This map is 900 years old – how accurate is it?
Around the year 1136, a map was inscribed in China. It is considered a remarkable example of medieval geography, but how does it fare when tested against modern georeferencing?
10 Natural Disasters in the Middle Ages
Here are ten of the worst natural disasters that took place in the Middle Ages.
Monsters Traveling from Map to Book: An Unexpected Journey
In this talk I will examine three cases in which information traveled in the other direction: the authors of books used maps as their sources for monsters.
Adriatic Sea or Gulf of Venice? How Medieval Politics played out on maps
For centuries a debate was taking place among Europe’s mapmakers: should the Adriatic Sea be called the Gulf of Venice?
Strange Borders with Medieval Origins
Are you a geography fan, excited about enclaves and exclaves? Here we take a look at six strange border areas whose origins date back to the Middle Ages.
New Medieval Books: Here Begins the Dark Sea
The story of the Venetian monk Fra Mauro and the map of the world he created in 1459.
Researchers discover medieval church lost to sea in 1362
A joint scientific project has located the sunken church of Rungholt in the North Frisian Wadden Sea in Germany. It is believed that the church and the rest of Rungholt were drowned in a storm surge in 1362.
10 Medieval Places That Don’t Exist
There were some strange lands and places that medieval people thought were real.
The Myth of the Flat Earth
If they didn’t think it was flat, what did they think? And why are we all convinced otherwise?
The Madaba Map: A Further Reexamination
I claim that the Madaba map belonged to a new genre of “Holy Land” iconography that appeared in Palestine in the sixth century, iconography that related to the formation of the Holy Land’s sacred space and the interpretation of its landscape in light of the biblical text.
Gough Map may have revealed location of long lost kingdom, researchers find
Stories of a lost kingdom off the coast of Wales date back to the Middle Ages. Now, new research suggests an area where the Kingdom of Cantre’r Gwaelod would have existed, and that the famous Gough Map has helped reveal it.
Mecca’s population was only about 500 people during the Prophet Mohammed’s time, study finds
New research suggests that the population of Mecca was only a few hundred people when the Prophet Muhammad first began preaching the Islamic religion during the first decades of the seventh century.
From Slave to Traveler to Writer: The Story of Yaqut al-Hamawi
Yaqut al-Hamawi is a celebrated medieval scholar, geographer, and traveler who lived in the Abbasid caliphate during the late 12th and early 13th centuries. He is famous for the books he composed and his travels throughout the Muslim world.
The Medieval Travel Guide of Cristoforo Buondelmonti
Cristoforo Boundelmonti’s 15th-century guide to the islands and lands around the Aegean Sea is a traveller’s delight.
Climate and the Crises of the Early Fourteenth Century in Northeastern Europe
This article demonstrates how tree-ring material can be applied to historical research using the climate-driven crises of the fourteenth century as a case study.
Mental Geographies and Cultural Identities in the Baltic Region in the Eleventh-Century: the Anglo-Saxon Cotton World Map
The cartography of the Baltic Sea and Scandinavia has been an interesting topic among scholars of the history of the ancient maps.
Medieval History, Explosive Volcanism, and the Geoengineering Debate
By studying historical explosive volcanism, medieval history provides a laboratory for understanding the climatic and societal impacts of geoengineering in the form of reports of extreme weather and societal stresses such as subsistence crises and even conflict arising from scarcity induced resource competition
A life well lived in the tenth-century
‘There is nothing that befalls travelers of which I did not have my share, barring begging and grievous sin.’
Fitting Medieval Europe into the World: Patterns of Integration, Migration, and Uniqueness
This essay explains different patterns demonstrating how medieval Europe was situated in global visions of the world.
A Transient Pulse of Genetic Admixture from the Crusaders in the Near East Identified from Ancient Genome Sequences
Human migrations, which often accompanied historical battles and invasions, have profoundly reshaped the genetic diversity of local populations in many regions.
Mapping European Population Movement through Genomic Research
This article reviews scientific publications that have attempted to use genetic and genomic data in order to investigate European migrations between the fourth and ninth centuries.
Jacopo de’ Barbari’s ‘View of Venice’ (1500): Image Vehicles Past and Present
This essay focuses on an iconic and ground-breaking woodcut – Jacopo de’ Barbari (c. 1460/70–1516) and Anton Kolb’s View of Venice (1500) – and an interactive museum installation that I first developed for Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art.
500 Years after the First Voyage around the World: Secrets of the Atlas Miller
This is the secret of the Atlas Miller: it tries to counter the idea that the world could be circumnavigated.
Portolan Charts from the Late Thirteenth Century to 1500
From the earliest extant copies, probably a little before 1300, the outline they gave for the Mediterranean was amazingly accurate.
Linking Seas and Lands in Medieval Geographic Thinking during the Crusades and the Discovery of the Atlantic World
If medieval writers understood the interplay between land and sea similar to modern research, what role did the complementary character of land and sea routes actually play in medieval geographic thinking?