Saturday, May 10, 2014

http://sexycodicology.tumblr.com/post/80366035594/victusinveritas-mappae-mundi-t-and-o-maps
(Scroll down a bit to get to the pictures.)

Whilst extremely inaccurate, these "T and O" maps represented the medieval worldview, and if you can't read the small scribblings in these pictures, it's something like this:

The T itself represents the Mediterranean Sea, although I don't know what that divide between Europe and Asia is. Perhaps the Aegean? Anyway, Jerusalem definitely is the center of the universe, so it had to be placed in the middle. Now, T and O maps were meant to be more metaphorical than literal, but then again the literal maps weren't much better. Part of me wants to ask how the hell do you fuck that one up so badly, but then again if you just threw me into a random location, told me to draw a map, and then sat back and crossed your arms until I did so, I probably wouldn't do much better. Still, I'm fairly certain someone should've realized the Mediterranean wasn't shaped like that. Or that Great Britain, whilst triangular, wasn't an actual triangle. Or that Ireland wasn't a rectangle. That's usually what's in my mind when Google Maps fucks up. At least I'm not dependent on something like this. I don't know if people actually carried maps back then because you can be damned sure this wasn't useful.

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