The Romans had a map of Europe that was 22 feet long, but only 1 foot high. To fit these dimensions, the mapmaker smashed geographic areas, turned peninsulas on their sides, and made east face north. Europe is almost unrecognizable. Because of this, modern cartographers dismiss this Peutinger Map as flawed and impractical. They should look at it again.
Although the Roman Empire collapsed over 1,500 years ago, Ancient Romans continue to influence the modern world. They invented technologies that are still in use today, cars drive on still-functioning Roman roads and bridges, modern literature and art carry Roman influences, and almost a billion people speak a derivation of the language spoken in Rome 2,000 years ago. This timelessness owes not just to resilient structures, but also to Renaissance writers, who, over 1,000 years after the fall of Rome, translated and printed Roman texts for the general public to read. Europeans then copied Rome’s literary techniques, replicated and expanded upon their scientific experiments, and spread Roman thought around the world during the colonial era. From there, Rome’s ideas germinated, continuing to inspire today’s artists and scientists.
Because Rome has influenced us so much, it 's easy to assume that Romans thought like us. That they would look at a problem and solve it much the same way that we would. For the most part they did, but not in one very important way.
Close your eyes and think of a map of the geographic United States.
What did you see? More than likely, your mind came up with the familiar north on top, south on bottom style of map that we 've all been exposed to since childhood. We 've been taught that the Pacific Ocean goes on the left, the Atlantic on the right, and the states are sandwiched in between. It 's just the way things are done.
Typical map of the U.S.
Why do we think of geography this way? As anyone who 's used a compass before knows, the needle always points toward the magnetic North Pole, which is close to the northern axis of the earth. Ancient cartographers decided that this magnetic north would be the top of their maps.
Thing is, these first mapmakers could have just as easily made the top of the map what we think of today as south. If they had drawn maps this way, it would flip the way we think of the world. Everything would be just as accurate as it had been with magnetic north on top, but it would be confusing to those who 'd always used north-on-top maps.
This brings up the type of questions that cause pot-smoking dorm room denizens to freak out. Why can 't east be the top of the map? West? Southeast? Why not ignore magnetic north altogether? Why couldn 't any geographic location be north? Why not center a map on a city? Could geography be displayed in different format other than rectangles and globes? What about a spiral map?
You may be saying that these changes would distort distances and make a map inaccurate. Although this is true, most modern maps do the same thing. For example, today 's maps often inaccurately display Alaska as being the same size as the western half of the United States. It 's nowhere near the same size, and we know that, but we 've just chosen to accept this inaccuracy. Our maps are based on a commonly shared illusion.
Alaska. Bigger than Europe.
This brings us back to the Ancient Romans. It seems that they made maps and viewed geography differently than us. Although few maps survived the fall of the Roman Empire, a monk in the 13th century uncovered one of the few that did and duplicated it. The transcription sat in a library for two centuries before German Konrad Peutinger discovered it, realized its importance, and made it public.
In some ways, this Peutinger Map is similar to something printed off Google Maps. A detailed representation of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, the map has major geographic features, highways, and cities from as far west as Spain to as far east as India. The two capitals of the Roman Empire, Rome and Constantinople, appear much larger than other cities. Likely drawn for those traveling long distances, the map includes inns and bathhouses where weary travelers could find rest. It also features tourist destinations, such as temples, ports, and monuments. Like directions from Google Maps, the Peutinger Map lists distance from one location to the next.
The Peutinger Map is remarkable in its complexity and detail, but what makes it truly interesting is that it makes almost no geographical sense to modern eyes. First, it 's not square or the rectangle shape we see in our maps. Instead, it 's 22 feet from left to right, but only 1 foot high (CLICK HERE AND ZOOM to view the map in detail).
Making it this small is the only way to fit it on the page.
In addition, the map doesn 't obey our modern map rules. Although western Europe is on the left of the map and Asia is on the right, places are folded to fit the map 's short height. Western France, for example, borders the top of the map, while what we think of as northern France awkwardly faces towards the Middle East. England and Italy are horizontal instead of their familiar North-South orientation.
Smushed and twisted France.
In addition, some locations on the map are elongated, while others are compressed or deformed. When compared to surrounding areas, Italy is much longer than it appears on today 's maps, but Greece is smashed and twisted into an almost unrecognizable mass. The northern coast of Africa is a straight line. Bodies of water are much smaller than their true dimensions. The Mediterranean looks more like a river than a sea. The Black Sea resembles an earthworm.
This thing is the Black Sea. I think.
The map has other unusual features. Centered on Rome, the map seems to ripple outward, with geography closer to the city taking up more map space than areas to the far north and south. For example, northern Europe from the Alps to Scandinavia is the same height as the city Rome. Africa is half as tall as Italy.
Rome on a sideways Italy.
A lack of scientific instrumentation can explain some of the Peutinger Map 's unusual construction. We have satellites and odometers to tell us distances. They did not. They didn 't know how big Africa is because they hadn 't explored south of the equator. Although the Romans knew the world was round, they may have believed that most of the world 's land mass stretched horizontally, explaining the map 's ribbon-like appearance.
Still, the Romans knew distances and the shape of landmasses within the Roman Empire. Not only had they explored the area around the Mediterranean, but they had seen Greek maps that were amazingly precise. For example, Greek thinker Eratosthenes drew a map 500 years before the Peutinger Map that was so accurate in its depiction of the Mediterranean, it looked Eratosthenes had access to a satellite image.
Reproduction of Erastene’s map.
Why didn 't the Romans just copy Eratosthenes or other Greek maps? If the Romans knew how to make 'normal ' maps, why is the Peutinger Map shaped like unraveled bubble tape?
Cartographer Simon Garfield believes that the Peutinger Map is a product of a 'cartographic dark ages. ' For whatever reason, cartography devolved following Eratosthenes. The Roman weren 't as good as the Greeks in making maps.
I think Garfield is wrong. The Peutinger Map wasn 't meant to be accurate. It was meant to be practical.
To me, the cartographer who drew the Peutinger Map 's unusual shape and awkward-appearing geography did so to make the map easier to carry. Whoever used the map back in the 300 A.D.s likely traveled extensively along Rome 's thousands of miles of roads. For long journeys, they would need something that they could roll up and stuff in a backpack, not a clunky 100 percent accurate, rectangular map. To travel from one place to another, they wouldn 't need to know the exact dimensions of Crete, just whether to turn left or right at intersections.
This is what happens to most maps after you unfold them.
In addition, an accurate map 'filled with empty, unimportant spaces like the Sahara Desert 'would have to be folded multiple times for storage. And as anyone who 's used a car map before knows, it 's almost impossible to fold along its intended creases. Over time, ancient paper would tear, making the map unreadable. Large maps are also hard to hold.
Multi-page atlases are little better. They often require flipping pages between areas that are adjacent to one another and they divide awkwardly shaped areas, like the state of Florida, into non-contiguous sections. Maps and atlases can often be confusing, inaccurate, and hard to use.
On the other hand, a traveler could roll out a Peutinger Map scroll to the section of road they 're traveling on and see which direction they need to turn to next. Because of this, I 'd argue that for travelers, a map in the model of the Peutinger Map was more efficient than not only Greek maps, but the maps and atlases used in cars in the late 20th century. In my opinion, until the recent advent of Google Maps, Romans did road maps better than us.
With its topography and cartography aspects, the Peutinger map is probably the most important piece of mapping of the ancient world. Such a detailed piece of military, cartography, and topography is rare. It gives us insight into how the ancients viewed their world and it shows us that people in the 1900s didn’t know how to make road maps.
Javier Lopez and Brad Folsom
