I really enjoyed this! It's interesting to see the evolution of mapmaking. And your passing observation at the end, rang true, when you said (more or less) "their maps showed exactly what they wanted them to show."
Thank you. So much fresh information! I notice this topic didn’t draw the huge viewer numbers of some other lectures, maybe because it’s not as exciting on the surface, but I found it well worth my time. Now I’m going to rewatch it to try to absorb the many details.
Regarding the Macrobian map with north at the top: It is said that magnetic compasses arrived in Europe from China in the 12th centuries. It is said that sailors wanted to draw magnetic lines on their maps and lay their compasses and maps so that the map magnetic lines pointed in same direction as their compass arrow.
John, I have an old friend Dan Terkla, Indiana Wesleyan, who’s area of study is Medieval maps and paradigms. Just wondering if he was one of those 12. Love your work . . Cheers
Referring to minutes 59:34 to 1:00:20, I would suggest that the horizontal beam of the letter "T" is not meant to represent rivers, but rather the Black Sea (separating Ukraine from Turkey) and the Red Sea (separating Egypt from Arabia and Sinai).
Yes, that's a sensible idea with our modern idea of continents, but that is not correct. The Nile and the Don are the border of the continents for the ancients.
I have a great book published by the Smithsonian - Great Maps: The world’s masterpieces explored and explained. Has most of the maps he talks about and many more, great book.
That’s actually a subject of some debate along Book of Mormon apologists. If you accept Joseph Smith as the translator, not the author of the book, then you might conclude that the Nephites oriented their direction in relation to the sea. So Joseph Smith may have misinterpreted the directional words in the Book of Mormon. Of course, this gets into the question of what a “divine translation” even means in the first place, which might not be the direction you were going in with your question.
20 kilometers was max distance what people moved 100 years ago, selling eggs to buy salt, city people didnt move even kilometer, stupid living away from work
