A Cartographer's Tale

A Cartographer's Tale

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Exploring the ocean floor
How humans discovered the ocean floor, surveyed it and managed to represent it on wonderful maps.
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Miguel García Álvarez
The “correct” map
The Mercator map creates distortions. Just like the Peters map and any map with any projection on a plane. This is the story of the correct map, the map…
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Miguel García Álvarez
2
How the prehistoric coastline influences US elections
From geological times and throughout part of US history, we explore how it still influences elections in the South today.
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Miguel García Álvarez
2
Holidays and the Olympics in Nazi Germany
A journey through the whitewashing of Nazi Germany, promoting tourism and organising the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
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Miguel García Álvarez
2

July 2025

Three maps to understand the Internet
The Internet came to revolutionise our lives, and these three maps show how it has managed to connect us all.
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Miguel García Álvarez
2
The discovery and conquest of Antarctica
The south was unknown for centuries. Many cartographers imagined it, and many explorers tried to prove its existence… until Antarctica appeared.
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Miguel García Álvarez
The true size of countries
Cartographic projections distort countries, which can lead us to believe that some countries are larger or smaller than others. Sometimes, this is not…
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Miguel García Álvarez
6
Kadesh: history is written by the victors
A journey through one of the best-documented battles of antiquity. With special attention to historiography and how this battle is one of the best…
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Miguel García Álvarez
Cartographic projections: deforming the Earth to represent it
The history of a compromise that was created to resolve an unsolvable geometry problem. The virtues and shortcomings of some of the most iconic map…
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Miguel García Álvarez
4

June 2025

A history of relations between Iran and the West
From the Great Game to coups. How the ambitions of the West and Russia repeatedly put Iran's sovereignty in check.
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Miguel García Álvarez
3
The Kingdom of Bamum, the best example of indigenous African cartography
A brief history of the Kingdom of Bamum, who had their own alphabet and were the creators of possibly the most iconic map of African cartography.
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Miguel García Álvarez
The Russian arrival on the Pacific Coast
A brief history of the creation of Russia, its initial expansion and exploration of the Far East until Ivan Moskvitin reached the Pacific Ocean.
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Miguel García Álvarez
2
© 2025 Miguel García Álvarez
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