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I would like to direct my readers’ attention to a new Substack publication by Pete Morris called Terra Cognita. Pete is a frequent GeoCurrents commentor and an insightful geographer. His introductory article in Terra Cognita is an excellent overview of the recent history of academic geography in the United States. And as can be seen […] The post Recommending Terra Cognita, a New Geographical Substack Publication appeared first on GeoCurrents.
The previous GeoCurrents post showed that the location of oil and natural gas deposits provides a partial explanation of the differences in the distribution of wealth and economic productivity across the country. But other factors must also be considered. Could language and ethnicity play a role? It has often been argued that the Persian, or […] The post Are “Non-Persian” Regions of Iran Poorer than Persian Regions? The Counter-Case of Mazandaran appeared first on GeoCurrents.
Learning the cardinal directions is an important but often neglected aspect of early geographical education. It is my impression that the understanding of cardinal directions, like most other aspects of geography, is in sharp decline. There are several reasons for this regression, but surely one of the most important is the abandonment of map navigation […] The post Teaching the Cardinal Directions to Young Students appeared first on GeoCurrents.
As regular readers probably noticed, GeoCurrents abruptly ceased posting at the end of July, 2025, just after having promised a new series on the Druze. Family considerations figured prominently in this cessation. A few months earlier, my son and daughter-in-law announced that they would be opening a bookstore in Bozeman, Montana, where they have lived […] The post New GeoCurrents Series on Elementary Geography appeared first on GeoCurrents.
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Last year, I created a new map projection, the Asymmetric Monstrosity, designed to make somewhat of an artistic and educational statement about projections in general. I also made a physical world map to demonstrate it. Of course, there is a huge difference between a projection and an individual map that uses that projection (a distinction … Continue reading Asymmetric Monstrosity: Home Edition →
In a recent post on Attila Bátorfy's Cabinet of Infographic Curiosities, he highlighted the Czech-born geographer and statistician Anton Leo Hickmann and his early contributions to data visualization. Hickmann’s most influential work, the Geographisch-statistischer Universal-Taschen-Atlas, was published in 1894. You can view it from the Austrian National Library. it’s full of interesting charts and maps but what got my attention was this diagram. I’ve posted before about comparative mountain heights. There’s even a post on the David Rumsey Map Collection showing many different examples of these but this one is new to me. Note that I stitched two atlas pages together to make the image above. The title translated from German is “Idealized view of the most significant highs and lows“. This graphic has two layers, the top one for mountain heights sitting over a layer of sea and ocean depths. The top panel shows Europe in the foreground and from left to right Africa, Asia, South America New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii. Mount Saint Elias (straddling the U.S. and Canada) is the only North America peak shown*, Denali must have been unknown to Hickmann. Here’s a detail with the Balkans in front and Amerika (mostly south and central) in the background. The second layer has the ocean depths with major seas layered on top of them, a clever way of showing many bodies of water in the same illustration. A second grouping underneath mirrors the top ones with a focus on the Alps atop the Mediterranean Sea and its affiliated bodies of water. Here’s a detail from the third and fourth panels with the Mediterranean and Ligurian Seas on the bottom, Bern on the foreground and some of the high peaks of the Alps in the background. *Not counting Hawaii as North America. Also Mt Hooker is a name that appears in many places but none of them are close to 4185 meters. For a deep dive into the rest of Hickmann’s atlas see Atilla’s post.
Adding a hillshade terrain to your basemap can give the map reader incredible amounts of information about the surface of the earth. But it’s also a mechanism for adding visual charm and interest to a map! With emotional resonance and technical merit bound up together in such a way, how can you possibly resist that …
As I often mock the AI-slop maps that I see on X (“Twitter”), my account has apparently responded by sending even more garbage my way. One example recently caught my attention as perhaps the worst map that I had ever seen. Then, several days later, I encountered something even worse. The first map, from the […] The post Is This the Worst Map in Current Circulation? No, It Is This One! appeared first on GeoCurrents.
