Whither Maps?

(Could this be the oldest map in the world? It's a map on a mammoth's tusk.  It's from around 25,000 BCE.  Read more at this link.)

Oh wow, do you see that picture up there?  It's a map from maybe 27,000 years ago.  It's an amount of time that's hard to wrap one's head around (although this quarantine has made it somewhat more understandable).  Smart people who study these things aren't entirely sure what it's a map of - it could be a map of the area where it was found, in the current Czech Republic.  Or it could have been a hunting map.  It's just fascinating to think, human beings were making maps way back when.  & I still can't tell someone exactly where the nearest dispensary is.

You might be wondering about my own fascination with maps.  I will tell you two stories about my youth - one which I am certain I've mentioned here before, another that I haven't.  I had this notion, because as a child I loved to look at maps, that every city was surrounded by railroad tracks.  That's how you knew you were leaving one city & entering another.  I hadn't thought about it before, but I suspect I might have thought that because of the broken line borders that designated boundaries, which perhaps I interpreted as railroads.  Anyway, my family members disabused me of that notion by calling me an idiot when I spoke the idea out loud.

This did not deter me from thinking I might be helpful & come up with a kind of map.  As I sat in the back seat while someone else (probably one of my brothers) was driving, I took to carrying a notepad & pencil & I attempted to scribble down the street names as we passed.  In a sense I meant to make a kind of "word map" that would help someone - if you memorized, for example, "Medina, Prescott, Ridgedale," you'd be able to know where a street was off another street (in this case, Fifth Street) if you needed a sense of where something was located.

Also I really just wanted a list of every street name.  That fascinated me.  I don't always know when my projects as a child began & ended, but I know when this one was quashed: when I saw my first map of Garland.  There, on the right hand side, was a list, in alphabetical order, of all the streets in the town.  I don't know if that's what I wanted all along, but I remember having a feeling that someone has somehow beaten me to the punch.  & I lost interest in that kind of cartography.

Until tomorrow, of course.  An entire show about maps!  But.  I can't say when tomorrow - I am still operating on what I'm calling quarantime - but some time tomorrow I hope there'll be a Self Help Radio episode about maps.  You can find it at the Self Help Radio website, but I'll announce it here & the other usual places.

You won't need to follow a map to find it.  Although if I planned better, that would've been fun.