Greetings fans!
This is something of a special mid-week update, but it's not of a faction, and it's not entirely official even mostly because a lot of our members don't have the program that is needed to run it and they haven't downloaded it yet. We have released our map already, but in our attempts to fine tune everything from the province boundaries, the locations of the capital cities (of 272BC, remember), the mountains, the rivers, the coastal regions, etc., some of us have created a file for the Google Earth program to mark all of the locations of our ancient cities. If you have downloaded and are running Google Earth, you may download our file for the program and keep it as a folder in your Google Earth location categories.
We have tried to be as precise as possible, and for some cities we can be exceedingly precise: Athenai is centered on the Akropolis of Athens, Roma is centered on the Forum Romanum of Rome, Persepolis is centered on the remains of the ancient city on the side of a low mountain, Marakanda is exactly over the ancient city in the middle of its oasis, found by space shuttle photographs the ancient citadel of the lost city of Ubar is located on the edge of the Rub al Khali or “Empty Quarter” in Oman. But for some “cities”, especially of nomadic peoples and dispersed populations, we have been forced to either use a central or important (in terms of resources, rivers, topography, etc.) location for the “city”. These are limitations that any game such as RTW has to deal with, and we have made the judgments we thought best.
The purpose behind the release of the Google Earth EB file is mainly to allow our fans to experience some of the absolutely amazing vistas that the program allows. It is an incredible opportunity to see the location of Alexandreia Eschate on the Jaxartes, looking out towards the west to Marakanda and Sogdiane. From the citadel of Akrokorinthos, above the ancient city of Korinthos, you may look down at the isthmus and across the Saronic Gulf to Athenai. You might look across the straits of Gibraltar from ancient Tingis to Gadir. Or follow the Danube from its mouth north of Kallatis past Buridava and Naissos to Singidunum and further north. Pass through the Dardanelles and the site of ancient Troy to the Bosphoros and follow the coast around the Euxine to see the nearby cities of Byzantion and Nikomedia, then Sinope, Amaseia, Trapezous, Kotais, Pantikapaion and Chersonesos on the Crimea, and then Olbia and down to Kallatis. The most recent map changes in the game have not yet been incorporated on our large jpg map that is being presented again here, but the map is very close (95%?) to being up to date (coastal changes in the Netherlands and Turkey, river branches in Pakistan, other changes in Arabia, have not yet made it to our map here).
The map here is almost a megabyte, so it may take some modem-users a while to download, but of course Google Earth itself requires a speedy connection and probably has trouble with more ancient computers also.
The Google Earth file itself, is downloadable here and it's very small actually:
ftp://europabarbarorum.org/EuropaBarbarorumSites.kmz
And Google Earth (the program) is downloadable here:
http://kh.google.com/download/earth/index.html
We hope those of you out there who have Google Earth can enjoy this mini-presentation. If you haven’t tried it out yet but have a good connection and a pretty good computer we would heartily suggest taking a look at it. And don’t forget to zoom in close to the sites and then change the angles to better appreciate the terrain differences. I would personally suggest (additionally) that you accompany the tour with appropriately “ancienty” music. I’m somewhat fond of the Vangelis Alexander score right now myself, especially for viewing pretty much anything east of Pella.
For those of you who can't run Google Earth, here's a little sample of three sites:
Thanks for your interest in our mod again and hang on just a little longer for the regular preview (which will *not* be preempted by this presentation) this weekend!
Bookmarks