Atlas Folio National Geographic Society

Introduction:

Maps of the Atlas Series and the Atlas Folio.

Each place name in the news today tells a fragment of a larger story. Africa stirs restlessly. Lonely Antarctica yields its secrets. Patterns of pipelines and bomber bases shift on Near Eastern sands. The range of a missile is measured by the breadth of oceans and the distance to the moon….. To relate these events to our own affairs, all of us neededdaily orientation.

The word orientation is itself significant. Its use comes to us from ancient Greek and Roman Map makers who drew the world as a stylized disk. Europe appeared at the lower left, Africa at the right, and Asia arched  massively across the top. The Orient’s prime position gave the reader its direction And so today  map still orient the reader.

Man has made use of maps since the first primitive huntsman traced a journey in the dust. Eskimos fashioned islands in relief with driftwood; for the same purpose, tropical islanders used shells. Babylonians of 2500 B.C.  baked maps of clay.

The world’s first modern atlas owed its origin to the elusiveness of maps. A wealthy Antwerp merchant, weary of unrolling and misplacing his numerous charts, commissioned Abraham Ortelius to compile maps of of uniform size “Together in a book which might easily be handled” as the merchant’s own apprentice put it. The result in 1570 was Ortelius’s great Theater of the World, a masterwork which established its maker as Royal Geagrapher to King Philip of Spain.

Inhoud:

1. Introduction

THE WORLD  2. World – 3. Top of the world – 4……..

UNITED STATES – 5. United States (general) – 6. Northeastern Unites States – 7. Washington to Boston – 8. Southeastern United States – 9. North Central United States – 10. South Central United States – 11. Northwestern United States – 12. Southwestern United States – 13. National Parks of the U.S. & Canada – 14. Battlefields of the Civil War – 15. Hawai – 16…

NORTH AMERICA – 17. North America (general) – 18. Alaska – 19. Canada (general) – 20. Eastern Canada – 21. Western Canada – 22. Mexico and Central America – 23. West Indies – 24. Central Canada.

SOUTH AMERICA – 25. South America (general) – 26. Northwestern South America – 27. Eastern South America – 28. Southern South America – 29….

EUROPE – 30. Europe (general) – 31. British Isles 32. France, Belgium and the Netherlands – 33. Spain and Portugal – 34. Scandinavia – 35. Germany – 36. Switzerland, Austria – 37. Italy – 38. Poland, Czechoslovakia – 39. Balkan States, including Hungary – 40. Greece and the Aegean – 41. Shakespeare’s Britain – 42….. – 43…..

ASIA – 44. Asia (general) – 45. Western Soviet Union – 46. Eastern Soviet Union – 47. Near East – 48. Southwest Asia – 49. Southeast Asia – 50. China – 51. Japan and Korea – 52. The Holy Land – 53….

AFRICA – 54. Africa (general) – 55. Nothwestern Africa – 56. Countries of the Nile – 57. Southern Africa – 58…..

AUSTRALIA – 59. Australia – 60. ….

THE OCEANS – 61. Pacific Ocean – 62. Atlantic Ocean – 63. Indian Ocean – 64…..

ANTARCTICA – 65. Antarctica.