Does anyone here know more about Natural Earth? What does it take to make a map? I've been looking for a good source, but not for something that requires serious commitment. Their website sounds great: https://www.naturalearthdata.com:
Natural Earth was built through a collaboration of many volunteers and is supported by NACIS (North American Cartographic Information Society), and is free for use in any type of project ....
The carefully generalized linework maintains consistent, recognizable geographic shapes at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales. Natural Earth was built from the ground up so you will find that all data layers align precisely with one another. For example, where rivers and country borders are one and the same, the lines are coincident.
Most data contain embedded feature names, which are ranked by relative importance. Other attributes facilitate faster map production, such as width attributes assigned to river segments for creating tapers.
you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software
The last quote raises questions for me: How much investment in software and time is that?
> The last quote raises questions for me: How much investment in software and time is that?
Not much at all as long as you're just interested in hosting a script that serves a community tile set. You can make it more interactive by using Leaflet.js. Also look at https://github.com/visgl/deck.gl.
It gets a lot more complicated once you start creating your own tile sets, making interactive applications, or just in general working with large amounts of spatial data.
Source: I work in academia and use a fair amount of ESA satellite data for social research.
Thank you. I'm afraid I'm lazier than that. :) I just want a service or maybe some software where I can create accurate maps to spec without great investment in time or setup. National Geographic's 'Map Maker' seemed promising, but the available data layers are very limited. I also found Nystrom World but didn't have time to examine it further; I suspect it's K-12 and maybe not the level of sophistication I want?
It's for my own purposes. For example, I'm studying on my own a topic relating to Greece, and (among others) wanted a map of labeled natural features to a certain level of detail (mountains, rivers, plains, bodies of water, islands, etc.), preferably with names from a specific time period, in both Greek and English. I spent a lot of time looking around and found nothing reliable or anything like the desired info, though I have to think others would want it. I wish I could quickly find quality maps, and modify them to my needs (e.g., add the older names as I learn them).
Maybe what you are telling me is that such a thing only exists if I host it myself.
> TBH I wouldn't expect Xinjiang mummies to be of Indo-European origin, given that Xinjiang is in east Asia.
Well, it's in Asia. It's very much a part of the steppes that run into Europe, better connected to them than it is to, say, China. There isn't really a natural geographic division between "Europe" and "Asia".
Worth noting also that India is much more difficult to get to from Ukraine than Xinjiang is, but they have a very strong Indo-European presence - that's why it's called "Indo-European" and not just "European" or perhaps "Perso-European".
Speaking of which, connections between China and Persia have always been extensive. The Tocharians are not Iranian, but it would hardly be a surprise if Iranian-speaking groups had ended up in their place.
> India is much more difficult to get to from Ukraine than Xinjiang is, but they have a very strong Indo-European presence
Could you elaborate? I was intriguged so I measured on google maps. Ukraine to Xinjiang is around 2500 miles. Ukraine to India is around 2400 miles. "strong Indo-European presence"? I would imagine it is easier to go south along the coasts to India than it is to cross the deserts to Xinjiang.
Hindi is an Indo-European language. As I mentioned above, that is the reason for the term "Indo-European" in the first place.
India is not entirely Indo-European speaking; about 20% of the population speaks a Dravidian language instead. But I feel comfortable describing almost 80% of the population as being "a very strong Indo-European presence".
> > India is much more difficult to get to from Ukraine than Xinjiang is, but they have a very strong Indo-European presence
> Could you elaborate? I was intrigued so I measured on google maps.
Straight-line distance is not informative as to how easy it is for a human to make the journey. Proto-Indo-Europeans used a cultural toolkit involving horse-drawn chariots. They started out in the steppes north of the Black Sea, which I've referred to above as "Ukraine". But look at this map of the steppe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Steppe
You can get to Xinjiang from Ukraine by riding a horse east through the steppe. (Admittedly, and then detouring a bit south into a desert. And riding the horse may be anachronistic.) You're spending almost the entire trip in the same climate and terrain you're already familiar with.
But going to India involves leaving the steppe to cross some rather different terrain, after which you end up in the tropics.
In fact we know the Aryans did get bogged down on the way to India; we have records of Indo-Aryan speakers ruling a kingdom in the north of Mesopotamia at a time when they hadn't yet reached India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitanni . These people did not blaze a path of conquest all the way to India; the territory around them was held by Semitic speakers and has been continuously from then to now.
Note how they start in Ukraine and it's easier for them to move a couple thousand miles east along the steppe (Afanasievo) than it is to move 50 miles north (Corded Ware).
The study actually confirmed that the older inhabitants from North Xinjiang (Dzungarian Basin) appear to be of Indo-European origin, mixed a little with locals.
It is possible that these were those who brought the Tocharian languages in the region.
The Tarim mummies from South Xinjiang did not look like the current population of this region and they had various resemblances, e.g. in clothes, with some Indo-European populations, so some believed that they might have been the ancestors of the later Tocharians.
The study has shown that they did not have genetic links either with their Indo-European neighbors or with the modern population.
Nonetheless, this does not contradict the fact that the old Tarim inhabitants seem to have been influenced culturally by the Indo-Europeans, who at that time were close to them (e.g. in pastoral & clothing techniques).
We tend to think in contemporary political categories too much and forget about the ancient ones.
A few thousand years ago, places like Xinjiang and the Iberian peninsula or Scotland were both on the outer edges of Indo-European expansion.
History had it that the Tocharians in Xinjiang were since then assimilated by non-IE people, while the pre-IE population in western parts of Europe was assimilated by IE people. (With the exception of the Basques.) But Xinjiang speaking an IE language was, at its time, about as normal as future England doing so.
> TBH I wouldn't expect Xinjiang mummies to be of Indo-European origin, given that Xinjiang is in east Asia.
Apart from the other comment pointing to the Tocharians of Tarim Basin who were Indo-Europeans, the only thing the classification Indo-European means that the language they spoke had Proto-Indo-European as a common ancestor. Even right now there's an Indo-European language right across Xinjiang's border - Tajik. This wouldn't have been anything out of the ordinary.
There are Indo-European speakers living in Xinjiang right now (Tajiks), and there were Indo-European speakers there 3000 years ago. It's not far-fetched to imagine a Western Eurasian connection.
The Eurasian steppe goes practically uninterrupted from Hungary to Manchuria, and it's a great big horse highway.
https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/ancient-mummies-of-...