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- by pre-Socratic philosophers interested in exploring the phenomena that regulated the external world. These geographic theories were further developed during the Hellenistic period and were later adopted and implemented by Roman geographers. In studying the shape and size of the Earth, ancient geographers developed the fundamentals of topography and cartography, the sciences of recording the surface of the terrain through drawings, as we still know them today. In particular, Roman surveyors introduced the concepts of measurable and measured space, and the visualization of the terrain through lines of demarcation. Their work became instrumental for administrators and generals whose main goal was to control and exploit the expanse of lands. Our modern knowledge of ancient cartography relies almost exclusively on written sources. Despite this paucity of ancient artifacts, it is clear that Greeks and Romans applied topographical studies to the mapping of land and sea routes, to the implementation of an accurate system of recording public and private lands, and to promote specific political agendas. In all these instances, the resulting representations of places presented the viewer with a distorted and schematized version of geographic and topographic elements, transforming those regions both on a conceptual and on a physical level. In the exhibition, several artifacts and manuscripts illustrate the ways in which space was conceptualized not only through topography and cartography, but also according to non-geographical elements such as strategy and tactics. Indeed, official propaganda during the Roman imperial period consistently boosted the emperors’ agendas by performing acts of ‘imaginative geography’, out-and-out manipulations of known geographic facts that contributed to the creation of ever shifting social, ethnic, political, and cultural boundaries. In addition to measuring, drawing and manipulating their known world, Greeks and Romans developed a flourishing literature of geographic.
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- isaw.nyu.edu
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- en
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- exhibitions-space-glossary-html-bce
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http://isaw.nyu.edu/exhibitions/space/glossary.html#bce