Drawing 4: The Roman Boot

This peninsula has only recently been called “Italy.”  During the days of the Roman Empire, it was simply part of the Roman Empire.  Later, during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, each city was like a little country unto itself.

This lesson focuses on the work of Claudius Ptolemy, a Roman citizen living in Alexandria, Egypt around 150 AD.  He picked up on the work that Strabo had done, and continued with the lines of longitude and latitude.  He also began to understand how difficult it would be to draw an accurate map of the world, once the areas far away from the equator were included.  Putting a spherical surface onto flat paper was impossible.  Mapmakers would have to use a variety of “projections” to deal with this problem.

 

The activity section will give you some activities about navigation using stars and a tool called a navigational quadrant.

 

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