A Map of Cosmographia
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Histories of the earth and the stars.
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 Cosmographia 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.
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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.
