Posts tagged as "fake"

Less A Map Of Vinland, More A Map Of Fakeland

Some uses of maps have remained relatively unchanged through the ages. We still use them to find out where we are and how to get somewhere else. Governments still use them to say "this is mine, that is yours". But as our planet has now been pretty comprehensively mapped, we don't use them to say "I got here first" that much anymore.

Which makes maps that prove that someone really did get there first extremely coveted and extremely valuable in about equal measures. The combination of value, national pride and good old human greed also makes early maps a fertile breeding ground for trickery and fakery.

The discovery of the fourth continent, after Europe, Asia and Africa, seems to have had more than its fair share of controversy.

Popular opinion holds that Cristoforo Columbo, better known as the anglicised Christopher Columbus, got to America first in 1492. Of course first is a loaded term; Columbus may have been the first European to set foot in the Americas but he certainly wasn't the first human on the continent. But did Columbus get there first?

Probably not; there's now growing evidence that a Norse expedition, led by Leif Ericson, landed on what is now Newfoundland in the 11th Century after being blown off course by a storm when travelling from Norway to Greenland. According to the Book of Icelanders, compiled around 1122 by Ari The Wise, Ericson first landed on a rocky and desolute place he named Helluland or Flat Rock Land, which may have been Baffin Island and then sailed for a further two days before landing again in a place he named Vinland, often mistranslated literally as Wineland but more likely to mean Land with Great Grass Fields.

Of course it would help if there was a map of Vinland, to underscore the I got there first point.

Deliciousness: bacon, Protect and Survive, outing the paleotards, Fake Carol and crop circles

It's been almost two weeks since one of these posts; I've been pretty much conferenced out, with FOWA London taking up a sizeable chunk of last week and the AGI's GeoCommunity mopping up any spare time the week before that.

The hallmark of any successful tech conference is appallingly bad wifi which, despite the best protestations of the conference organisers, always buckles under the strain around 30 minutes into the opening keynote. All of which has meant that my Delicious account has been on a bit of a diet recently, but here's what did make it through the wifi ...* Yet more bacon products make it to market. Most of them are novelty value only but surely there's scope for bacon flavoured mayo, for those moments when the perfect BLT is just out of reach? * Twickenham Fire Station tested its' air raid siren last week and memories of the Protect and Survive public service announcements on British TV at the height of the Cold War came flooding back. * My talk's at the AGI GeoCommunity conference seemed to get people talking; both seriously and somewhat tongue in cheek and I also managed to out the (neogeographer) Geoweb chair as an old school paleogeographer. * The CEO of the company I work for finally managed to achieve the accolade of being faked on Twitter. * And the source of all the crop circles was finally found in a town in the US with a strangely familiar name.

Posted via email from Gary's Posterous