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Interactive map of the Roman Empire now online
Imagine you’re in Rome, it’s 205 CE, and you’ve got to figure out the quickest way to transport wheat to Virunum, in what’s now Austria. Your transportation choices are limited: ox cart, mule, ship or by foot, and your budget is tight. What do you do?
Enter ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World. With it, you can survey the options that would have been available to an ancient Roman in that very predicament with the ease of getting directions via GPS.
Type in your starting point, destination, the goods you need to move, and the time of year. Voila! You can quickly see the most cost-effective way to transport the grain.
By generating new information about the ancient Roman transport network, ORBIS demonstrates how, more than anything else, the expansion of the empire was a function of cost.
ORBIS reconstructs the time spent and financial expense associated with pre-modern travel. By simulating movement along the principal routes of the Roman road network, the main navigable rivers and hundreds of sea routes, the interactive route map recreates the infrastructure of the entire pre-modern Roman world in a way that has never been done before.
Classics Professor Walter Scheidel and Stanford Digital Humanities Specialist Elijah Meeks developed the highly detailed digital model over the last eight months. It was officially launched May 2.
Story here. Interactive maps here.
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And now, a look at some really terrifying antique tools for brain surgery
As if it wasn’t scary enough in modern times.
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Jar in the Form of a Man with Disfigured Face
Peru, Moche, ca. 200-600 CEThe University of Missouri
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May 12th 1949: Berlin Blockade ends
On this day in 1949 the Soviet Union lifted their blockade of the Allies’ access to West Berlin which was under their control. The Soviets aimed to force the Allies to give them control over the whole of Berlin by preventing the sending of supplies to West Berlin. However, the Allies organised the Berlin Airlift which dropped supplies to the people of Berlin. The airlift was successful, and after almost a year the embarrassed Soviets lifted the blockade. Thus two German states were created: West Germany (under Allied control) and East Germany (under Soviet control). The crisis is considered one of the first crises of the Cold War.
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A beautiful Sumerian seal.
“The look on the ostrich’s face is priceless.”
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Unknown language found stamped in ancient clay tablet
In deciphering the tablet seen above, John MacGinnis of the University of Cambridge found that many of the names on the list are not from any currently known ancient language. “One or two are actually Assyrian and a few more may belong to other known languages of the period, such as Luwian or Hurrian,” he says, “but the great majority belong to a previously unidentified language.”
» via New Scientist
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On May 4th, 1970 Ohio National Guard troops opened fire on unarmed students at Kent State University who were protesting the American invasion of Cambodia. In a period of 13 seconds, the National Guard troops wounded nine and killed four. This map, prepared for the Commission on Campus Unrest, shows “the Commons” area on the Kent State Campus, the movement of the National Guardsmen, and the locations where students were shot.
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Lovers Plying a Rooster with Sake
ARTIST:Harunobu Suzuki
DATE:c. 1767The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
