If you’re not marvelling at the beauty of this world, then you’re not paying attention.
Cosmography as a word is no longer in vogue, but it once denoted attempts to map the entire cosmos. It differed from geography in that its scope included the celestial — other worlds, the heavens, creation — alongside terrestrial concerns like cartography, people, flora, and fauna.
In essence, traditional cosmography was an attempt to unite history, geography, anthropology, ethnology, zoology, and theology all in one; a preposterously vast, yet dazzling endeavour.
This publication is an attempt to do the same.
Subscribe to to explore the world, via history, mythology, and art.
After all, our time on earth is finite. Let us not squander it. Let us learn instead.
“A cracking read.”
— Oxford Professor of World History, Peter Frankopan
Do you like travel? History? Mythology? Me too.
Hi. I'm
.Ever since I was given a globe as a small child, I have been obsessed with faraway places, old maps, and stories of adventurous explorers. As a teenager, I spent hours staring at distant place names on the six-foot map of the world I had pinned to my bedroom wall. I always used to wonder: Who lived there? What were they like? What did they do?
These questions led me first into dusty books, then to travel, and now to Cosmographia. Here I share my lifelong fascination with the distant corners of the globe, its myriad cultures, peoples, and myths.
Subscriber Testimonials:
Popular Free Reads:
How did the Holy Land come to be holy?
“The Land of Israel is the centre of the world; Jerusalem is the centre of the Land; the Holy Temple is the centre of Jerusalem; the Holy of Holies is the centre of the Holy Temple; the Holy Ark is t…
The Khyber Pass
Welcome to Atlas’ Notes. In these posts I share an artwork, a poem, a literature excerpt, an antique map, and some photography - all centred on a particular place. For the full archive, see here. The …
The Story of the Ice Balloon
The line between courage and folly is a fine one. On the 11th of July 1897, three men stepped off the dry land of Svalbard into the basket of a hydrogen balloo…
Full Index:
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By Discipline:
By Series:
Exploring the role of networks in human history.
Journeys through the strange landscapes of our planet’s deep past.
History’s most beautiful documents.
A weekly compendium of beautiful things.
Stories of mysterious ‘phantom lands’ that have appeared on maps through the ages.
How the Holy Land came to be holy.
The great cities of the world, as seen by her finest artists.
Exploring the world’s abandoned spaces.
The origins of urbanisation.
The history of humanity’s most enduring symbols.
400,000 years of European prehistory condensed into four blogposts.
