Geography.  It is common knowledge for the most part.  People live in a world that they know.  The know the layout of their hometown, and they know the layout of the hometowns of their friends and loved ones. The world globe is printed on t-shirts and postcards.  We know where we are are in the universe now.  Or do we?  History has shown, that there is always so much more to learn.   Take it back a couple of hundred years ago.  Philosophers, scientists, astronomers…they were looking for our place in this universe, and while they did find relevant and meaningful discoveries, they were always off, just a bit.  So perhaps too, we may be off just a bit.

Consider sailing out into the ocean, when the maps of the time showed that once you reach a certain point, you would fall off the edge of the earth.  But you went anyway.  A road map of sorts, that basically illustrated the end of your journey, but…the journey did not end.  Ptolemy wrote, a lot…and he created maps of geography, which depicted that of the world that was known.  At that time.  This really makes me wish that he was alive today.  To witness the intuitive thoughts and theories he had, in this new world.  So far from his own.  It wasn’t long after his death that his works were translated, and even in that short amount of time, the world became a much larger place than he could have ever imagined.

But as the Renaissance cartographers knew then, and what we know now, he was right on given what he had to go with.  It is the history of wonder.  It was a time when people were questioning the world map of their lives, and wondering where they fit on that map.  Not just physically, but spiritually and existentially as well.  I don’t think that times have changed much.  Sure, we have easier ways to find out where we need to be, but now hundreds of years later, people are still just trying to figure out where they are going.  But if we take a look at Michelangelo’s work, we can see that our fingers can almost touch…through time and history, and through today and yesterday.  And we can in fact, get to where we are going, get to where we want to be.

The Definition of Geography: Ptolemy, World Maps, and History is a post from: Kiss Java

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