A Sense of Where You Are: Excerpts from The History of
Cartography, The Illustrated Longitude and Atlas of the Universe
Originally belonging to the Skiri band of the Pawnees, the
[painted celestial deerskin] chart was collected at Pawnee,
Oklahoma, in 1906 as part of a sacred bundle. It may be a
descendant of a precontact original. The Milky Way, which the
Pawnees thought of as parting the heavens and as the pathway of
departed spirits, is represented by small dots across the middle
of the chart. The History of Cartography, Vol. 2, Book 3:
Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic
Australian and Pacific Societies David Woodward and G. Malcolm
Lewis, eds. University of Chicago Press, $150 Ptolemy's prime
meridian [from the 1482 edition of Cosmographia] ran through the
westernmost point of known civilization, the Fortunate Islands,
or Isles of the Blest, which correspond today with the Canary
Islands. The Illustrated Longitude Dava Sobel, William J. H.
Andrewes Walker & Co., $32.95 This map [topo