This month's National Geographic has an article featuring the Mannahatta Project, a recreation of Manhattan's natural environment. The project started by geolocating the still-extant sites on the British map of the island, prepared during the Revolutionary War, and built from there back to 1609, when Henry Hudson became the first European to see the place.
The website is built around the Google map of Manhattan, but with an extra layer representing a visual image of the landscape as it likely appeared in 1609, plus popup descriptions of the local ecosystem. You should definitely try it out.
I've posted a quickie-demo here.
The project was also featured in the New Yorker a couple years ago.
Monday, September 7, 2009
New York prehistory
Labels:
cartography,
environment,
history,
nature
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hmm, couldn't they tie the Manhatta Project in with the Manhattan Project and actually get it back to something more like what it was in 1609?
That would overshoot the mark, taking it back to whatever featured bedrock sans vegetation. Not as pretty.
Post a Comment