Alexandria-on-Tigris

This follows on "Ancient Roman environment" paragraph halfway down here: the blog post about the Roman road network ended up observing the vastly different water regime in ancient Mesopotamia. 

Fox News Digital ran a feature titled Alexander the Great's long-lost city located after nearly two millennia: ‘Absolutely stunning’ about Alexandria-on-the-Tigris (Charax Spasinou, summary at bottom). That falls smack dab in the middle of that map region. I simply recycled the previous map with Ancient World Mapping Center (AWMC) at UNC-Chapel Hill data for that period.

Charax Spasinou was originally founded as Alexandria (or Alexandria on the Tigris) by Alexander the Great in 324 BC, replacing a small Persian settlement called Durine. It was later rebuilt by Antiochus IV and briefly renamed Antiochia (or Antiochia in Susiana). 

That description sits here with relevant  AWMC data tabulated, c/w two archaeological reports here and here on the. last decades' excavations: check out the stunning shallow geophysical mapping results for what may have been the largest port city of mid-1st Millennium BC. 

I sorted the Pleiades ancient place names database for features that mention Alexander (the Great) and found only two. Alexandria didn't show up, so i simply pulled the location and plotted it on the map.

click to enlarge, original here

You can clearly see why the port "then declined as the Tigris shifted and the Gulf shoreline migrated, leaving the port stranded" (summary below): the current shoreline today is way south of Alexandria then; that is the same with ports at the time of the Crusades on the French medieval coast of Provence.

Here are the previous maps from the prior blog that show the change in water regime mentioned atop:

click to enlarge, from blog post

News Summary (Perplexity)

Archaeologists have confirmed the precise location and layout of Alexandria on the Tigris, a long-lost city founded by Alexander the Great in what is now southern Iraq near the Persian Gulf, revealing a remarkably well-preserved ancient trade hub.

What was found

• The city is Alexandria on the Tigris, founded in 324 B.C. as a port linking trade between India, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean via the Persian Gulf.

• It declined after the 3rd century A.D. when the course of the Tigris River shifted and the site fell into obscurity.

How they located it

• Since the 2010s, and especially from 2016, archaeologists have used drone imagery and high‑resolution geophysical scans to map fortification walls, street grids, city blocks, temples, workshops, harbor and canal systems.

• Work began under British archaeologists Jane Moon, Robert Killick and Stuart Campbell, with more recent leadership by Stefan R. Hauser of the University of Konstanz.

Significance of the site

• The mapped area covers about 2.5 square miles, which Hauser calls enormous for an ancient city, surpassing even major capitals like Seleucia on the Tigris or Alexandria on the Nile in block size.

• Buildings are preserved just beneath the surface, giving an almost unique opportunity to reconstruct an entire ancient city plan without later construction disturbing the remains.

Historical and research context

• Ancient sources such as Pliny the Elder (citing older accounts) report that Alexander personally chose the site for its strategic position at the junction of river and sea, when a new harbor for Indian trade was needed in southern Mesopotamia.

• The city later became important under the Parthian Empire, which Hauser describes as one of antiquity’s most understudied powers; the site may therefore illuminate Parthian history, structure and culture.

Current and future work

• Fieldwork has been difficult because of security conditions (including ISIS control in parts of Iraq in the 2010s), extreme summer temperatures above 120°F, and air pollution; early surveys were conducted under close military or police supervision.

• Researchers plan to investigate city quarters, workshops and kilns further, funding permitting, and hope to complete the geophysical mapping of the entire site soon.

Continental drift not push-me but pull-you, the Rockhall Plateau

 A funny thing happened when I showed my last blog post to my mom: "what is that blob right above where it says 'Atlantic Ocean'?". Widow and mother to geologists, she learned to read maps: she spotted the Rockhall Rise as it shows in the zoomed-in view below; it's also known as Rockhall Plateau (Perplexity), briefly a piece of crust left behind in the spreading of the North Atlantic. The tectonic plate margins, incl. the mid-Atlantic Ridge top right, are highlighted in cyan below. Same as the second-last blogpost showed interesting geomorphology only seen in North polar view, this portion of the far North Atlantic also shows better than in a normal or equatorial map view shown at right.

Mapping Arctic Boreal Peatlands, cont.

 This follows on the original post here, with more news on "Arctic fires" that are counterintuitive a priori:

Perplexity summary of NASA captured it from space, and it looks like a bad joke: fire burning on the ice of the North Pole. The scary thing is that it has been multiplying for 10 years: NASA satellites have detected a dramatic rise in Arctic wildfires over the past decade, with fires spreading farther north into icy regions, fuelled by an Arctic warming four times faster than the global average. These blazes, now more frequent and intense, are shifting from the Arctic's edges to a broad northern band, burning drier tundra and releasing ancient carbon from permafrost, turning some areas into carbon sources. Lightning ignites many of these deep-burning fires, whose smoke travels globally, worsening air quality and signalling urgent climate impacts as noted in recent Arctic assessments. 

A view from the top of the world

This follows on from 3D maps in current affairs: it showed an intriguing feature bisecting the Arctic on a proxy topography for the earth's crust; it's only visible on a Polar Stereographic projection, looking straight down the North Pole, mapped here for features N of 50° N lat.

This was seen when mapping ArcticDEM - High-resolution Elevation Models of the Arctic (Esri Living Atlas) and Seabed Sediment Thickness (clipped to N of 50°N, Esri Living Atlas).  From the poster & overlay at the bottom:

Mapping Arctic Boreal Peatlands

This follows on East Anglia environment in a global context. A recent article, Peatlands across the Arctic are expanding as the climate warms, research shows  via @physorg_com, made me look to map data for that. I posted a fair bit on East Anglia peatlands in this blog. I also recently used polar Arctic basemaps N of 50°lat., like Arctic Waterfront, a measure of geopolitical stakes, amongst this blog's Arctic coverage. Next post is Mapping Arctic Boreal Peatlands, cont..

Mapping USAF Global Range

This follows on a previous post mapping long-haul flights (this blog) in a similar manner.

Currently in the news, the UK prohibited the use of forward bases by the US, whereas that issue was sidestepped last summer for US intervention in Iran (Perplexity). Having looked at the range of fighter jets in Arctic War games (this blog), I did the same for B52 bombers (Perplexity). Here are the relevant data:

The travels of La Macareña

 ... Aaand now for something completely different! Following on tracing travels & travails on simple maps for my travels over a decade ago and recently Samurais & Richard Lionheart, I traced the journey of that song&dance everyone knows.

It all started with ye olde beer advert popping up on YouTube shorts:

Henry VIII Dissolution of Monasteries in England

This continues history posts from Roman Roads vast network and local effect, to medieval travels by Richard I and by Samurais.

Inspired by National Archives' story map: Discover the Dissolution of Monasteries by Henry VIII from 1536 to 1540, here is its intro:

 Henry VIII's break from Rome and the creation of the Church of England set in motion a revolutionary chain of events that resulted in the closure of almost 900 religious houses, displacing 12,000 people from their religious orders. While some were allowed to remain or convert, many were given pensions to surrender their churches and many still were simply evicted with no compensation. The dissolution changed the kingdom's schooling, medical care, land ownership and powerful figures - but why did it happen, and how did it affect your local area?

A Belgian holiday

 This picks up from A Roman Holiday about aspects of Roman Roads. A friend pointed out this YouTube video, How A Roman Road Changed Belgium Forever, here is their synopsis:

Why does Belgium speak two languages? The answer is a 2,000-year-old Roman road.

In this video, I explain how the Via Belgica, a highway built by the Roman empire around 50 BC, created a language border that still divides Belgium today. The road ran from Tongeren to Bavay, separating Romanized Gaul in the south from Germanic tribes in the north. That linguistic divide has persisted through the Middle Ages, Spanish rule, Austrian rule, French occupation, and Belgian independence.

Today, Dutch speakers live north of the line, French speakers live south of it, and the border is still influenced by that ancient Roman road. Even Belgium's election results are decided by this 2,000-year-old line.

Having mapped Roman Roads, I recreated a focussed map on the region, adding the Belgian Wallonie region in green. As roads were unidentified in the AWNC database, I selected them per video. I found a source (no metadata in arcgis.com) that put Via Belgica right along it, confirming my choice.

3D maps in current affairs

This picks up on the previous Beautiful maps... as well as Arctic Waterfront... re: the distribution of influence over the Arctic in the news of late.

Update: see in A view from the top of the world more on an intriguing lineament bisecting the Arctic from top to bottom on an Alaska Polar Strereographic projetion.

This time let's look at the elevation maps of the area:

• High Resolution Elevation Model of the Arctic (Esri Living Atlas)
• Seabed Sediment Thickness (Esri Living Atlas)