Pretty much. Three plates meet in Ethiopia at what's called the Afar Triangle. All three plate boundaries are divergent, and the boundary between the African plates forms what's sometimes called the Great Rift Valley. It will eventually become a sea that divides Africa.
On a completely random side note, the Great Rift Valley produces excellent coffee, as well.
The Great Rift Valley is an aulacogen, which is a failed rift. The Red Sea and Gulf of Aden are the two arms of the triple junction that are spreading.
Well shit. My bad. All of my knowledge comes from the coffee side of it, so I'm not surprised I got something wrong. Is the valley still going to become a sea that divides Africa, though?
Tbh, anything decent quality from east Africa will be pretty special. I recommend finding a good local roaster, though, as bad roasting will ruin the origin qualities.
Is that specific location serving as "best guess", where the current dating records are the oldest, or a different reason?
*I was curious enough to go down a surface level rabbit hole on this, and it seems the answer to my question is "yes to all 3". Definitely recommend checking out the Wikipedia on the Great Rift Valley and Human Evolution. Really cool stuff.*
That's why we have so many fossils in Utah. Much of it was 10,000' sand dunes surrounding a lake that took up much of the state. Cover everything with sand in an area where a bunch of animals can live then give it time
But that means other places are being combed less. Causing a sampling bias.
There might be places with older fossils, but we don't know because we arnt really looking for them there.
Not exactly true
but that's a little no story about archeologists and anthropologists
a lot of work has been done and between olduvai gorge and Australia and china they have a pretty good understanding of where humans originated from and how our earliest ancestors migrated
imagine how many explorers, students and researchers have been in the field since about 1830
a lot
and thanks to planes and satellites they can pinpoint likely areas - working with geologists and historical earth science people
We do look in other places. That exact little area is combed through due to sampling from other areas and that the conditions for fossilization were good in the area.
There’s a neat theory that sapient hominids emerged in the GRV because the active and readily available volcanism there allowed hominids to access fire. Essentially, a species which can use fire extensively must have large intellects and complex societies, but big brains need calories only accessible through fire.
So it’s a chicken or the egg type deal, *except* that volcanism in the Valley (think Yellowstone) may have allowed hominids to sort of cheat their way into developing the kind of sapience we possess.
Bear in mind, this is *super* new and very out there. There’s also a lot of side components and tangential evidence. Don’t hedge your bets or anything, but at least it’s an entertaining thought.
That general part of Africa is a strong candidate, but where exactly in Africa Homo Sapiens diverged is in no way a settled question. A lot of scientists are convinced South Africa is a possibility as well.
Rwanda is pretty high. I was there at the start of this year, and forgot how high it was. So we were at 1500 meters, and i thought we had to go down to 0… but i suddenly saw street lights and seconds later the plane touched down…
All 4 of those countries have elevations over 2.500masl and some of them are amongst the highest in Africa. Mount Kenya is 2nd after Kilimanjaro, Mount Stanley on the border of Uganda and DRC is 3rd.
That is just not true, in fact I have not heard of it being called Mount Rwenzori, the local name is Mount Ngaliema. The Rwenzoris are the range which it is a part of.
In my experience Mt Stanley is more commonly used and us westerners tend to care more about these issues than anyone else but I appreciate the intent behind decolonising language nonetheless.
Oof. A volcano outside Goma just blew two years ago. Destroyed a portion of the city and created fears of a limnic eruption. I was there two months later actually. Saw the devastation first hand. But yeah, the most beautiful scenery I've seen in the world yet.
Yeah. I live in South Africa, and according to this map we live in the Himalayas or something.
We have the Drakensberge on the escarpment, but it's not nearly as high as the map gives the impression it is. Also, north-west of it is the Free State, which is notoriously flat, and in the central western part of the country between Cape Town and the Free State we have the Karoo, which is also notoriously flat up until a few hundred kilometres before you reach Cape Town. This seems to be on the map (there where Beaufort West is), but it seems much smaller than in reality, and the immediate surrounds are not nearly that exaggerated.
Vertical scale is always exaggerated on these relief maps. It's meant to touch them and it's pretty boring and barely perceptible to feel the true vertical scale. The exaggeration factor is usually stated somewhere.
If you made a vertically accurate 3d map of anywhere at this scale, including the Himalayas, it would be completely flat. This map is something like 8000 km across, Everest is only 0.1% of that, which would be imperceptible
In a 3d elevation map you can't have the same scale for elevation or it would look like it is perfectly smooth as mount kilimanjaro the highest point in africa is only 0.073% as tall as the whole continent is long.
For reference, if the map is 8cm tall like it looks in my phone screen its highest peak would be 58.4 microns.
The original map is from British explorers from the late 1800s so of course it’s not accurate. If you look you can see place names like “French Kongo” and “Kongo Free State” (which “belonged” to the evil Leopold and was anything but free) and “Chief Chitambo’s Village” which aren’t actual place names so much as statements of Western European perceived stakeholders.
OP posted the original source image (and the elevation data source) down thread.
It was free as in "Free Trade". Any western company could set up shop there and do whatever they want (chop limbs, build a private army, enslave locals, etc...) as long as they paid tax to the king. This was different from other colonies where priority was given to companies from the controlling colonizer country and chopping limbs was regulated.
Relief maps are supposed to be deliberately exaggerated to show vertical scale. As long as the exaggeration is consistent, it's a great and accurate representation of how the topography varies in different areas of the continent.
One reason africa is so poor is the height differential between the hinterland and the coasts makes the rivers non-navigable to the coast.
Another is a lack of bays and inlets to allow for protected, deep harbors.
Whereas europe, asia and america have many ports that lead to rivers that can be navigated hundreds and sometimes 1000s of miles inland.
Another reason is that Africa has weak institutions for a suite of different reasons, the upshot of which is that large-scale broad economic enfranchisement has historically been very difficult to achieve.
Robinson and Acemoglu's "Why Nations Fail" is a pretty good read on the subject, though by now it's a bit dated.
Fun fact, Morocco’s mountains are in fact the same range as the Appalachian Mountains in the US and the Scottish Highlands.
Morocco would have been next to New England.
I was just about to ask that. Love geology/archeology and being from new England I knew that pretty much the whole east coast used to be attached to Africa. Pretty neat to see the connection
This map is wildly exaggerated. The tallest mountain in Africa is about 6km tall, and Africa is 7000km wide. The tallest mountain should be less than a pixel elevated. Basically, this map should be flat if it were to scale.
Relative to its size, the Earth is nearly as smooth as a billiards ball. So yeah, any large topographic map that's to scale would just be flat. But their purpose isn't necessarily to be to scale.
I think the creator is going for the vintage aesthetic with this map, and not suggesting that it is actually from 1892.
Or perhaps the atlas info material is from 1892, but the added tography is the OC.
Nope I just googled it. This actual image, including the topography, is from the original source. This is not OC.
Also, [hey look](https://www.reddit.com/r/Maps/comments/sgry3v/topographic_map_of_africa/).
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/14ivq1l/oc_the_topography_of_africa/jpi6d6l/
Probably helps to look at OP's profile/username.
Unless you are suggesting that it could only be OC if OP did the topographical measurements themself?
Their username and history doesn’t do it for me. I found this map online easily including all the topographic information.
Maybe they made some slight edits to it or polished up the image compression but that isn’t original content. If anything they’re just dodging a reverse image search.
man... this is so educational for a rando like me. i can look up almost any of these names and get a history lesson. incredible map if you take everything with a grain of salt and do your research
They were Italian colony for 5 years although they hate to admit it, they were "got" as much as anyone else only difference is that they were a colony for a short time.
When has it ever been "up"? The country has ever been a den of misery, dictatorship, unimaginable poverty, no development for hundreds of years.
And no, I'm no Eritrean or Egyptian, just stating painful facts
As an Ethiopian, I have a certain level of disdain towards my country and people for multiple reasons, some of which you've expressed yourself. But your comments are not merely statements of "painful facts" but an expression of hate.
And I don't think Ethiopia avoided colonization because the people are "unique flowers" as you've put it, but due to circumstance that had built up throughout the country's thousands of years of history.
I mean, the Italians took the capital and some of the roads while the monarchy continued to resist regardless and kicked them out in just a few years (With support from the Allies of WWII at that point, course).
By that logic Vladivostok and far eastern Russia was a Japanese and American colony from 1918-1922.
Every people in Africa resisted so I don't know the point you are making except to somehow falsely represent ethiopiaas a unique special flower like no other.
The country was invaded and conquered and colonised by Italian for 5 years.
The only particularly special thing about them in this case was that they had the government and resources to buy a fucktonne of guns from orthodox Christian countries like Russia.
And 5 years with minimal control is really not a lot of time.
You should look at the [Madrean Sky Islands](https://azstateparks.com/sky-islands) which are mountain ranges in Arizona that are surrounded by desert but have a completely different ecosystem because of the elevation difference
Extra special updoot for this, because you never see this, do you? I always think of Africa as a huge flat plain with sand at the top, jungle in the middle, and endless savannah at the bottom. Thank you.
[Original Image Source](https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~302568~90073130:Africa-?sort=Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No&qvq=w4s:/when%2F1894;q:africa;sort:Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No;lc:RUMSEY~8~1&mi=19&trs=20)
[Global Elevation Dataset (GEBCO)](https://www.gebco.net/data_and_products/gridded_bathymetry_data/)
Tools: QGIS, Blender
This map is a blend of modern topography with antique surveys, showing the exaggerated terrain of Africa around the year 1894. Check out some others like this on my [IG page](https://www.instagram.com/eastofnowhere/)!
Any particular reason for choosing a map from so long ago? Would have been interesting to see with modern borders. Not that the modern borders in Africa are that organic, many were more or less drawn by colonial powers, but still.
Not map creator but I've made maps like this, most of the shape file & DEM work is done in ESRI/QGIS/whatever flavor GIS software you want. Blender for lighting and shading effects.
Google shaded relief/topographic maps or look on YouTube. Plenty of resources show how to do this.
Never really knew where the mountain ranges of Africa were.
This explains why some people don't consider North Africa to be part of Africa. There's a freaking mountain between the rest of it.
I mean this culturally and as a general sentiment of those that have been there.
Fun fact: there are exactly zero navigable rivers in Africa, aside from the Nile, and even that isn't navigatable all that far.
And to be clear, I mean for commercial traffic. Not row boats or whatever. I'm talking international trade.
The lack of navigatable rivers is a big part of why Africa is impoverished.
Edit: to be clear, I said a part, not the only reason.
Interesting fact. The land mass in Egypt just a few hundred miles from the Mediterranean coastline is actually under water level but some 50metres. It was planned that a long canal would be dug to potentially creat one of Africa's largest lakes and bring water to the eastern edge of the Sahara but it didn't happen because of cost.
Not exactly useless. As you identify, transportation would be a benefit whatever the water type. Fish would swim in the channel and the lake, creating a fishing industry. The water in the lake could be desalinated for drinking water as though on the coast. The evaporation of the water from the lake would cool the area, increase the humidity, and lead to more rainfall, allowing capture of freshwater directly for irrigation and human use.
The scale of engineering required for the project, and many of the potential benefits, would of course be utterly enormous, which is why it's never been done
Idk if these posts are ads but I see them every now and then on Reddit. I have two of their maps framed and they’re pretty cool; North America and the Sea of Tranquility. Expensive though.
A significant part of our country is on what's called the great plateau. There are also the cape fold mountain ranges around the southern coast which are a beautiful mountain range.
The library when I was a kid had one of those massive globes, complete with topography on it. I used to love spinning it around and seeing where it would stop, and try to find a book about that place. There's something really cool about the sense of touch when learning or exploring.
This map is very weird in labeling Portuguese Mozambique as "Free State of East Africa". I can find almost no other references _anywhere_ to that name, the only other one is [this old pocket atlas from 1893](https://books.google.com/books?id=EmcuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA171&lpg=PA171&dq=%22free+state+of+east+africa%22&source=bl&ots=V-zt5xytgl&sig=ACfU3U1oCodsiOONbfJUSU1CReq9vfn_zg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjjrIXL7N__AhXSGTQIHYo1AcYQ6AF6BAgsEAM#v=onepage&q=%22free%20state%20of%20east%20africa%22&f=false) that just so happens to also be from Rand, McNally's & Co. There are other references to "Estado da África Oriental" ("State of East Africa") as an alternative name, but never with the "Free". Sounds like that company just fucked up their research and mislabeled that colony in all their products.
It's a modern restoration of an 1892 map, one of their "vintage" maps. They don't seem to make large alterations to the labelling when they do that, going off their website, so that's why it sticks to the colonial labelling.
5 second Google which gets close: [/r/MapPorn/Germany](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/vfpo7v/germany_elevation_map/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1)
With westernized map size, do you mean the mercator projection ? If so, the answer to your question is two times yes. Africa in the mercator projection is not distorted significantly, it's mainly the northern nations that appear to be way bigger in relation to equatorial nations
You're right about Mercator not distorting Africa much, but FWIW this isn't Mercator. You can tell at a glance because the lines of latitude and longitude on Mercator are straight lines, while on this map they are both curves, excepting the central one of each—the equator and, for this map, apparently about 35° east longitude. The map labels longitude as 10°, 20°, 30°, etc, but the lines don't seem to be. Judging by the straight central meridian passing close to Cape Agulhas, I think it is probably 35° east.
As for the map's projection, it doesn't seem to say, but I'm guessing some kind of [polyconic projection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyconic_projection_class) with a central meridian appropriate for showing Africa (eg, 35° east), and obviously cropped to feature Africa. Polyconic projections in reference maps like this were very common back in the late 1800s. Rand McNally used polyconic projections a lot back then.
Also, re u/TheDangerSnek 's "real satellite size"—raw satellite images are "perspective projections", ie, what it would look like if you took a picture of the Earth, or part of the Earth, from space, [like this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Vertical_perspective_SW.jpg) (not a photo obviously, but still a perspective projection), or from a plane. IOW, *all* unprocessed aerial or satellite photos are perspective projections because, ya know, the Earth is round and all. *Everything* has foreshortening distortion except the one central point directly below the camera/scanner/viewpoint, with the distortion increasing as you get farther from that point. Can see it in [this Tissot indicatrix](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/Perspective_with_Tissot%27s_Indicatrices_of_Distortion.svg/1024px-Perspective_with_Tissot%27s_Indicatrices_of_Distortion.svg.png)—the central circle is a circle, and as you move away from that point circles become increasingly smooshed/foreshortened.
If one was infinitely far away, you'd get an orthographic projection showing exactly half of the Earth, [like this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Orthographic_projection_SW.jpg/1024px-Orthographic_projection_SW.jpg). Can't take a photo from infinitely far away but you can construct a map that makes it look like you did. These also have severe foreshortening distortion much like perspective projections. Usually satellite images are of small parts of the Earth and orthorectified—removing the foreshortening distortion so it looks like your viewpoint is always "straight down"—which works well enough for smaller areas but is problematic with single images of areas as large as Africa. For showing larger areas these images are typically mosaicked with other such orthorectified images into some other projection, like Web Mercator in Google Maps' satellite images.
Sometimes you see "raw" satellite images of large parts of the Earth in things like high orbit, often geosynchronous weather satellite imagery, [like this](https://www.goes.noaa.gov/FULLDISK/GEVS.JPG). Arguably these are "unprojected", but it is usually clearer to call them "perspective projections", since they necessarily "project" the round Earth on a flat image.
I mean, any image of the Earth that is flat, like on a computer screen, or as scanned by a satellite's sensors, or even in your own eyes when looking at a globe, *must* be distorted, often in multiple ways.
So Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and parts of Kenya and Tanzania are all in one massive valley?
Pretty much. Three plates meet in Ethiopia at what's called the Afar Triangle. All three plate boundaries are divergent, and the boundary between the African plates forms what's sometimes called the Great Rift Valley. It will eventually become a sea that divides Africa. On a completely random side note, the Great Rift Valley produces excellent coffee, as well.
The Great Rift Valley is an aulacogen, which is a failed rift. The Red Sea and Gulf of Aden are the two arms of the triple junction that are spreading.
Well shit. My bad. All of my knowledge comes from the coffee side of it, so I'm not surprised I got something wrong. Is the valley still going to become a sea that divides Africa, though?
Great coffee, plus a great training location for distance running in the west facing escarpments
There's a freaking mountain between the rest of it. I mean this culturally and as a general sentiment of those that have been there.
I’m pretty sure that’s what he meant by failed rift, it’s not pulling apart there(?) and is pulling apart in different parts instead.
What's a good Great Rift roast to try? Or even a great Great Rift roast
Tbh, anything decent quality from east Africa will be pretty special. I recommend finding a good local roaster, though, as bad roasting will ruin the origin qualities.
Burundi varieties are my favorite from the region. Sweet Maria's usually has some on deck at their website.
The Great Rift Valley is also where we originated as a species.
Is that specific location serving as "best guess", where the current dating records are the oldest, or a different reason? *I was curious enough to go down a surface level rabbit hole on this, and it seems the answer to my question is "yes to all 3". Definitely recommend checking out the Wikipedia on the Great Rift Valley and Human Evolution. Really cool stuff.*
Oldest fossil records going back to the species we evolved from are from there.
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Is that due to the nature of boggy/swampy/Riverland regions aiding in preservation?
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That's why we have so many fossils in Utah. Much of it was 10,000' sand dunes surrounding a lake that took up much of the state. Cover everything with sand in an area where a bunch of animals can live then give it time
Keep in mind the area is still being combed by archaeologists as well. It's likely we'll find even more discoveries in the coming years.
But that means other places are being combed less. Causing a sampling bias. There might be places with older fossils, but we don't know because we arnt really looking for them there.
Not exactly true but that's a little no story about archeologists and anthropologists a lot of work has been done and between olduvai gorge and Australia and china they have a pretty good understanding of where humans originated from and how our earliest ancestors migrated imagine how many explorers, students and researchers have been in the field since about 1830 a lot and thanks to planes and satellites they can pinpoint likely areas - working with geologists and historical earth science people
Do you really think that archeologists haven't thought about that?
Wait until Antarctica melts.
We do look in other places. That exact little area is combed through due to sampling from other areas and that the conditions for fossilization were good in the area.
There’s a neat theory that sapient hominids emerged in the GRV because the active and readily available volcanism there allowed hominids to access fire. Essentially, a species which can use fire extensively must have large intellects and complex societies, but big brains need calories only accessible through fire. So it’s a chicken or the egg type deal, *except* that volcanism in the Valley (think Yellowstone) may have allowed hominids to sort of cheat their way into developing the kind of sapience we possess. Bear in mind, this is *super* new and very out there. There’s also a lot of side components and tangential evidence. Don’t hedge your bets or anything, but at least it’s an entertaining thought.
That general part of Africa is a strong candidate, but where exactly in Africa Homo Sapiens diverged is in no way a settled question. A lot of scientists are convinced South Africa is a possibility as well.
Olduvai Gorge
That triangle must be quite a ways out there.
Rwanda is pretty high. I was there at the start of this year, and forgot how high it was. So we were at 1500 meters, and i thought we had to go down to 0… but i suddenly saw street lights and seconds later the plane touched down…
All 4 of those countries have elevations over 2.500masl and some of them are amongst the highest in Africa. Mount Kenya is 2nd after Kilimanjaro, Mount Stanley on the border of Uganda and DRC is 3rd.
Mount Stanley? Yes he possibly was the first European to lay eyes on it but most people call it Mount Rwenzori.
That is just not true, in fact I have not heard of it being called Mount Rwenzori, the local name is Mount Ngaliema. The Rwenzoris are the range which it is a part of. In my experience Mt Stanley is more commonly used and us westerners tend to care more about these issues than anyone else but I appreciate the intent behind decolonising language nonetheless.
What were you doing there?
Hunting poachers and bringing them to absolute justice.
Famously in the Great Rift Valley. Some pretty cool volcanoes there, too!
Oof. A volcano outside Goma just blew two years ago. Destroyed a portion of the city and created fears of a limnic eruption. I was there two months later actually. Saw the devastation first hand. But yeah, the most beautiful scenery I've seen in the world yet.
I don't think this map is very accurate to be honest. Check Google Maps satellite view to get a better idea
Yeah. I live in South Africa, and according to this map we live in the Himalayas or something. We have the Drakensberge on the escarpment, but it's not nearly as high as the map gives the impression it is. Also, north-west of it is the Free State, which is notoriously flat, and in the central western part of the country between Cape Town and the Free State we have the Karoo, which is also notoriously flat up until a few hundred kilometres before you reach Cape Town. This seems to be on the map (there where Beaufort West is), but it seems much smaller than in reality, and the immediate surrounds are not nearly that exaggerated.
Vertical scale is always exaggerated on these relief maps. It's meant to touch them and it's pretty boring and barely perceptible to feel the true vertical scale. The exaggeration factor is usually stated somewhere.
But it does almost makes Toto's claim feasible, "As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti."
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If you made a vertically accurate 3d map of anywhere at this scale, including the Himalayas, it would be completely flat. This map is something like 8000 km across, Everest is only 0.1% of that, which would be imperceptible
I remember Neil Degrasse Tyson saying if we shrink the earth to the size of a cue ball, it would be smoother than a cue ball.
I think he said it would be smoother than any material humans can make. Earth is a huge place
In a 3d elevation map you can't have the same scale for elevation or it would look like it is perfectly smooth as mount kilimanjaro the highest point in africa is only 0.073% as tall as the whole continent is long. For reference, if the map is 8cm tall like it looks in my phone screen its highest peak would be 58.4 microns.
The original map is from British explorers from the late 1800s so of course it’s not accurate. If you look you can see place names like “French Kongo” and “Kongo Free State” (which “belonged” to the evil Leopold and was anything but free) and “Chief Chitambo’s Village” which aren’t actual place names so much as statements of Western European perceived stakeholders. OP posted the original source image (and the elevation data source) down thread.
It was free as in "Free Trade". Any western company could set up shop there and do whatever they want (chop limbs, build a private army, enslave locals, etc...) as long as they paid tax to the king. This was different from other colonies where priority was given to companies from the controlling colonizer country and chopping limbs was regulated.
They definitely took the whole “invisible hand of the free market” thing too far. And too literally.
Relief maps are supposed to be deliberately exaggerated to show vertical scale. As long as the exaggeration is consistent, it's a great and accurate representation of how the topography varies in different areas of the continent.
This post is an ad, the IG is in the legend
It's allegedly from 1892 so there's bound to be some errors, I guess. The scale does look a bit wonky, but it's a beautiful map.
If you scroll down, OP states this map is blend of data and antique maps to show the exaggeration of the period.
It looks like every elevation was scaled up to exaggerate the topography. It’s instagram art.
One reason africa is so poor is the height differential between the hinterland and the coasts makes the rivers non-navigable to the coast. Another is a lack of bays and inlets to allow for protected, deep harbors. Whereas europe, asia and america have many ports that lead to rivers that can be navigated hundreds and sometimes 1000s of miles inland.
Another reason is that Africa has weak institutions for a suite of different reasons, the upshot of which is that large-scale broad economic enfranchisement has historically been very difficult to achieve. Robinson and Acemoglu's "Why Nations Fail" is a pretty good read on the subject, though by now it's a bit dated.
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And that only happened because it was weak in the first place
potato potahto
Yes, it’s called the great rift valley
THAT'S why Morocco is so damn hard to infect in Plague Inc.
I like to start in Morocco
Never realized how mountainous Morocco was.
Fun fact, Morocco’s mountains are in fact the same range as the Appalachian Mountains in the US and the Scottish Highlands. Morocco would have been next to New England.
Almost heaven.
🎼 West Morocco 🎶
All Dank Hashes Selling for that Euro
I don’t usually equate West Virginia to Morocco lol
Desert roads, take me home, To the place, I belong, Sweet Morocco, camel mama, Take me home, desert roads.
Camel mama ....I snorted laughing.
I was just about to ask that. Love geology/archeology and being from new England I knew that pretty much the whole east coast used to be attached to Africa. Pretty neat to see the connection
More like Western Europe. The Atlas Mountains were the only part of Africa that originate from the same mountain range.
> Morocco would have been next to New England. Why isn't it?
Continental drift
That makes sense, because Tokyo is also far over an ocean.
Deja Vu!
Pokimane is basically Scottish
This map is wildly exaggerated. The tallest mountain in Africa is about 6km tall, and Africa is 7000km wide. The tallest mountain should be less than a pixel elevated. Basically, this map should be flat if it were to scale.
All topographic maps are exaggerated. Some topographic globes have mountains that would be 10s of miles high if they were to scale.
But this map has mountains that would be hundreds of miles high.
we know. that's how these maps work. it's so we can see them and marvel.
Relative to its size, the Earth is nearly as smooth as a billiards ball. So yeah, any large topographic map that's to scale would just be flat. But their purpose isn't necessarily to be to scale.
How old is this? So many of these names don't exist anymore Edit: From 1894, apparently
At the bottom it says copyright 1892.
Why the hell is the post labeled as Original Content then?
I think the creator is going for the vintage aesthetic with this map, and not suggesting that it is actually from 1892. Or perhaps the atlas info material is from 1892, but the added tography is the OC.
Nope I just googled it. This actual image, including the topography, is from the original source. This is not OC. Also, [hey look](https://www.reddit.com/r/Maps/comments/sgry3v/topographic_map_of_africa/).
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/14ivq1l/oc_the_topography_of_africa/jpi6d6l/ Probably helps to look at OP's profile/username. Unless you are suggesting that it could only be OC if OP did the topographical measurements themself?
Their username and history doesn’t do it for me. I found this map online easily including all the topographic information. Maybe they made some slight edits to it or polished up the image compression but that isn’t original content. If anything they’re just dodging a reverse image search.
This content creator takes old maps and adds elevation data to them
Yet this entire map including the topo is easily found online.
Back before they added the Arabian peninsula, apparently
man... this is so educational for a rando like me. i can look up almost any of these names and get a history lesson. incredible map if you take everything with a grain of salt and do your research
I'm over here trying to figure out where Derr, Egypt is There's still a Derr temple there so that helped
Now I get why they "Never got Ethiopia"
They never got Thailand either
Thailand was able to play the Western powers against each other, I don't know if their geography helped or not
Ethiopia used to be further north before Portugal, The Ottoman Empire, and Egypt got them, then they moved south and got some others.
Who is “they” in this quote?
Oh, ignore me, I’m sure it’s about colonization.
https://youtu.be/xuCn8ux2gbs?t=950. Watching the whole thing is delightful!
The sun is a deadly lazer
They were Italian colony for 5 years although they hate to admit it, they were "got" as much as anyone else only difference is that they were a colony for a short time.
Colonization and occupation are different things
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5 years colony of Italy, deny all you want but that's the fact.
I think the get is a more vague idea of controlling generations and forcing language/cultural shifts
Didn't do them any good, they're one of the most backward country in Africa.
Are you Eritrean or Egyptian that only people they will do anything just to put Ethiopia down
When has it ever been "up"? The country has ever been a den of misery, dictatorship, unimaginable poverty, no development for hundreds of years. And no, I'm no Eritrean or Egyptian, just stating painful facts
As an Ethiopian, I have a certain level of disdain towards my country and people for multiple reasons, some of which you've expressed yourself. But your comments are not merely statements of "painful facts" but an expression of hate. And I don't think Ethiopia avoided colonization because the people are "unique flowers" as you've put it, but due to circumstance that had built up throughout the country's thousands of years of history.
Lol "thousands of years". Tell that bs to the white idiots who support this awful country. Reality is there was no Ethiopia before 1890s.
I was hoping for a reasonable conversation but I see you just want to spew your hate. That's fine. Carry on.
Can't reason with people who eat raw meat. Good bye
Not a very mature conversationalist, are you?
So you don't eat sushi
I mean, the Italians took the capital and some of the roads while the monarchy continued to resist regardless and kicked them out in just a few years (With support from the Allies of WWII at that point, course). By that logic Vladivostok and far eastern Russia was a Japanese and American colony from 1918-1922.
Every people in Africa resisted so I don't know the point you are making except to somehow falsely represent ethiopiaas a unique special flower like no other. The country was invaded and conquered and colonised by Italian for 5 years.
The only particularly special thing about them in this case was that they had the government and resources to buy a fucktonne of guns from orthodox Christian countries like Russia. And 5 years with minimal control is really not a lot of time.
Yup, mountains in the desert. Why has no one ever told me this? I've had geology classes wtf.
Even crazier, those mountains on the northwest are the same ones as Scotland, Nova Scotia, and all the way down the Appalachians.
I would like to know more.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Pangean_Mountains
Thank you.
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Sir, I'm a redditor not a geographist
Kinda like Arizona
AZ represent
The capital of New Mexico sits at 7000 feet.
You should look at the [Madrean Sky Islands](https://azstateparks.com/sky-islands) which are mountain ranges in Arizona that are surrounded by desert but have a completely different ecosystem because of the elevation difference
Gorgeous. Never looked at it this way.
Extra special updoot for this, because you never see this, do you? I always think of Africa as a huge flat plain with sand at the top, jungle in the middle, and endless savannah at the bottom. Thank you.
[Original Image Source](https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~302568~90073130:Africa-?sort=Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No&qvq=w4s:/when%2F1894;q:africa;sort:Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No;lc:RUMSEY~8~1&mi=19&trs=20) [Global Elevation Dataset (GEBCO)](https://www.gebco.net/data_and_products/gridded_bathymetry_data/) Tools: QGIS, Blender This map is a blend of modern topography with antique surveys, showing the exaggerated terrain of Africa around the year 1894. Check out some others like this on my [IG page](https://www.instagram.com/eastofnowhere/)!
Any particular reason for choosing a map from so long ago? Would have been interesting to see with modern borders. Not that the modern borders in Africa are that organic, many were more or less drawn by colonial powers, but still.
Do you make tutorials for maps like these? Which part is QGIS used for versus Blender?
Not map creator but I've made maps like this, most of the shape file & DEM work is done in ESRI/QGIS/whatever flavor GIS software you want. Blender for lighting and shading effects. Google shaded relief/topographic maps or look on YouTube. Plenty of resources show how to do this.
Are these maps for sale anywhere?
I'm thinking this was an advert, but the maps are very cool. The map has the company name right on it, look again.
Also interested
Oh cool, If I click on global elevation dataset can I find south and Centro America like this as well ?
Beautiful work.
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.
Holy, this data is actually beautiful
Never really knew where the mountain ranges of Africa were. This explains why some people don't consider North Africa to be part of Africa. There's a freaking mountain between the rest of it. I mean this culturally and as a general sentiment of those that have been there.
From pictures I’ve seen did not expect Namibia to be so mountainous. Today I learned
Yeah, i figured its sand from the documentaries I've seen.
Fun fact: there are exactly zero navigable rivers in Africa, aside from the Nile, and even that isn't navigatable all that far. And to be clear, I mean for commercial traffic. Not row boats or whatever. I'm talking international trade. The lack of navigatable rivers is a big part of why Africa is impoverished. Edit: to be clear, I said a part, not the only reason.
Reckon it’s possible to dig a big canal or something? expensive but a build it and they will come sort of project
Sure. Except no one who can pay for it wants to, and, anyone who wants to build it, can’t afford.
Interesting fact. The land mass in Egypt just a few hundred miles from the Mediterranean coastline is actually under water level but some 50metres. It was planned that a long canal would be dug to potentially creat one of Africa's largest lakes and bring water to the eastern edge of the Sahara but it didn't happen because of cost.
It would be saltwater, so it would be useless. Or were they just thinking it would be for transportation?
Not exactly useless. As you identify, transportation would be a benefit whatever the water type. Fish would swim in the channel and the lake, creating a fishing industry. The water in the lake could be desalinated for drinking water as though on the coast. The evaporation of the water from the lake would cool the area, increase the humidity, and lead to more rainfall, allowing capture of freshwater directly for irrigation and human use. The scale of engineering required for the project, and many of the potential benefits, would of course be utterly enormous, which is why it's never been done
This is absolutely beautiful. I'd pay good money for a high quality print.
Idk if these posts are ads but I see them every now and then on Reddit. I have two of their maps framed and they’re pretty cool; North America and the Sea of Tranquility. Expensive though.
They're definitely ads. I don't mind if it's nice stuff that is actually interesting and made by an artist.
here is their etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/EastOfNowhereCo
This is so cool. Never thought that South Africa would be so mountainous
A significant part of our country is on what's called the great plateau. There are also the cape fold mountain ranges around the southern coast which are a beautiful mountain range.
I’ll never stop marveling that Africa looks like the head of a giraffe.
Why doesn't every map have a date? Where's the date?
The bigger question, what direction does the water flush in Rand McNally?
The library when I was a kid had one of those massive globes, complete with topography on it. I used to love spinning it around and seeing where it would stop, and try to find a book about that place. There's something really cool about the sense of touch when learning or exploring.
This map is very weird in labeling Portuguese Mozambique as "Free State of East Africa". I can find almost no other references _anywhere_ to that name, the only other one is [this old pocket atlas from 1893](https://books.google.com/books?id=EmcuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA171&lpg=PA171&dq=%22free+state+of+east+africa%22&source=bl&ots=V-zt5xytgl&sig=ACfU3U1oCodsiOONbfJUSU1CReq9vfn_zg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjjrIXL7N__AhXSGTQIHYo1AcYQ6AF6BAgsEAM#v=onepage&q=%22free%20state%20of%20east%20africa%22&f=false) that just so happens to also be from Rand, McNally's & Co. There are other references to "Estado da África Oriental" ("State of East Africa") as an alternative name, but never with the "Free". Sounds like that company just fucked up their research and mislabeled that colony in all their products.
I thought this was a weed subreddit and I was going to talk about how it rains down in Africa...
This is absolutely gorgeous! 😍 I would absolutely buy a large print/poster of this.
The Earth is such a beautiful wet wrinkly planet
The mountains are way ott.
Yes, very exaggerated
So dope! Can you do Japan?
Took away upvote for potentially being a very out of date map and inaccurate.
Potentially? It says 1800s
Earth is very old. “Out-of-date” might be a perspective for some.
this map is flat, sir, it was bang on back then
These maps with exaggerated z-scale don't do anyone a favor to further understanding.
Am I the only one that was grossed out when I zoomed in?
Upvoted because i thought it was cool, downvoted when I realized I was duped by some lame ig person.
Looks kinda like triceratops head
The Toyota is beautiful. However, the actual map with place names is a cluttered mess and virtually unreadable.
These are my favorite type of maps
Looks cool but it isnt very accurate
The fact is a long time ago India was a part of Africa continent.
Fascinating graphics. Appalling use of colonial time toponyms.
It's a modern restoration of an 1892 map, one of their "vintage" maps. They don't seem to make large alterations to the labelling when they do that, going off their website, so that's why it sticks to the colonial labelling.
Awesome as always. I need germany so bad
5 second Google which gets close: [/r/MapPorn/Germany](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/vfpo7v/germany_elevation_map/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1)
Is this the real satellite size of africa or the westernized map size?
With westernized map size, do you mean the mercator projection ? If so, the answer to your question is two times yes. Africa in the mercator projection is not distorted significantly, it's mainly the northern nations that appear to be way bigger in relation to equatorial nations
You're right about Mercator not distorting Africa much, but FWIW this isn't Mercator. You can tell at a glance because the lines of latitude and longitude on Mercator are straight lines, while on this map they are both curves, excepting the central one of each—the equator and, for this map, apparently about 35° east longitude. The map labels longitude as 10°, 20°, 30°, etc, but the lines don't seem to be. Judging by the straight central meridian passing close to Cape Agulhas, I think it is probably 35° east. As for the map's projection, it doesn't seem to say, but I'm guessing some kind of [polyconic projection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyconic_projection_class) with a central meridian appropriate for showing Africa (eg, 35° east), and obviously cropped to feature Africa. Polyconic projections in reference maps like this were very common back in the late 1800s. Rand McNally used polyconic projections a lot back then. Also, re u/TheDangerSnek 's "real satellite size"—raw satellite images are "perspective projections", ie, what it would look like if you took a picture of the Earth, or part of the Earth, from space, [like this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Vertical_perspective_SW.jpg) (not a photo obviously, but still a perspective projection), or from a plane. IOW, *all* unprocessed aerial or satellite photos are perspective projections because, ya know, the Earth is round and all. *Everything* has foreshortening distortion except the one central point directly below the camera/scanner/viewpoint, with the distortion increasing as you get farther from that point. Can see it in [this Tissot indicatrix](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/Perspective_with_Tissot%27s_Indicatrices_of_Distortion.svg/1024px-Perspective_with_Tissot%27s_Indicatrices_of_Distortion.svg.png)—the central circle is a circle, and as you move away from that point circles become increasingly smooshed/foreshortened. If one was infinitely far away, you'd get an orthographic projection showing exactly half of the Earth, [like this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Orthographic_projection_SW.jpg/1024px-Orthographic_projection_SW.jpg). Can't take a photo from infinitely far away but you can construct a map that makes it look like you did. These also have severe foreshortening distortion much like perspective projections. Usually satellite images are of small parts of the Earth and orthorectified—removing the foreshortening distortion so it looks like your viewpoint is always "straight down"—which works well enough for smaller areas but is problematic with single images of areas as large as Africa. For showing larger areas these images are typically mosaicked with other such orthorectified images into some other projection, like Web Mercator in Google Maps' satellite images. Sometimes you see "raw" satellite images of large parts of the Earth in things like high orbit, often geosynchronous weather satellite imagery, [like this](https://www.goes.noaa.gov/FULLDISK/GEVS.JPG). Arguably these are "unprojected", but it is usually clearer to call them "perspective projections", since they necessarily "project" the round Earth on a flat image. I mean, any image of the Earth that is flat, like on a computer screen, or as scanned by a satellite's sensors, or even in your own eyes when looking at a globe, *must* be distorted, often in multiple ways.
Africa is stunning! Such a beast! No wonder all the Europeans were salivating to try and exploit it! Glad they got kicked out! Africa do yourrr thang
The most resource rich land, they just can't figure it out
Really nicely done, I had to double check that it wasn't a photograph of some model in college geography classroom.