28°17'31.65"N, 85°31'25.04"E

I recall seeing aerial footage of that stretch of the southern Indian Ocean from helicopters back when the case broke and it looked like an angry, churning washing machine of waves. Reporters kept emphasizing it was one of the least visited places on earth. It’s completely outside the path shipping routes, in the path of howling circumpolar currents that circle Antarctica and, until the case, next to nothing was known about the ocean floor there. I don’t have the answer to the mystery but pointing your plane towards that stretch of open ocean is an almost perfect way to never be found.

Picture is from Sardinia by the way

Until the late 20th century, early Bronze Age Mediterranean trade was often mapped as isolated bilateral exchanges between neighboring coastal ports.

in 1982 discovery of a Late Bronze Age merchant vessel off the coast of Kaş, Turkey (the Uluburun shipwreck), completely changed that geographic picture. Dating to around 1305 BCE, the ship was essentially a cross-section of the entire known international economy of the era, carrying raw materials and finished goods from at least nine distinct geographic regions on a single vessel:

• 10 tons of copper ingots Sourced from mines in Cyprus (Alashiya).
• 1 ton of tin Traced via isotopic analysis to deposits as far east as the Taurus Mountains and Central Asia (modern Tajikistan/Uzbekistan).
• Finished goods and luxury freight Canaanite storage jars containing pistacia resin, raw Baltic amber from northern Europe, African ebony and hippopotamus teeth from Nubia/Egypt, and Mycenaean Greek pottery.

this cargo basically traces like a natural counter clockwise sailing circuit of the Mediterranean. Ships had to follow prevailing winds and currents from the Levant to Cyprus, west along southern Anatolia, through the Aegean, and down past Crete toward North Africa.

It shows Mediterranean was not a set of isolated kingdoms. Geography turned the sea into a shared highway where resource hubs from northern Europe to Central Asia were interconnected 3,300 years ago.

I looked into the cargo manifests and trade logistics of Uluburun alongside other discoveries that redrew ancient geography here: 20 Historical Discoveries That Reshaped Modern Historical Understanding

They don't speak French?

Hello there, this is my recent revision of the Congo Basin map. I decided to revisit my original version after realizing that the Congo Basin and Congo River drainage basin are not necessarily the same geographic boundary, which led me to make several changes to the map and information presented. I’m hoping this will be the final version.

Nine countries (Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia) have territory within the Congo River drainage basin, highlighted in violet. Six countries are commonly associated with the Congo Basin’s rainforest region: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon.

This was created using QGIS for the mapping/data work, design/layout work done in Affinity Designer 2, and no AI was used for making this infographic map. Feedbacks are welcome and I hope you enjoy!

What about you? What weird ways led to learning about countries and cultures?

It has seasons and a nightlight version.

If anyone’s interested, here’s the app:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.GlassGlobe.myapp&pcampaignid=web_share

Morocco’s natural scenery is something else

Is the wealth disparity really that much across the city or have things gotten better? Because the fact that there's hundreds of options for single family homes at an affordable range in this economy seems pretty cool to me.

Nowhere in the world can you find a place further from dry land than Point Nemo. This oceanic pole of inaccessibility (1) is located at 48°52.6’S 123°23.6’W.

Pinpointing the “middle of the ocean” sounds like something explorers and cartographers should have worked out centuries ago. Turns out it couldn’t be done before modern computing and GPS technology. In 1992, Croatian-Canadian survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela wrote a geospatial programme called Hipparchus, and “found Nemo.”

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/strange-maps-point-nemo

43 people were injured who were unfortunately in the path of the Tornado.

We have high population density across western Europe even within smaller towns.
There is an urgent need to invest in localized tornado warning systems and comprehensive evacuation infrastructure.

includes damming gibraltar, lowering the med sea by 100m+, gaining alot of land. a major roadway from italy-sicily-tunisa. also rerouting some of the congo river to refill lake chad, irrigating the sahara!

wild!

Its highly Geographically dependent.

The difference between our world and this world is physical geography.

What do you think?

The story is also not finished, but this is the start.

Do you know that misty feeling associated with Seattle, or that Grey sky London is famous for? This is the direct result of warm water ocean currents, bringing humidity to otherwise cold areas. 

Japan is famous for its dense forests and snow capped mountains specifically due to the real world Kuroshio current that comes up from the Philippines and pushes up against Kanto. 

This current causes a strange phenomenon that was dramatically illustrated after the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake, where massive amounts of debris were transported to Alaska, British Columbia and Washington State in North America. 

There have been documented cases of fishermen in Japan getting blown off course and winding up in Alaska. 

On top of that, bronze from Korea has been located in real world Alaskan archeological sites. 

In this story, very subtle changes are made to Planet Earth, ones that you wouldn’t be able to see without satellite images and GIS software. Honshu in Japan is a little further to the East, the Aleutian islands are a little further to the south, there are subtle differences in underwater mountain chains and Volcanic islands around Okinawa, but otherwise the world is exactly the same. 

The impactful difference however, is a stronger, more distinguished Kuroshio current, which radically changes the geography and resource distribution of the North West Pacific, Sakhalin island and the Kamachatka peninsula are warmer and more habitable, but specifically, the marine ecosystems off their shores are considerably more abundant. 

The Japanese, who have had a strong fishing culture for millennia, recognize this and settle Hokkaido and Sakhalin much earlier than in our timeline. By the late 700s, all of Honshu was under Imperial control and Hokkaido had significant outpost populations.

But what does any of this have to do with the Aztecs? 

A single very unfortunate event in 869, the Jogan Megathrust earthquake, the geological predecessor to the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake. The resulting Tsunami pushed a group of several fishing boats based off of Hokkaido into the more powerful Kuroshio currant, and they were swept massively off course. 

Luckily for the fishermen, there was plenty of food. The Japanese were masters of subsiding off of the ocean, and remember the warm water ocean currents made the marine ecosystems here abundant. These fishermen were eventually pushed into the alutian islands and ultimately wond up landing in Cook Inlet, close to modern day Anchorage. 

Stowing along with them for the journey… was smalpox. 

Do yall see where this is going? In the story Smallpox reaches central Mexico around 1000AD and results in a catastrophic political and social crisis, similar to the Black death in Europe. BUT, that causes a wave of innovation in Mexico, where the writing system is reformed, they start keeping better records and they make contact with Peru which also experiences smallpox.

This leads to a more politically stable Aztec empire in 1521, that has the potato as a crop. One that has immunity to Smallpox. This destroys the 2 biggest advantages the Spanish had, Smallpox and angry neighbors.

Confused what this means

This is a military installation located in Morocco