A 2nd century map of Germania by the scholar Ptolemy has always stumped scholars, who were unable to relate the places depicted to known settlements. Now a team of researchers have cracked the code, revealing that half of Germany’s cities are 1,000 years older than previously thought.
The founding of Rome has been pinpointed to the year 753. For the city of St. Petersburg, records even indicate the precise day the first foundation stone was laid.
Advertisement
Historians don’t have access to this kind of precision when it comes to German cities like Hanover, Kiel or Bad Driburg. The early histories of nearly all the German cities east of the Rhine are obscure, and the places themselves are not mentioned in documents until the Middle Ages. So far, no one has been able to date the founding of these cities. Our ancestors’ lack of education is to blame for this dearth of knowledge. Germanic tribes certainly didn’t run land survey offices — they couldn’t even write. Inhabitants this side of the Rhine — the side the Romans never managed to occupy permanently — used only a clumsy system of runes.
According to the Roman historian Tacitus, people here lived in thatched huts and dugout houses, subsisting on barley soup and indulging excessively in dice games. Not much more is known, as there are next to no written records of life within the barbarians’ lands.
A 2nd century map of Germania by the scholar Ptolemy has always stumped scholars, who were unable to relate the places depicted to known settlements. Now a team of researchers have cracked the code, revealing that half of Germany’s cities are 1,000 years older than previously thought.
The founding of Rome has been pinpointed to the year 753. For the city of St. Petersburg, records even indicate the precise day the first foundation stone was laid.
Historians don’t have access to this kind of precision when it comes to German cities like Hanover, Kiel or Bad Driburg. The early histories of nearly all the German cities east of the Rhine are obscure, and the places themselves are not mentioned in documents until the Middle Ages. So far, no one has been able to date the founding of these cities. Our ancestors’ lack of education is to blame for this dearth of knowledge. Germanic tribes certainly didn’t run land survey offices — they couldn’t even write. Inhabitants this side of the Rhine — the side the Romans never managed to occupy permanently — used only a clumsy system of runes.
According to the Roman historian Tacitus, people here lived in thatched huts and dugout houses, subsisting on barley soup and indulging excessively in dice games. Not much more is known, as there are next to no written records of life within the barbarians’ lands.
Click here to read this article from Spiegel Online
Related Posts
Subscribe to Medievalverse