Articles tagged with: GeoNotes
Exploring Mesoamerican Ruins with Google Street View
Google Maps’ Street View has long been a wonderful tool for exploring urban environments from afar. Now Google, in a partnership with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, has taken Street View to the ruins of thirty ancient Mesoamerican cities, and hopefully up to sixty more within the next year. Viewers can explore a number of Classical Mayan sites, …
Geographical Illiteracy in Civilization V
Since 1991, the Civilization series of computer games has been the best product on offer for the historically or geographically inclined gamer. The latest incarnation of the game, Civilization V, features dozens of unique playable “civilizations” that include broad linguistic or ethnic groups like the Celts and Polynesians, long-gone empires like Babylonia and Carthage, and modern states like the Netherlands. …
Mongolia’s Three Manly Skills, the Olympics, and Genghis Khan
In anticipation of future posts exploring the geography of Olympic medals, this post will focus on the sporting fortunes of one country in particular—Mongolia. Mongolia tends to perform very well in on the basis of medals won weighed by population or GDP. In 2012, Mongolia earned two silver and two bronze medals, placing it third in total medals per dollar …
Extreme Salt Lakes Around the World
The world has many famous salt lakes. Central Asia’s Caspian and Aral Seas, alongside the Dead Sea between Jordan and Israel, are perhaps the best known. Utah’s Great Salt Lake and California’s Mono Lake and Salton Sea are also by no means obscure. These bodies of water are all fascinating in their own right, but by the standards of the …
Egypt’s Storied Wadi Tumilat
Most monuments from Egyptian antiquity are grand, conspicuous, stone-made, and thoroughly impractical. The Wadi Tumilat, a defunct Nile distributary branching East from the delta, boasts no such monuments. In ancient times it was a vital part of the Canal of the Pharaohs, a major feat of ancient civil engineering that linked the Red Sea to the Mediterranean via the Nile. …
The World According to Canada and Texas
The portrayal of other countries in the humorous map “How Typical (Central) Canadians See the Rest of the World” contrasts sharply with the global vision found in its counterpart about Texans. Though it lacks geographical precision, the map about Central Canadians’ attitudes, found on the Canadian creator’s blog, effusively praises different countries for their natural beauty, the friendliness of their …
