
Complete Scans of the Penguin Atlas of Medieval History (1961) - benbreen
http://www.learn.columbia.edu/courses/medmil/pages/non-mma-pages/maps/penguin.html
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contingencies
On 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.

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mhurron
Is 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.

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benbreen
Each 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).

