30 Unusual Maps People Shared On This Group That Might Change Your Perspective On Things
Interview With Author
For many of us, cartography day in geography or history class meant a quick nap. With our eyes open, we’d dream of all the delicious stuff we were gonna eat after school, of music we’d play on the Walkman, of a message we received the other day from that cutie…
To bring back our long-lost excitement for hard pieces of data, aka maps, plans, and geographic drawings, we're gonna need to start from the very best of them. Luckily, there’s a whole online community on Reddit dedicated to the most unusual charts of geographic areas that took maps to a whole new level.
From mapping "October" in European languages to mapping an eagle’s track over a period of twenty years, these incredible examples will surely put the world into a completely new perspective.
Who knows, you may well unleash your inner cartographer and become among 1.1 million like-minded members of the maps subreddit. In that case, you may need some more cartographical goodness with 41 maps that portray lesser-known facts about America.
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To find out more about this amusing Reddit community by the name r/MapP**n, Bored Panda reached out to its creator Patrick McGranaghan, who started the subreddit in 2011 while living in Taiwan.
Patrick said he has always been a map geek: “I wanted people to share those maps so that they are easy to find and discuss.”
It turns out, he works as a land surveyor in Colorado and is a devoted member of several map societies across the nation, including the North American Cartographic Information Society, Charles Close Society for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps, and Rocky Mountain Map Society, to name just a few.
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Okay, mind blown; it's literally twice as big as I'd imagined given typical maps. Thank you, person who made it!
The creator said that the title r/MapP**n followed the trend on Reddit at the time when “there were a lot of subreddits with a *-porn suffix.” He explained further: “This refers to pictures of innocuous things like nature, architecture, or engineering marvels in a beautiful way. It was not meant to be sexual. The internet at the time was a lot more relaxed and using that term was funny.”
“In the years since the culture on the internet has taken a much more puritan bias and some people don't like that name,” Patrick said.
However, he assured us that “the goal of the brand has not changed, though: it's a place to share and discuss beautiful maps.”
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When it comes to submissions, they come in every form and style. “From historical maps showing ancient borders, to funny memes and transit maps. People also post imaginary maps of places that they create in their minds.”
In fact, every kind of map imaginable has been posted to this subreddit. Patrick said that linguistic maps are popular, as well as maps that re-imagine state and national borders. There are also maps of asteroids and maps of routes of famous explorers.
“One of my favorite interactions is when a map is posted of an obscure place and someone in the comments says they live there or has a story about that place.”
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Wow, I never knew this. Unlikely Jesus was fair skinned, blond and blue eyed....
Patrick concluded that “Maps are a way to visualize the world in a way that is easy to grasp. They are an aid in learning about new lands and faraway places. They help us find our way when we are lost.”
Especially in a time like now, “when the pandemic prevents us from traveling, maps are a way that we can travel without leaving our home,” the map enthusiast said.
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In the "australia" map.... that little pink line above the "L", is actually New Zealand - a totally separate country to "Australia" (although the Aussies & Kiwis do consider themselves like "siblings" ie we are staunch rivals within sports, but stick together in defense of eachother).
Keep in mind that something like 80% of Australia's land is dessert, with 80% of the population on the east coast. The horizontal line joins Perth (capital of Western Australia), to the rest of the country. The vertical line joins Darwin (capital of the Norther Territory) with the rest of the country. Yes, there are smaller towns in the centre - but they are very rare.
I live in the fruit section, not far from the sponge cake, custard and fortified sherry. I'm being a trifle silly here, as Australia is not NOT 80% dessert. ;-)
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And still, it is either complicated or very expensive to book a ticket from west to east, since most railway companies only focus on national travels or travels to the neighbouring countries only. When I travelled from Amsterdam to Stockholm, I had to book separate tickets at the Dutch, the German and the Swedish railway company, and crossed my fingers that all of them would be in time, so that I would not miss one. And it wasn’t even fast: the trip took 24 hours. A trip from Amsterdam to Kyiv would even take 3 days. From an environmental perspective I prefer the train over flying, but with these circumstances the train will never win from flying with most people.
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Note that this is only the passenger network. In the US, rail is predominantly used for freight.
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California does. East coast does. And, of course, the train they call the city of New Orleans. My cousin used to take it home from college in Illinois. (Note: the highest lines in North America are in Canada.)
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The British did create railway routes so that they can quickly extracts goods, however the dense network that you see above was formed later after independence, specially in the last thirty years.
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I thought the US would have so many rails across the desert- how do you get around if you can't drive?
People apparently don't. (I mean, there seem to be some long distance buses called Greyhounds, but in general, poor people and other non-car-drivers are apparently expected to stay where they are. Even getting around in cities can be hard without a car from what I read. Next to no public transport, bicycles are seen as only nuisances and even a lack of sidewalks to just walk somehwere!)
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Now make one of Brazil to compare, just for fun. A country so big with such a poor railway network.
The US, at one point, had a lot better public transportation. But, because our country is made up of a small minority of greedy capitalists, they actually got together at the turn of the twentieth century and destroyed a lot of it in order to force the public to buy automobiles. Most of our railways now are strictly commercial, which is why they don’t show up on this map. Because capitalism to the extent that we have has destroyed the humanity in this country and human decency as a whole seems to be a thing of the past. 😢
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I love how "North America" only shows the United States. MORE than half of North America is CANADA
Yeah this is probably my favourite. But only because I am obsessed with trains.
One I first looked at Australia it kinda looked like a weird fist (?) still kinda see it!
That's not accurate for Australia.Victoria ,for one have an extensive country train network.(and New Zealand s not part of Australia :/
Yes, there are lots more railways in the US. They are only showing the major lines, and most of the US railways are not for passengers but cargo instead. I wish we had lots more routes for passengers but we don't.
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I've been on the one that goes up the middle of Australia, now I need to do the one that goes Perth to Sydney
There is a fantastic show titled 'Rail Away' where they follow trains on various European networks. The trains usually run in less busy areas so you get to see a lot of the countrysides. They also have an Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/railawaytv/.
the trains run in less busy areas, so that the normal people from the countryside can travel to their workplaces - not for the tourists....
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Though difficult to see, I commend this picture on demonstrating corretly that there is no railway line connecting north and south Wales entirely in Wales - you have to go go via England no matter which route you take.
Australia has urban rail networks that aren't shown here, why is that?
like 90% of us Aussie's live on the SE coast, but this is the coolest way I've ever seen it put to scale
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Note: this post originally had 75 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
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Hello :) #24 is made by us at https://fb.com/indiainpixels - as the watermark says. Could you please source us instead? Thank you
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