Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
- and ignore some of our own, lest we be tricked into mistaking the mapmaker's
devices for our own. The worst thing we can do is to condescend. To a greater or
lesser degree, maps are always adequate to what they were meant to do. A carto-
grapher draws something in a particular way because that is what he intends. If he
had wanted to draw it another way, he would have done so. The problem is ours,
nothis.Whenahistoricalmaplooks'wrong'tous,itissimplybecausewehaven't
figured out its code. In fact, the 'wrong' bits can be the best places to start looking
for clues about how to crack the code. Where its code and our own fail to align is
where we need to look most carefully.
But I must warn you: we won't break all the codes. The Selden map is full of
secrets. Only some of them will we unlock. I count six.
____________________
The first secret is China. China sticks out on the Selden map in several ways. It
containsmoregeographicaldetailthananyotherpartofthemap.Ithasmoreplace-
names than any other zone. And visually it has its own distinctive design, a coher-
ence that seems complete unto itself and doesn't require the rest of the map to give
it sense. It fills a lot of the map without quite belonging to it.
ConsiderthemostpronouncedfeatureoftheChinasection,theserpentinechan-
nels that writhe across the landscape and bind Ming China into a unified whole. At
first glance they must be rivers. But no. Already we have mis-stepped, using our
code for a map to which it does not apply. What look like river channels are not, in
fact, rivers at all. With one exception, they are provincial boundaries. This feature
isnoteasytodetect,astheseboundariesarecolouredthesameastheocean.Worse,
wheretheyreachthecoast,theyseemtoopenontotheoceanthewaythatriversdo.
TheexceptionistheuppersectionoftheYellowRiverbeyondtheGreatWall,run-
ning up the left-hand side of the map. Its source - and labelled as such (Hyde has
latinised it as huang fluvii aqua incipium ) - is a peanut-shaped lake that runs off
the edge of the map, almost opening into the Indian Ocean. Once the river gets to
the Great Wall, it disappears and provincial boundaries take over. The same visual
system is thus used to depict two completely different things: rivers and boundar-
ies. It's confusing, and not a common device on Chinese maps.
Also visually prominent are dozens of cities, each in a label edged in yellow, or
crenellatedinredinthecaseofaprovincialcapital.Therearealsodozensofsingle-
character labels edged in red. At first glance they must be lesser places. Wrong
again.Thenamesinthesecirclesarenotcity-names.Theyareconcretenouns:Bas-
Search WWH ::




Custom Search