Hello, and welcome to another ancient warfare magazine podcast.

Today we're going to talk about the latest issue of ancient warfare magazine,

Issue 13-2, which deals with geography and warfare in the ancient world.

And we've got some questions that have been submitted to us by our patrons

and on our Facebook page and social media.

And one question that came up from several people

deals with maps in the ancient world, which is a very relevant question,

and one that I happen to know is not dealt with in the issue.

So let's talk maps.

Do we know what maps were like in the ancient world? Were they used by ancient generals? Were they state secrets? Were there specialized survey mapping units and navies? There's quite a bit of stuff to talk about. And some things we're going to have to say do no and some

things we probably can say something about. Who wants to start with that one?

Well I think we can start by saying they did have maps but they're not maps as we know them.

That the ancient world maps were very much itineraries, that they had locations, perhaps geographical

features, but very much in a linear fashion, like the Putinger table and a couple of other

fragments of maps that survive, that tell you there's a city, there's a road, there's a river,

there's a city, there might be five days between,

and that those maps are often miss out things that you might expect them to have because we think of that location as being an important one,

but it would be between the two locations on the ancient map but it's not there because it's not

part of that itinerary i suppose um and we have the ancient periplus peripluses periply i'm not sure

what the plural of peripus is um and they of course are the sailings around which we've got for Africa the Eurithran Sea the Black Sea

and a couple of others and they are the same they are you sail for this many days you come to a port

you sail for this many days you come to a river you can trade here we know that there are people

...