Arainbow of tiny furrows spreads across a map of the contiguous United States, the lite-brite hues popping against a black backdrop, giving the appearance of roots or a vascular system.
To the casual observer, this is undeniably a work of art. But the image’s creator, Hungarian cartographer Robert Szucs, sees his work as primarily scientific. “You can call me an artist if you insist, but it still makes me smile a bit,” says Szucs. “I’m definitely still getting used to that.”
Rather than art, Szucs has a background in digital cartography and geographic information system (GIS) analysis. With a master’s in geography and GIS from the University of Szeged, Szucs has used these skills for everything from mapping orangutan movement and changes in Indonesian forest coverage to monitoring whale behavior in Alaska. “GIS is a collective name for all things geographic, spatial and mapping related,” he explains. “It's basically a tool set, and I've used it for widely different things.”
Szucs didn’t make artistic maps until a decade into his cartography career. While volunteering at a marine environmental research NGO in Portugal, he began to experiment in his free time with open-source software commonly used by cartographers to generate data visualizations. Through trial and error, Szucs learned how to create maps that are both informative and visually striking. Szucs works under the alias “Grasshopper Geography,” a reference to his Hungarian nickname, “Szöcske,” which translates to grasshopper.
The majority of Szucs’ maps depict expanses of land sectioned off by watersheds, the areas of land that comprise the drainage systems channeling rainwater from creeks to rivers to oceans. The cartographer found existing river maps uninspiring, and decided to use satellite data based on digital elevation models to create his own. “I’ve had this feeling for quite a while when looking at river maps, that maybe I could do better,” says Szucs. “I wanted to do justice to the beauty of rivers.” Szucs’ maps show the watersheds in a way that is both elegant and informative—though his color use is primarily an aesthetic choice, the variation in hues delineates different watersheds with scientific accuracy, with each color corresponding to a continuous river system. For example, on his map of the United States, the pink spider-webbing across nearly half the country represents the massive Jefferson-Mississippi-Missouri River system, which includes, of course, the parts of the Missouri and Mississippi river basins that are experiencing catastrophic flooding right now.
According to Matthew Ross, an assistant professor with Colorado State University’s Department of Watershed Sciences, the bright colors highlight key factors of watershed morphology. “Watershed size and shape can control a lot of important hydrologic and biogeochemical functions of rivers,” says Ross. “The maps show the real variation in the world of watershed sizes well.”
Szucs’ maps lack the sterility common in data visualizations—though scientifically valuable, they are filled with personal connection. His favorite maps are of places that hold deep meaning for him. “South Africa,” he says, “where I first moved from my parents’ house. Alaska, where I spent two summers, and where my soul is at home.” So far, Szucs has created 156 maps showing watersheds and river systems across the globe, ranging in scale from singular states to an entire seven-continent expanse. In addition to water systems, Szucs has also mapped forest coverage, and intends to attempt city streets as his next endeavor.
Though never displayed in a gallery setting, Szucs’ maps have received international attention. After posting the works on Etsy in 2016, Szucs was inundated with responses from individuals captivated by the colorful maps.
“My maps reveal that I was right to think you could do justice to the beauty of nature in a scientific way,” says Szucs. “They are important because they inspire millions of people to go out and appreciate nature more.”
On a Monday late in April 2020, the tiny, rocky, sparsely populated Norwegian island of Smøla, which had been sealed off from the outside world for three months, reopened its one point of access, a ferry terminal that connects it to the coastal cities of Trondheim and Kristiansund. The move brought joy to the residents of Smøla, who often travel to the mainland for supplies and recreation. It also gladdened tourists and adventurers, particularly those with an interest in the fabled land of Thule, also known as ultima Thule, whose exact location in the world has been debated for over two millennia. According to one recent school of thought, Smøla is the island with the strongest claim to that location: reopening Smøla thus meant that it was once again possible to set foot on Thule.
Thule’s enigmatic and complicated history begins in the fourth century BCE, when the ancient Greek explorer Pytheas left the port city of Massalia—now Marseille, France—in search of new trading opportunities in the Far North. Pytheas and his commercial backers had a special interest in finding amber, used as a form of currency, as well as tin, a key ingredient in manufacturing bronze. Sailing at first west, then north, Pytheas arrived at and mapped the coastline of Prettanikē—now the British Isles—and then boldly headed farther north into uncharted territory. And there the journey entered an unworldly realm. After a few days’ sail, Pytheas reached a place he described as neither earth nor sea, “but instead a sort of mixture of these similar to a marine lung, in which the earth and the sea and all things together are suspended, and this mixture is … impassable by foot or ship.” Pytheas landed nearby, on an island whose name he heard as Thule [TOO-lee]. Eventually he returned to Massalia and wrote his masterwork, On the Ocean, an account of his voyage and a treatise of enormous influence in the ancient world.
Greek explorer Pytheas traveled to what is now the British Isles and farther north in a trireme, exploring and mapping much of the coastline. He wrote of Thule, an island that people have searched for ever since. This illustration is by John F. Campbell from the 1909 book The Romance of Early British Life. (Chronicle/Alamy)
Unfortunately, like so many other ancient masterworks, the copy of On the Ocean meant to be preserved for posterity was lost when the great library at Alexandria burned down in 48 BCE. No other copy—presumably there were other copies in Marseille and elsewhere—has survived. All that is known of On the Ocean comes from a small and somewhat random set of quotes and paraphrases passed along by later geographers and historians like Strabo (early first century BCE) and Pliny the Elder (later in the same century).
These snippets of text seem to confirm that Pytheas actually had discovered a strange island in the remote Far North, in fact the remotest Far North of the known world—thus the adjective ultima, meaning “most extreme,” attached to it by the Roman poet Virgil. But where exactly was the island? No other explorer had returned to it in the centuries between the discovery and the destruction of the library. As a result, Strabo, Pliny, and other writers could only guess at Thule’s true location. Their speculation initiated a whole branch of Thule scholarship and exploration, all aimed at finding the place Pytheas had so intriguingly described. And as century after century went by without a definitive answer, Thule attained a kind of mythic stature. From the first century CE onward, Thule became more of an idea than an actual place, an abstract concept decoupled from the terrestrial map, simultaneously of the world and otherworldly. Poised at the edge of the known and inhabited Earth, it functioned as an emblem of mystical isolation, liminal remoteness, a real discovered place and yet unknown: “Out of SPACE—Out of TIME,” to quote Edgar Allan Poe in one of the countless literary allusions to the enigmatic island.
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Few places on Earth have been the subject of as much controversy, wrote the German historian Martin Ninck in 1945, referring to the search for Thule. The controversy arises from the thinness of the evidence—mostly just those scant surviving fragments from On the Ocean. The clues point in certain clear directions while leaving open a broad range of possibilities. Over the years, Iceland, Greenland, the Shetland Islands, the Faroe Islands, Saaremaa (an Estonian island), and islands along the north coast of Norway have all been viewed as contenders.
These postage stamps from the Faroe Islands reproduce part of the map Carta Marina created in 1539. It shows the Faroe Islands (Fare) with nearby Thule (Tile). The Faroe Islands is just one of many places in the world’s northern reaches that vie for the location of Thule. (Image via stamps.fo/public domain)
Since the early 20th century, though, two schools of thought have dominated the debate: that Thule is Iceland, and that it is Norway. The arguments for each side are compelling, yet the evidence is so ambiguous that for every plausible claim, the other side has forcefully advanced a counterclaim. Consequently Norway versus Iceland, as a scholarly debate, often looks very much like a stalemate, impossible to break.
The debate received a jolt, though, in 2010 with the publication of a study out of the Technical University of Berlin. The authors, two geodesists (geodesy is a branch of applied mathematics focused on maps and measurements), an expert in the study of Greek and Latin texts, and a historian of science, took an innovative approach. They began with the famous map of the oikoumenē—the ancient Greek name for the inhabited world—drafted by the second-century CE geographer Ptolemy. Although the map was sophisticated for its time, its coordinates were problematic, partly because of deficits in Ptolemy’s understanding of projection, partly because of errors in measurements of distances. The German team addressed the problems through reconstructionist geodesy, a method of detecting the errors accurately and correcting them systematically. The novel approach led to a solution striking in its precision. And to a happy, if surprising, outcome for everyone who favored Norway. Thule, according to the team, almost certainly must be the island of Smøla, a locale farther to the south than any of the Norwegian islands that had been on the longlist of contenders.
In 2010, a team of researchers used this world map, drafted by the geographer Ptolemy in the second century CE, to help calculate that Smøla, Norway, was a probable location for Pytheas’s Thule. (Wikimedia)
The confidence of the researchers in their finding can be seen plainly in a letter from the team leader, Dieter Lelgemann, to a journalist in Smøla in 2008, following a press release that announced the team’s in-progress discovery: “As about this old information there cannot be any doubt anymore,” he wrote. “You live on the mystic island of Thule, and this can of course be interesting for all tourists.”
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On the mystic island, the reaction was generally enthusiastic. Many of Smøla’s 2,000 permanent residents saw an opportunity. For the past few decades, the focus of the island’s tourism marketing had been sportfishing and wildlife tours, primarily for European and domestic markets. To be identified as Thule potentially opened up a much wider realm of tourist interest, international in scope. Before long, ideas for Thule-inspired merchandise entered into the picture: T-shirts, caps, jigsaw puzzles of antique maps, models of Greek merchant vessels. A marketing logo was designed that featured a ship sailing toward a midnight sun skimming the horizon in midsummer, just as Pytheas had described the sun in On the Ocean.
The sanguine view of an influx of Thule tourists has its roots in historical precedent, as tourists have been curious about Pytheas’s voyage for centuries. The Dutch historian and artist Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, for example, born in 1563, traveled to Norway’s North Cape to sketch landscapes of a coast that at the time stood among the contenders. In the 19th century, Thomas Cook & Son, forerunner of the late Thomas Cook Group, arranged tours to the North Cape and nearby islands and advertised them as journeys to an Arctic wasteland discovered by the ancient Greeks. And solo or small teams of adventurers set out on quests for Thule, including the renowned polar explorers Vilhjalmur Stefansson (the discoverer of several islands in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago) and Fridtjof Nansen (the first to cross the Greenland ice cap and later a Nobel Peace Prize laureate).
Then there are the Thule voyagers of the present, the tourists who pay homage to the statue of Pytheas in Marseille, or visit the Thule Bar in Lerwick on the Shetland Islands, or run in the annual ultima Thule marathon on Saaremaa, or leave their jobs to chase Thule clues and write about them, as Joanna Kavenna did in the much-lauded 2006 book, The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule.
Pytheas is celebrated in this statue in Marseille, France, the port from which he set sail on his northern voyage that included the discovery of Thule. (Flickr user graham chandler)
It’s not, though, as if even the most optimistic Smøla residents expected throngs of tourists. The interest in Thule has always been driven by a somewhat esoteric curiosity. None of the polar explorers or amateur adventurers who set out in search of the actual Thule were motivated by material or commercial interests. The search for Thule has been purely a search to solve a mystery, unlike, say, the search for the Northwest Passage as a European trade route to Asia. An abstruse mystery; still, even a slight boost to tourism makes a difference to a small island like Smøla that relies heavily on tourism revenue.
Making Smøla a Thule tourist destination has long been on the mind of Ernst Olav Blakstad. If anyone on Smøla knows Thule’s complex history, it’s this affable, exceptionally knowledgeable master mariner whose work has taken him across many of the same northern oceans traversed by Pytheas. He’s stocky, with the broad shoulders and muscular forearms of someone who could wrestle a thrashing shark into submission. From the second floor of a pub in Dyrnes, a village in the northwest corner of the island, he points out a house built by his grandfather and originally used for storing cod and repairing fishing nets. His uncles and father built a bigger structure for making nets and trawls; that building is now the pub we’re sipping coffee in. “My family has fished for cod from this island for four generations,” he says. He’s proud of the deep tradition, but thinks that for tourism to gain traction, it needs to be bold. “We need to think bigger,” he says. “We need to look beyond our fishing history, toward our rightful place in the major discoveries of the ancient world. We are a major discovery.”
And in fact, in the last few years, under the leadership of Einar Wikan, Smøla’s official business manager for the community, an assortment of new programs has been implemented to aggressively court tourism beyond the seasonal staple of sport fishers and wildlife viewers. Blakstad feels confident that in the expanded tourism scheme, Smøla’s identification as Thule will play a key role. “Thule tourists are dedicated people, searching for knowledge.”
Ernst Olav Blakstad, a mariner and sometime tour guide, examines several fishing net tags in his personal collection of maritime artifacts in Smøla. (F. Salazar)
For the less hardcore of the Thule searchers, however, Smøla-as-Thule has proved so far to be a hard sell. Hurtigruten, a major cruise line in the region, advertises the opportunity to “travel in the footsteps of the ancient Greek explorers,” but the nearest its cruises come to Smøla are stops at Kristiansund and Trondheim, still some distance (in the former case, two ferries and a bus) from the beach where the most famous of the Greek explorers may well have set foot. Lindblad Expeditions’ fleet of adventure cruise ships, including the National Geographic Explorer, has been making regular stops at Smøla, but most of the passengers who disembark have come to see the wildlife—Smøla has one of the densest concentrations of white-tailed eagles in northern Europe—or to tour the quaint fishing village of Veiholmen, at the far northern end of a long spit of land at the island’s northeast corner.
The difficulties in courting Thule tourists were summed up in a conversation with Jonathan Zaccaria, an expedition leader for Lindblad Expeditions who’d brought a group of adventure tourists to Smøla in 2018 aboard the National Geographic Explorer. After the Explorer put in, Blakstad, who occasionally gives Thule-oriented tours and talks, showed the group around the late–Iron Age fishing villages of Brattvær and Odden, but the passengers were restless. They wanted quaintness. They spent half of their day on Smøla in Veiholmen, the epitome of quaintness, with its fetching oceanfront kaffeebarer (coffee bars) and white clapboard houses bearing names from the era when Veiholmen built a new, more sheltered harbor: a tourist favorite is Latræva—lazy asses—marking the property to which the less diligent of the harbor excavators would retreat for unsanctioned breaks.
In the end, Zaccaria hadn’t been impressed: even with charming Veiholmen, Smøla considered as a whole was just too desolate, in his view, Thule or no Thule, to justify a cruise stop. “The countryside of the countryside” was how he characterized Smøla as a Thule destination in comparison with, say, Reykjavík on Iceland. And in fact, according to Zaccaria when we spoke in January, Lindblad had recently reviewed its upcoming expeditions and crossed Smøla off the list as, on balance, unworthy. Lindblad declined to confirm or deny, but in any case, for at least the summer 2020 cruising season, the point is moot, as most of Norway’s cruises have been put on pause on account of the coronavirus pandemic. No small loss, as the cruises contribute massively to western Norway’s economy.
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Another obstacle to leveraging the German team’s discovery as a means of boosting Smøla’s Thule tourism lies in the enormity of the history of the search for Thule. The history goes back so far, and so many voices have weighed in over the centuries, that even as innovative and confident a claim as that of the German team can at best take its place in the debate, its geodesic evidence stacked up against all the rest.
The view that Thule is Iceland, for example, remains influential. Foremost among the advocates of Thule-is-Iceland is Barry Cunliffe, author of The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek and a professor emeritus at Oxford University who taught European archaeology for 36 years. Cunliffe defends the Iceland position one morning in the café of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. In many ways, Cunliffe is Blakstad’s scholarly counterpart, the defender of Iceland, as Blakstad is of Smøla. Cunliffe in his thick wool sweater looks like he, too, would be at home at the helm of a fishing trawler. It’s easy to imagine Blakstad and Cunliffe squaring off in friendly yet forceful debate over black coffee in some North Sea port tavern.
At the Ashmolean, with his notes spread on the table in front of him, Cunliffe sketches a plausible scenario for Pytheas’s route to Iceland. “Imagine you’re a seafaring people,” he says, referring to the early inhabitants of what is now the northern British Isles, “and every year you see birds migrating to the north. Where are they migrating to? Land must be out there, beyond the horizon. Eventually curiosity—the human desire to acquire knowledge—drives you northward to explore.” It would have been those explorers, Cunliffe argues, who first discovered Thule, and who led Pytheas there.
The fishing village Veiholmen on the island of Smøla. (Michael S. Nolan/Alamy)
But what about the honey and the mead, two famously contested points in the Thule mystery? In a fragment from On the Ocean, Pytheas wrote, or seems to have written, that his hosts on Thule subsisted by cultivating herbs and fruits, and that they made a drink from grain and honey: mead. Advocates of Thule-is-Norway seize upon this point as definitive. Iceland, they say, almost certainly wasn’t inhabited at all until well after Pytheas made his voyage, while on Smøla there are archaeological finds suggesting that Bronze Age settlers farmed, kept bees, and drank mead.
“Ah, the mead,” says Cunliffe. “The Pytheas fragment is a bit vague. It doesn’t actually include the name ‘Thule.’ It may refer to some unspecified people in the north, not specifically the inhabitants of Thule.”
And so our conversation goes, Cunliffe addressing each of the points of the debate in turn, ending on a note of cheerful uncertainty. Did he think it possible that a full copy of the lost manuscript of On the Ocean might turn up one day behind a wall in a monastery or a Marseille chateau, and settle the issue once and for all? Never say never, he says, adding that he predicts the Thule debate will continue in perpetuity. (Though he’s aware of the German team’s work, he professes not to be enough of an expert in geodesy to want to offer an opinion.)
Before we part, Cunliffe adds that if someone gave him £1-million in funding to put to whatever use he wanted, he would go digging in the peat in the north of Iceland in search of Bronze Age human settlements; at present, the generally accepted date for the settlement of Iceland isn’t until about the ninth century CE. Such proof would, at the very least, silence the Norway boosters who endlessly bring up Iceland’s emptiness in Pytheas’s time as a fatal blow to the Iceland argument.
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To approach Smøla by boat is potentially treacherous—much of the island’s coastline is studded by thousands of rocky islets, some as small as huts, that jut from the sea like mini icebergs. More than 6,000 have been mapped, and then there are the countless fluer, rock formations that become submerged and perilous at high tide. Over the long span of time that Smøla prospered with a cod fishery—its first fishing villages were settled in the early 14th century—many fishing craft ran aground in bad weather on the islets, and many lives were lost. At the center of Veiholmen stands a memorial statue of a widow, holding her orphaned child by the hand and gazing toward the west where the cod-fishing grounds were richest and the deadly islets also happen to be most densely concentrated.
But the approach from the south is all smooth sailing. The ferries from Trondheim and Kristiansund make their way to Smøla from the south. If in fact Smøla is the long-lost Thule, Pytheas would have come from this direction, too.
One cold twilit afternoon, Blakstad drives me south to Kuli, a strip of land about a kilometre and a half long just off Smøla’s south coast. It’s here, on Kuli’s marshy heath, that in the first millennium BCE the earliest inhabitants of Smøla farmed and built their homesteads and, perhaps, kept bees and drank mead. Kuli’s south coast offers an ample share of sheltered coves where Pytheas easily might have come ashore. The name Kuli is itself a clue. One theory as to the origin of the fabled island’s name is that Pytheas, on hearing “Kuli,” could have entered it in his logbook as “Thule.”
Blakstad leads the way across the heath to burial mounds where Kuli’s later residents, Vikings, buried their dead in sailing vessels that would transport them and their prized possessions to Valhalla. Alongside one mound, a sign for tourists depicts a Viking warrior surrounded by a variety of weapons, all laid out symmetrically and with perfect spacing, a breakdown of one troop’s personal arsenal, like a page from an instruction manual for new recruits to boot camp.
A sheltered strip of land known locally as Kuli on the island of Smøla is thought to be a plausible landing spot for Pytheas. The steep-sided mountains on the island of Tustna, across the strait from Kuli, have served as a distinctive landmark for mariners for millennia. (F. Salazar)
Farther out along the heath, a panoramic view encompasses the straits leading north toward Trondheim and the steep, spiky mountains on the island of Tustna across the straits. As we track ferries and an occasional cruise ship sailing past, Blakstad, with sweeping gestures, expounds on the Berlin team’s claim and why it all makes so much sense when seen from up close, from the very spot where Pytheas himself might have admired the sun skimming the horizon.
Pytheas, says Blakstad, would have wanted a sheltered route to explore the coast. An ideal natural route is provided by the straits (“the fairway” as it’s called locally). Trade routes along the straits may have been in existence since the Bronze Age. Those steep, spiky mountains across the fairway serve as a distinctive, even dramatic, landmark. Vikings knew the route well. The mountains signal the location of the coves just across the way in Kuli. Blakstad points down toward one such cove, tranquil and easily accessible.
“Yes, but—,” I begin, thinking of the Icelandic counterclaims. Blakstad cuts me short. “If it had been me,” he says, “and I’d ventured into open ocean from the north of Britain, as I’ve done, and I was hoping to explore unknown territory to the north, this is the route I would have chosen.” With sonorous emphasis, he adds, “And I’m a navigator.”
This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.
Tucked away inside a nondescript building located along a back alley in North London, a team of craftspeople was busily at work putting the finishing touches on a custom, handcrafted globe. With the clock ticking, the artisans at Bellerby & Co., a globemaking studio, only had a few days left before the final piece—a globe measuring more than four feet in diameter—was shipped to a customer awaiting its arrival in Italy. From start to finish, it took artisans almost a year to complete the project, a length of time that might seem excessive in today’s instantaneous world. However, considering that Bellerby & Co. is one of the only remaining ateliers that still makes globes by hand using a meticulous step-by-step process that hasn’t deviated much over the centuries, the end result is worth the wait.
The reason it takes so long for a globe to be made is because nearly every step is done by hand. Peter Bellerby, the company’s founder, says it took him upwards of two years before getting his footing as a globemaker, and he’s still learning something new every day.
“It’s really about learning motor skills,” Bellerby says.
A painter adds in details onto a globe. (Paul Marc Mitchell)
Before founding the company in 2008, Bellerby worked as a property developer, with a brief stint as a violin maker. The thought of becoming a globemaker never crossed his mind until his father said he wanted a globe for his 80th birthday. Not pleased with what was available on the market, he decided to try his hand at making a globe himself. He figured it would take him about three or four months to complete, with enough time to spare to make one for himself. He didn't realize how truly difficult the art of globemaking really is.
Some of the first globes were made by the Greeks, who were the first to create spherical celestial adaptations of the planet. It wouldn't be until the 1490s that geographer Martin Behaim produced the first terrestrial globe. Known as the Erdapfel or "earth apple," it unfortunately is riddled with errors, including a botched depiction of the African coast, but nonetheless, it remains the oldest surviving globe of its kind in history, and is part of the collection at the German National Museum in Nuremberg.
Over the years, globemaking has evolved, but many of the same steps of the process remain in place. In this video from the 1950s, artisans can be seen glueing sheets of newsprint onto a wood sphere before covering it in nine separate coats of plaster until perfectly smooth. The map is then cut and applied by hand. Globemakers today follow similar steps, but in a much more streamlined fashion that relies on computer-created geography, and hardier materials, such as the resin molds that Bellerby employs. Bellerby & Co. bills itself as "one of the last remaining traditional globemakers [in the world.]"
One of the challenges Bellerby faced during his first project was ensuring that the cast of the globe was actually round. He found several manufacturers willing to make him a form, but none were a perfect sphere and they were often riddled with plateaus, something that would make the next step in the process even more challenging (more on that in a second). Not satisfied, Bellerby eventually partnered with a Formula 1 fabricator to make molds of various sizes, from an 8-inch mini desk globe to the massive 4-footer like the one commissioned by the Italian client. Bellerby started out by using plaster of paris in the molds (a material used historically in globemaking, but thanks to technological advancements, is less commonly used today), but through much trial and error he now favors resin and composite, which are more likely to stand the test of time.
“They can hold up for centuries,” he says. “I want to make globes that can be passed down from one generation to the next. [At Bellerby & Co.] we over-engineer every aspect of the process so that the final result is absolutely bulletproof.”
Gores that will be added to the globe. (Paul Marc Mitchell)
Perhaps the biggest challenge that Bellerby faced was figuring out how to place a rectangular map onto a circular form. Luckily, many centuries ago (during the 15th century to be exact, right around the time when explorer Christopher Columbus set foot in the New World), and through trial and error, globemakers found the solution: slicing a map into triangular shapes called “gores.” This step would allow for easier placement of the map onto the sphere. Although that step may sound simple enough, it’s probably the most challenging skill that globemakers have to master during their apprenticeship to become a full-fledged globemaker.
“The gores take a long time for people to perfect,” Bellerby says. “When you’re doing this, you’re moistening the paper and then stretching it over a sphere. You have to make sure the paper doesn’t rip. It’s one of the most nonintuitive things to begin with. You really have to understand how to move your hands much slower and be very gentle. When you’re picking up the paper [especially in the case of the larger globes], it can rip under its own weight. You would think it’s a very easy thing to do, but it’s one thing to put paper on a sphere and another to make sure that all of the pieces line up correctly.”
Bellerby's studio employs more than 20 craftspeople, from cartographers who design the gored maps (during a commission, clients have the opportunity to customize their globe, highlighting points of interest like their hometown or routes of past travels) to artists who paint on the details once the spheres have been gored, dipping into a wide spectrum of paint and ink pots to help bring each globe to life. With a steady hand, artists highlight each continent by shading in borders, coastlines and other geographic details, ensuring that each brushstroke is perfectly executed while also giving each globe a handcrafted touch. Bellerby estimates that about six people will have touched each globe before it’s ready to be shipped to a client.
Pots of paints and inks used by the artisans. (Paul Marc Mitchell)
“I felt like his story and the beauty of globemaking really embody the idea of lost arts,” Freidenrich says. “He’s largely self-taught, and his dedication to getting every step of the process right is fascinating to me. The team he's built is very passionate and dedicated to this work. Globemaking isn't something that you fall into; he looks for people who are interested in the process and are willing to invest the time and energy into doing good work. He's assembled a very harmonious atelier of globemakers.”
Peter Bellerby, founder of Bellerby & Co., at his London studio. (Paul Marc Mitchell)
That attention to detail has also helped globemaking stay relevant, especially in modern times when most people turn to Google Maps or some other form of GPS for geographical information. However, as many people who have canceled their travel plans due to the Covid-19 pandemic have come to learn, spinning a globe is one way to explore the world without leaving home. In fact, Bellerby saw a roughly 15 percent uptick in globe orders compared with previous years, with the lead time for a finished piece now nearing about a year out. On average, the studio produces about 750 globes each year, with rates starting at about £1,300 ($1,800) for a mini desk globe to £44,500 ($89,000) for the largest model.
“A globe is the ultimate visualization of where we live in the solar system,” Bellerby says. “You have the ability to interact with the globe in a way you can’t [by looking at a computer screen]. Using something like Google Maps to get from point A to point B is really efficient—you don’t drift on Google, you function. On a globe, you can picture your home and visualize where you’re going. Globes constantly remind us how miniscule we are, and how wonderful the world is.”
Geographyis the study of places and the relationships between people and theirenvironments.Geographers explore both the physical properties of Earth’s surface and the human societies spread across it. They also examine how humancultureinteracts with the natural environment, and the way that locations and places can have an impact on people. Geography seeks to understand where things are found, why they are there, and how they develop and change over time.
Ancient Geographers
The term "geography" comes to us from the ancient Greeks, who needed a word to describe the writings and maps that were helping them make sense of the world in which they lived. In Greek, geo means “earth” and -graphy means “to write.” Using geography, Greeks developed an understanding of where their homeland was located in relation to other places, what their own and other places were like, and how people and environments were distributed. These concerns have been central to geography ever since.
Of course, the Greeks were not the only people interested in geography. Throughout human history, most societies have sought to understand something about their place in the world, and the people and environments around them.
Indeed, mapmaking probably came even before writing in many places. But ancient Greek geographers were particularly influential. They developed very detailed maps of areas in and around Greece, including parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia. More importantly, they also raised questions about how and why different human and natural patterns came into being on Earth’s surface, and why variations existed from place to place. The effort to answer these questions about patterns and distribution led them to figure out that the world was round, to calculate Earth’s circumference, and to develop explanations of everything from the seasonal flooding of the Nile River to differences in population densities from place to place.
During the Middle Ages, geography ceased to be a major academic pursuit in Europe. Advances in geography were chiefly made by scientists of the Muslim world, based around the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. Geographers of this Islamic Golden Age created the world’s first rectangular map based on a grid, a map system that is still familiar today. Islamic scholars also applied their study of people and places to agriculture, determining which crops and livestock were most suited to specifichabitats or environments.
In addition to the advances in the Middle East, the Chinese empire in Asia also contributed immensely to geography. Until about 1500, China was the most prosperouscivilization on Earth. The Chinese were scientifically advanced, especially in the field of astronomy. Around 1000, they also achieved one of the most important developments in the history of geography: They were the first to use the compass for navigational purposes. In the early 1400s, the explorer Cheng Ho embarked on seven voyages to the lands bordering the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, establishing China’s dominance throughout Southeast Asia.
Age of Discovery
Through the 13th-century travels of the Italian explorer Marco Polo, Europeans learned about the riches of China. Curiosity was awakened; a desire to trade with wealthy Asian cultures motivated a renewed interest in exploring the world. The period of time between the 15th and 17th centuries is known in the West as the Age of Exploration or the Age of Discovery.
With the dawn of the Age of Discovery, the study of geography regained popularity in Europe. The invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s helped spread geographic knowledge by making maps and charts widely available. Improvements in shipbuilding and navigation facilitated more exploring, greatly improving the accuracy of maps and geographic information.
Greater geographic understanding allowed European powers to extend their global influence. During the Age of Discovery, European nations established colonies around the world. Improved transportation, communication, and navigational technology allowed countries such as the United Kingdom to successfully govern colonies as far away as the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Africa.
Geography was not just a subject that made colonialism possible, however. It also helped people understand the planet on which they lived. Not surprisingly, geography became an important focus of study in schools and universities.
Geography also became an important part of other academic disciplines, such as chemistry, economics, and philosophy. In fact, every academic subject has some geographic connection. Chemists study where certain chemical elements, such as gold or silver, can be found. Economists examine which nations trade with other nations, and what resources are exchanged. Philosophers analyze the responsibility people have to take care of the Earth.
Emergence of Modern Geography
Some people have trouble understanding the complete scope of the discipline of geography because, unlike most other disciplines, geography is not defined by one particular topic. Instead, geography is concerned with many different topics—people, culture, politics, settlements, plants, landforms, and much more.
What distinguishes geography is that it approaches the study of diverse topics in a particular way (that is, from a particular perspective). Geography asks spatial questions—how and why things are distributed or arranged in particular ways on Earth’s surface. It looks at these different distributions and arrangements at many different scales. It also asks questions about how the interaction of different human and natural activities on Earth’s surface shape the characteristics of the world in which we live.
Geography seeks to understand where things are found and why they are present in those places; how things that are located in the same or distant places influence one another over time; and why places and the people who live in them develop and change in particular ways. Raising these questions is at the heart of the “geographic perspective.”
Exploration has long been an important part of geography. But exploration no longer simply means going to places that have not been visited before. It means documenting and trying to explain the variations that exist across the surface of Earth, as well as figuring out what those variations mean for the future.
The age-old practice of mapping still plays an important role in this type of exploration, but exploration can also be done by using images from satellites or gathering information from interviews. Discoveries can come by using computers to map and analyze the relationship among things in geographic space, or from piecing together the multiple forces, near and far, that shape the way individual places develop.
Applying a geographic perspective demonstrates geography’s concern not just with where things are, but with “the why of where”—a short, but useful definition of geography’s central focus.
The insights that have come from geographic research show the importance of asking “the why of where” questions. Geographic studies comparing physical characteristics of continents on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, for instance, gave rise to the idea that Earth’s surface is comprised of large, slowly moving plates—plate tectonics.
Studies of the geographic distribution of human settlements have shown how economic forces and modes of transport influence the location of towns and cities. For example, geographic analysis has pointed to the role of the U.S. Interstate Highway System and the rapid growth of car ownership in creating a boom in U.S. suburban growth after World War II. The geographic perspective helped show where Americans were moving, why they were moving there, and how their new living places affected their lives, their relationships with others, and their interactions with the environment.
Geographic analyses of the spread of diseases have pointed to the conditions that allow particular diseases to develop and spread. Dr. John Snow’s cholera map stands out as a classic example. When cholera broke out in London, England, in 1854, Snow represented the deaths per household on a street map. Using the map, he was able to trace the source of the outbreak to a water pump on the corner of Broad Street and Cambridge Street. The geographic perspective helped identify the source of the problem (the water from a specific pump) and allowed people to avoid the disease (avoiding water from that pump).
Investigations of the geographic impact of human activities have advanced understanding of the role of humans in transforming the surface of Earth, exposing the spatial extent of threats such as water pollution by manmade waste. For example, geographic study has shown that a large mass of tiny pieces of plastic currently floating in the Pacific Ocean is approximately the size of Texas. Satellite images and other geographic technology identified the so-called “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”
These examples of different uses of the geographic perspective help explain why geographic study and research is important as we confront many 21st century challenges, including environmental pollution, poverty, hunger, and ethnic or political conflict.
The natural environment is the primary concern of physical geographers, although many physical geographers also look at how humans have altered natural systems. Physical geographers study Earth’s seasons, climate, atmosphere, soil, streams, landforms, and oceans. Some disciplines within physical geography include geomorphology, glaciology, pedology, hydrology, climatology, biogeography, and oceanography.
Geomorphology is the study of landforms and the processes that shape them. Geomorphologists investigate the nature and impact of wind, ice, rivers, erosion, earthquakes, volcanoes, living things, and other forces that shape and change the surface of the Earth.
Glaciologists focus on the Earth’s ice fields and their impact on the planet’s climate. Glaciologists document the properties and distribution of glaciers and icebergs. Data collected by glaciologists has demonstrated the retreat of Arctic and Antarctic ice in the past century.
Pedologists study soil and how it is created, changed, and classified. Soil studies are used by a variety of professions, from farmers analyzing field fertility to engineers investigating the suitability of different areas for building heavy structures.
Hydrology is the study of Earth’s water: its properties, distribution, and effects. Hydrologists are especially concerned with the movement of water as it cycles from the ocean to the atmosphere, then back to Earth’s surface. Hydrologists study the water cycle through rainfall into streams, lakes, the soil, and underground aquifers. Hydrologists provide insights that are critical to building or removing dams, designing irrigation systems, monitoring water quality, tracking drought conditions, and predicting flood risk.
Climatologists study Earth’s climate system and its impact on Earth’s surface. For example, climatologists make predictions about El Nino, a cyclical weatherphenomenon of warm surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. They analyze the dramatic worldwide climate changes caused by El Nino, such as flooding in Peru, drought in Australia, and, in the United States, the oddities of heavy Texas rains or an unseasonably warm Minnesota winter.
Biogeographers study the impact of the environment on the distribution of plants and animals. For example, a biogeographer might document all the places in the world inhabited by a certain spider species, and what those places have in common.
Oceanography, a related discipline of physical geography, focuses on the creatures and environments of the world’s oceans. Observation of ocean tides and currents constituted some of the first oceanographic investigations. For example, 18th-century mariners figured out the geography of the Gulf Stream, a massive current flowing like a river through the Atlantic Ocean. The discovery and tracking of the Gulf Stream helped communications and travel between Europe and the Americas.
Today, oceanographers conduct research on the impacts of water pollution, track tsunamis, design offshoreoil rigs, investigate underwater eruptions of lava, and study all types of marine organisms from toxicalgae to friendly dolphins.
Human Geography
Human geography is concerned with the distribution and networks of people and cultures on Earth’s surface. A human geographer might investigate the local, regional, and global impact of rising economic powers China and India, which represent 37 percent of the world’s people. They also might look at how consumers in China and India adjust to new technology and markets, and how markets respond to such a huge consumer base.
Human geographers also study how people use and alter their environments. When, for example, people allow their animals to overgraze a region, the soil erodes and grassland is transformed into desert. The impact of overgrazing on the landscape as well as agricultural production is an area of study for human geographers.
Finally, human geographers study how political, social, and economic systems are organized across geographical space. These include governments, religious organizations, and trade partnerships. The boundaries of these groups constantly change.
The main divisions within human geography reflect a concern with different types of human activities or ways of living. Some examples of human geography include urban geography, economic geography, cultural geography, political geography, social geography, and population geography. Human geographers who study geographic patterns and processes in past times are part of the subdiscipline of historical geography. Those who study how people understand maps and geographic space belong to a subdiscipline known as behavioral geography.
Many human geographers interested in the relationship between humans and the environment work in the subdisciplines of cultural geography and political geography.
Cultural geographers study how the natural environment influences the development of human culture, such as how the climate affects the agricultural practices of a region. Political geographers study the impact of political circumstances on interactions between people and their environment, as well as environmental conflicts, such as disputes over water rights.
Some human geographers focus on the connection between human health and geography. For example, health geographers create maps that track the location and spread of specific diseases. They analyze the geographic disparities of health-care access. They are very interested in the impact of the environment on human health, especially the effects of environmental hazards such as radiation, lead poisoning, or water pollution.
Geographic Techniques
Specialists in geographic techniques study the ways in which geographic processes can be analyzed and represented using different methods and technologies. Mapmaking, or cartography, is perhaps the most basic of these. Cartography has been instrumental to geography throughout the ages.
As early as 1500 BCE, Polynesian navigators in the Pacific Ocean used complex maps made of tiny sticks and shells that represented islands and ocean currents they would encounter on their voyages. Today, satellites placed into orbit by the U.S. Department of Defense communicate with receivers on the ground called global positioning system (GPS) units to instantly identify exact locations on Earth.
Today, almost the entire surface of Earth has been mapped with remarkable accuracy, and much of this information is available instantly on the internet. One of the most remarkable of these websites is Google Earth, which “lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean.” In essence, anyone can be a virtual Christopher Columbus from the comfort of home.
Technological developments during the past 100 years have given rise to a number of other specialties for scientists studying geographic techniques. The airplane made it possible to photograph land from above. Now, there are many satellites and other above-Earth vehicles that help geographers figure out what the surface of the planet looks like and how it is changing.
Geographers looking at what above-Earth cameras and sensors reveal are specialists in remote sensing. Pictures taken from space can be used to make maps, monitor ice melt, assess flood damage, track oil spills, predict weather, or perform endless other functions. For example, by comparing satellite photos taken from 1955 to 2007, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) discovered that the rate of coastal erosion along Alaska’s Beaufort Sea had doubled. Every year from 2002 to 2007, about 45 feet per year of coast, mostly icy permafrost, vanished into the sea.
Computerized systems that allow for precise calculations of how things are distributed and relate to one another have made the study of geographic information systems (GIS) an increasingly important specialty within geography. Geographic information systems are powerful databases that collect all types of information (maps, reports, statistics, satellite images, surveys, demographic data, and more) and link each piece of data to a geographic reference point, such as geographic coordinates. This data, called geospatial information, can be stored, analyzed, modeled, and manipulated in ways not possible before GIS computer technology existed.
The popularity and importance of GIS has given rise to a new science known as geographic information science (GISci). Geographic information scientists study patterns in nature as well as human development. They might study natural hazards, such as a fire that struck Los Angeles, California, in 2008. A map posted on the internet showed the real-time spread of the fire, along with information to help people make decisions about how to evacuate quickly. GIS can also illustrate human struggles from a geographic perspective, such as the interactive online map published by the New York Times in May 2009 that showed building foreclosure rates in various regions around the New York City area.
The enormous possibilities for producing computerized maps and diagrams that can help us understand environmental and social problems have made geographic visualization an increasingly important specialty within geography. This geospatial information is in high demand by just about every institution, from government agencies monitoring water quality to entrepreneurs deciding where to locate new businesses.
Regional Geography
Regional geographers take a somewhat different approach to specialization, directing their attention to the general geographic characteristics of a region. A regional geographer might specialize in African studies, observing and documenting the people, nations, rivers, mountains, deserts, weather, trade, and other attributes of the continent. There are different ways you can define a region. You can look at climate zones, cultural regions, or political regions. Often regional geographers have a physical or human geography specialty as well as a regional specialty.
Regional geographers may also study smaller regions, such as urban areas. A regional geographer may be interested in the way a city like Shanghai, China, is growing. They would study transportation, migration, housing, and language use, as well as the human impact on elements of the natural environment, such as the Huangpu River.
Whether geography is thought of as a discipline or as a basic feature of our world, developing an understanding of the subject is important. Some grasp of geography is essential as people seek to make sense of the world and understand their place in it. Thinking geographically helps people to be aware of the connections among and between places and to see how important events are shaped by where they take place. Finally, knowing something about geography enriches people’s lives—promoting curiosity about other people and places and an appreciation of the patterns, environments, and peoples that make up the endlessly fascinating, varied planet on which we live.
