Source from: http://ata.hannam.ac.kr/cities/hcc/beijing-ae+map.jpg
This is the one of my three maps I found attractive in the internet，though not very clear.
It's a map of Beijing, which, actually, central part of it.
What it attract me is the majesty and rigor revealed from it.
From this map, we can see it is many rectangular wall like Russian Matryoshka. Actually, hundreds of years ago, it's a way to divide people's social status and their ethnic. The innermost city is the famous Forbidden City, which is the palace of emperor, no citizens can enter it. the second is Imperial City. it is built for Man people, the dominant ethnics at that time. Any other ethnics without permission enter will be killed, revealing the majesty of power.
Besides, I can also find lots of features of Chinese Geomancy or Fengshui. In other words, Beijing is a standard city built under the rule of Geomancy. It located in the north of China and face to the south. It's a very common Chinese feature, not only face to south have more sunshine and warm wind. It's also a symbol of supreme as emperor. North in China means failure and surrender. And north to the palace is a hill called Jing, south of the palace is a moat. It's a totally man-made hill and moat because that symbolizes safe and prosperity. The main palace of the forbidden city, the hall of supreme harmony, is exactly located at the fibonacci lines of it.
Moreover, Beijing is also symmetric, its symmetry axis passes through all main palace of forbidden city, and other structures in the Imperial City, like Tianan Gate, Yongding Gate. Nowadays, there are also famous Bird Nest and Water Cube on it.
In a nut shell, though a faint map, I can also get lots of information of Chinese culture and Geomancy knowledge from it.
What it attract me is the majesty and rigor revealed from it.
From this map, we can see it is many rectangular wall like Russian Matryoshka. Actually, hundreds of years ago, it's a way to divide people's social status and their ethnic. The innermost city is the famous Forbidden City, which is the palace of emperor, no citizens can enter it. the second is Imperial City. it is built for Man people, the dominant ethnics at that time. Any other ethnics without permission enter will be killed, revealing the majesty of power.
Besides, I can also find lots of features of Chinese Geomancy or Fengshui. In other words, Beijing is a standard city built under the rule of Geomancy. It located in the north of China and face to the south. It's a very common Chinese feature, not only face to south have more sunshine and warm wind. It's also a symbol of supreme as emperor. North in China means failure and surrender. And north to the palace is a hill called Jing, south of the palace is a moat. It's a totally man-made hill and moat because that symbolizes safe and prosperity. The main palace of the forbidden city, the hall of supreme harmony, is exactly located at the fibonacci lines of it.
Moreover, Beijing is also symmetric, its symmetry axis passes through all main palace of forbidden city, and other structures in the Imperial City, like Tianan Gate, Yongding Gate. Nowadays, there are also famous Bird Nest and Water Cube on it.
In a nut shell, though a faint map, I can also get lots of information of Chinese culture and Geomancy knowledge from it.
Source:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Piri_reis_world_map_01.jpg
The second map I find is Piri Reis World Map, discovered serendipitously on 1929, through the philologic work of the German theologian, Gustav Adolf Deissmann(1866-1937). It's a very significant world map because it's a pre-modern map compiled in 1513 by a turkish admiral and cartographer called Piri Reis. Only half of this map survives now, which shows the western coast of Europe and North Africa and the coast of Brazil, but it's important for its demonstration of the extent of exploration of the world around 1500'. And there's also an amazing assumption that the southeast part of the map is the Antarctic coastline and mountains with incredible accuracy. And those information is almost impossible to discover until 1975, when human sent their first satellite to space, because those mountain were covered by heavy snow all over the year, which are hard to detect by naked eyes.
Though it's still a controversy of it's origin and the actual meaning of the antarctic part of the map. It's still attracting me because of the power and mystery of pre-modern society. How can they do such difficult job at that time without the help of advanced equipment. Maybe there was alien to help them? Or God? No one knows.
The last one, which is much heavier than previous two----the death toll during the World War Two. Though it's hard to show the real damage it causes to each country and the world through dry number, it does evoke the aversion of human beings towards war. Through statistics of official number all over the world, the total number of death reaches 130 000 000 and 75 890 000 among them are innocent civilians. From this map, we also can find that almost every countries in the world get involved in this notorious war (except countries which can't give accurate estimate). No one won at last. It's very essential to stop such tragedy happens again, and it needs cooperation of countries all over the world. There must some other ways to solve international conflicts which are much better than using military power, and I see it as sign of civilization.
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