Reference
Source, data provenance, and the mathematics that place every coordinate on the disc.
The antique chart you see in the Chart layer is Alexander Gleason's New Standard Map of the World, first published in 1889 and patented in 1892 (U.S. Patent 497,917). Gleason, a carpenter and civil engineer from Buffalo, New York, drew the world inside a single circle with the North Pole at the centre, meridians radiating outward like spokes, and concentric circles of latitude.
The high-resolution scan used here is in the public domain and preserves the original engraving's compass rose, ice rim, and distance scales. We cropped and centred it on the North Pole so that it aligns exactly with the mathematical projection used by the interactive engine.
The Satellite layer is a reprojected version of NASA's Blue Marble next-generation composite — a public, global, true-colour image built from satellite observations. We transformed the standard equirectangular source into the same north-polar azimuthal-equidistant disc used by Gleason, then sliced it into a tile pyramid so detail stays crisp as you zoom in.
Every pin on the map is backed by publicly available sources. We do not invent coordinates or descriptions; we curate, verify, and cite what is already documented.
City and site coordinates come from public-domain gazetteers and verified geographic databases. Each latitude/longitude pair is checked against the projection before being plotted.
Gallery images are sourced from Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia under their stated free licences (mostly Creative Commons and public domain). Each dossier shows the best site photograph first, followed by context shots and historical images.
Categories include biblical sites, ancient cities, sacred architecture, megaliths, LiDAR discoveries, recent archaeological finds, and North American mound/earthwork complexes. Each category is tagged by hand using scholarly and journalistic sources.
Recent finds and LiDAR surveys are linked to their original reporting — for example, articles from Earth.com and peer-reviewed archaeology journals — so you can read the primary source for yourself.
Current catalogue: 148 landmarks across 8 categories. Every entry includes a name, location, era, coordinates, blurb, and up to 10 gallery images.
Gleason's chart is mathematically an azimuthal equidistant projection centred on the North Pole. That means:
The scan is normalised to a 1,000 × 1,000 unit square. The North Pole sits at the centre (500, 500). For any latitude φ and longitude λ:
r = 2.61 × (90 − φ) x = 500 + r · cos(λ) y = 500 − r · sin(λ)
The equator therefore falls on a circle of radius 235 units, and Antarctica becomes the ice rim engraved around the edge. New York at 40.71° N, 74.01° W resolves to x 535.4, y 623.7.
On this projection the radial (north-south) scale is exact everywhere. One map unit equals 42.60 km along a meridian. East-west distances are stretched toward the rim, so the measurement tool uses the haversine formula to report true great-circle distances in kilometres and miles instead of relying on the flat disc.
Example: the great-circle distance from New York to London is about 5,570 km · 3,461 mi.
Every flat map distorts something. On an azimuthal equidistant chart distances and bearings from the centre are true, while shapes and areas stretch progressively toward the rim. Southern landmasses appear wider on the disc than they measure on the ground. Read the map as the historical instrument it is, and treat southern-hemisphere distances with that caveat in mind.
Ready to explore?
Return to the map and start discovering landmarks.
