As a boy, I was interested by maps from the Age of Exploration. I particularly enjoy reviewing maps from this age that show how Westerners' understanding of the world differed from what we know now. For centuries, for example, they knew that there was something down here below Indonesia, but they didn't really know what it looked like or exactly where it was. For a long time, many people thought that what we now know as Australia and Antarctica might be the same landmass.
When someone asks, "If you could live at any time in history and do whatever you wanted, what would you do?" My answer is always "I would be an explorer." I am drawn to terra incognita like moth to flame. The urge I have to go to these places is very difficult to put into words. I need to go to them.
That urge is probably why I am in Australia right now. I'm mostly speaking subjectively, of course -- Australia is terra incognita to me. But, remarkably, terra incognita still exists (though not as it once did). There are still parts of this continent that have not yet even been mapped, some of which are in far western New South Wales. According to people who know about these things, there are still probably relatively large areas of the Kimberly, Arnhem Land, and central Western Australia (e.g., the Pilbara) that have never or rarely been visited by Europeans.
As recently as 1984, there were Aboriginal Australians living in the Gibson Desert of Western Australia who, incredibly, had never seen or been seen by the rest of Australian society. Members of the Pintupi people known as the Pintupi Nine, lived as hunter-gatherers unaware of the modern world until one fateful day when they encountered a group of Australian whites and Aboriginals from the outside world. Anthropologists call this "first contact."
The story of this encounter, and the reactions of the Pintupi Nine to the modern world, is astounding (see the links in the previous paragraph). Although most of them were favorably impressed with things such as running water, one of them chose to return to his previous life after having seen what Western civilization had to offer.
The Pintupi Nine are widely believed to have been the last uncontacted people living in Australia. But before this encounter, it was widely believed that there were no uncontacted people in Australia.
So, what else is out there?
Perhaps the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, which is thought to have gone extinct in 1936. There have been thousands of unconfirmed sightings since then. My hope is to be the first to prove its continued existence.
And so, on days like this, I sit on my porch here in Sydney and think about getting myself a 4WD, provisions, and taking off to the unknown. I'm just waiting on the rest of my crew to arrive from the US.
In the meantime, I satisfy my need vicariously. I pour over the maps in my Explore Australia 2012 book, I read the Strange Maps blog (favourite post here), I plan my trip to the State Library of New South Wales' new free (!) exhibit entitled "Finding Antarctica: Mapping the Last Continent," and I plot to claim sovereignty over some piece of terra nullius.
I also delight over news like this from Slate, which reports on this year's winner of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society's "Best of Show" award (not to be confused with "Best in Show"). The winner, David Imus, spent nearly 6,000 hours working "alone on his map seven days a week for two full years." The result of this "artisanal cartography" project is what Slate calls "the best printed map of the US you'll ever see."
Reading the article, which you should, will give you a great feel for why map-making is an art and for what sets apart great maps from the run-of-the-mill type that are usually produced by the big corporations that dominate the industry. So what are you waiting for?
One final note: America's (possibly) last artisanal cartographer is, of course, an Oregonian. Only in Oregon, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment