Berlin Researchers Crack the Ptolemy Code

Spiegel ^ | 01 Oct 2010 | Matthias Schulz

[Palter]

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.

Astonishing New Map

That may now be changing. A group of classical philologists, mathematical historians and surveying experts at Berlin Technical University's Department for Geodesy and Geoinformation Science has produced an astonishing map of central Europe as it was 2,000 years ago.

[Palter]

The researchers appear, for example, to have accurately located three particularly important Germanic sites, known to Ptolemy as "Eburodunum," "Amisia" and "Luppia." The new calculations put these sites at the present day cities of Brno, Fritzlar und Bernburg (Saale), all places already possessing unusually distinguished recorded histories.

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.

[Palter]

Map, ping.

Not to be confused with these accurate Maps.

[bunkerhill7]

Berlin Researchers Crack the Ptolemy Code

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 beer gardens are 1,000 years older than previously thought.

The other half are still sleeping it off.

[Sacajaweau]

I'm an old map freak. My last dissertation began with: "They all have secrets and those secrets are shown on the map and are also held elsewhere by the author." The problem is tracking the original notes of the original author.

A fascinating field.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Welthauptstadt Germania

[Opinionated Blowhard]

The more we learn, the more we see that ancient civilizations that we have forgotten were vibrant and relatively “advanced.” “Germany” during Roman times is portrayed as a bunch of savage tribes scratching in the dirt for a living when they aren’t invading Roman territories. We see from this they were more of a society than we thought. I suspect this may allow historians to continue piecing together that there was a rudimentary, interconnected German society on Rome’s border.

Its drummed into our heads to respect other cultures yet some our worst arrogance, from a cultural perspective, is to not respect just how much our own ancestors had developed their own societies.

[stefanbatory]

wow! according to this map, the city I used to call home is much older than the thought to be founding in 1346!

[hoagy62]

Loosely translated: “World High City” Germania. IIRC, this was the city that “Hitler’s Architect” Albert Speer designed. That dome in the top of the picture was supposedly several hundred feet high.

This likely what Berlin might have become if the Nazis won WW2.

[stefanbatory]

World Capital City, actually...

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

"World Capitol City"

Speer's father, a successful architect, took one look at that model and said, "You people must be crazy." (He also went into convulsions of disgust when introduced to der Fuehrer.)

Hitler himself, seemed aware of the fact that an artificially created capitol would be a sterile aesthetic failure.

[pappyone]

later

[wolf78]

Ironically, the parts of Welthauptstadt Germania that had actually been built before or during the war, are still in use.

German Ministry of Finances (former Air Ministry)



German Foreign Ministry (former Reichsbank)

[SunkenCiv]

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[1010RD]

That’s true. We live in a world of lost knowledge.

Reading all this makes me ponder on the fate of the Ten Tribes. Where did they get to?

[Domestic Church]

Dare I ask what all that brown stuff represents?

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

Our ancestors' lack of education is to blame for this dearth of knowledge.

Can you thatch a roof, make butter, kill boars, tan leather, tell a food plant from a poison plant?

[zeugma]

Excellent find. Fascinating.

[Jeff Chandler]

It’s best not to get too carried away with romanticizing primitive cultures.

[bannie]

At Dolan Barracks, Schwaebisch Hall, Germany, we lived in the officers’ quarters for the Nazis. Nice quarters.