the US-Mexico border.

Though the work has political implication, the drive is strictly humanitarian. Between 1 Oct 1999 and 30 Sep 2004, thier site notes, more than 650 migrants died while trying to cross southern Arizona’s deserts. Their aim is to mitigate this tragic consequence.

Recently, as reported by CNN, a Mexican government agency planned to distribute about 70,000 copies of a map produced by Humane Borders to Mexican citizens. Negative concern held that this would lead to increased illegal immigration into the USA; opposing opinion seemed to be that this would prevent death to those who were going to be making the journey anyway.

Eventually the idea has been scrapped, though; According to CBS, it developed that there was a fear that this would give anti-immigrant groups clues as to where to find illegal immigrants.

I can reach out and touch you

Olivo Barbieri has a unique way of looking at the world, as his aerial photographs will quickly reveal. Says Metropolismag.com:

Olivo Barbieri’s Las Vegas. In focus: “New York, New York” (copyright Barbieri)

Barbieri has an ongoing project, called Site Specific, that is steadily compiling such aerial photos of cities. So far, he’s imaged Rome; Amman, Jordan; Las Vegas; Los Angeles, and Shanghai. The effect is produced by shooting with what is called a “tilt-shift” lens from a helicopter platform. Says the photographer:

Next on his list: New York, New York.

(Thanks as usual to Cartography and The Map Room)