2018 has seen the new Worldmapper come to light, which is also why this blog has become a bit more quiet in recent months. This year’s Christmas greetings show a collage of the 569 new maps that we have published on Worldmapper since its launch in April:
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Tag Archives: xmas
Christmas Card-o-gram 2017: Aurora meets GDP
This year’s christmas card-o-gram blends a view of northern lights (captured near Höfn, East Iceland) with a cartogram of global GDP distribution in 2017:
Connecting people: A world map of undersea cables
Despite satellite technology, global communication heavily relies on undersea cables to keep people connected. “A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean.” (Wikipedia) Undersea cables are the backbone of the internet, so that being connected determines a region’s ability to participate in global communication flows.
The following cartogram shows data from Greg’s Cable Map reprojected onto an equal population projection, giving a perspective of how people rather than land areas are connected to the global communications infrastructure. Landing points where the cables connect to land are marked as red dots in the map, while the background also shows very faded shipping lanes (over sea) as well as the gridded cartogram projection (over land):
Nativity map: The Census of Quirinius revealed
The first two chapters of the Gospel of Luke in the Bible state that the birth of Jesus took place at the time of the census: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.”
Believing in the religious background of the nativity story or not, evidence for the Census of Quirinius following Caesar Augustus’ decree exists beyond the bible. However, despite all recent initiatives to open up public data, the Census results of back then have not seen the light of day…until now!
This Christmas we can reveal the results of the Census of Quirinius following a freedom of information request to the Roman Empire (well, and following some more in-depth analysis within the Worldmapper project using Angus Maddisons studies). This is how the world looked in the year 1 CE (3761 Hebrew calendar, 7.17.18.13.3 Mayan calendar, 544 Buddhist calendar):
Wishing everyone a happy new year!
Views of Christmas
Another year over
Wishing everyone a Happy New Year
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