Historical maps on GoogleEarth
Monday, March 2nd, 2009 | News
GoogleEarth skipped the 3rd dimension and went straight into the 4th one. If you want to see historical maps - and if you have GoogleEarth installed in your computer, - you simply need to expand the Featured Content -> Rumsey Historical Maps (Layers panel).
Unfortunately, no Medieval maps are available yet. Some of the earliest maps available are of Asia 1710 , Paris 1716 and Africa 1787.
However, it would be technically possible to have a Middle Ages map. In fact, how interesting would it be to have the our perception of the world through time?…
I am not sure whether the modeling required for these layers that juxtapose to Earth are flexible enough to allow a justaposition of the Earth the way that Lactantius or Cosmas Indicopleustes proposed…
And this is where Digital Humanities becomes so wonderfully complex. A historical problem becomes a problem of Mathematics, CAD and programming. How to juxtapose a flat texture to an interactive 3D model?:) Maybe virtual worlds such as Second LIfe offer some interesting approaches, as they constanly need to map 3D structures on 2D surfaces.
Comments are welcome!
Posted by Ana Boa-Ventura