Google (Ancient) Earth: Proof of Concept

Here’s another proof of concept toy. Done as a demonstration for the Biological, Geology and Geography departments in Leicester. I’ve hooked into the satellite data on Google Maps. The result is a small-scale atlas of Greek cities in the Aegean.

If you visit the Atlas (which needs a better name if I’m going to keep it) and click on the city names beneath the map, then the city will be located for you. If you click on a marker then links to info on the Perseus Project (Berlin), Flickr, the Wikipedia and threetypes of Google come up. So if you want images of Aphrodisias then click on the Aphrodisias marker and you can pick from Flickr or Google Images. If you want books on Sparta then click on the Sparta marker and then on Google Books.

There are problems with some entries. Thebes has to be identified as Thebes, Greece rather than just Thebes to avoid confusion with Thebes, Egypt. This is where the data file is rather spiffy. You can see it at www.archaeoastronomy.co.uk/atlas/greecelocs and it stores information like this:

Cityname|long|lat|perseus|flickr|wiki|web|books|images

The pipes separate the name of the marker from its longitude and latitude. The remaining entries can be filled in, but if they’re left blank the script assumes the search query is the same as the city name. This means that

Thebes|23.32|38.32|||Thebes%2C_Greece||||

correctly links to Thebes, and

Lesbos|26.33|39.17||Lesvos||Lesvos||Lesvos|

allows you to search for images of Lesbos without upsetting anyone.

With it being set to satellite as default, it copes with zooming a lot better. You can even make out the Erechthion on the Acropolis.

The page that helped me a lot with this was Mike’s Little Web Page.

I’m away in Durham today and tomorrow, so comments, queries and complaints are all welcome, but I won’t be answering them for a while.