Ptolemy's Britain and Ireland: A New Digital Reconstruction

Corey Abshire,Dmitri A Gusev,Anthony Durham,Sergey K Stafeyev

doi:10.5194/ica-proc-1-1-2018

Abstract

Abstract. In this paper, we expand application of our mathematical methods for translating ancient coordinates from the classical Geography by Claudius Ptolemy into modern coordinates from India and Arabia to Britain and Ireland, historically important islands on the periphery of the ancient Roman Empire. The methods include triangulation and flocking with subsequent Bayesian correction. The results of our work can be conveniently visualized in modern GIS tools, such as ArcGIS, QGIS, and Google Earth. The enhancements we have made include a novel technique for handling tentatively identified points. We compare the precision of reconstruction achieved for Ptolemy's Britain and Ireland with the precisions that we had computed earlier for his India before the Ganges and three provinces of Arabia. We also provide improved validation and comparison amongst the methods applied. We compare our results with the prior work, while utilizing knowledge from such important ancient sources as the Antonine Itinerary, Tabula Peutingeriana, and the Ravenna Cosmography. The new digital reconstruction of Claudius Ptolemy's Britain and Ireland presented in this paper, along with the accompanying linguistic analysis of ancient toponyms, contributes to improvement of understanding of our cultural cartographic heritage by making it easier to study the ancient world using the popular and accessible GIS programs.

Highlights

This paper presents results of a continuation of our multiyear research of Claudius Ptolemy’s classic Geography, a uniquely rich ancient work that provides coordinates of more than 6,300 places known to the celebrated astronomer and geographer
We expand application of our mathematical methods initially developed to investigate Ptolemy’s India and Arabia (Abshire et al 2016, 13–34; Abshire et al 2016, 133–154) to Albion and Hibernia, the modern Great Britain and Ireland, historically significant islands once situated on the outskirts of the ancient Roman Empire
Despite the overall abundance of information contained in Ptolemy’s impressive catalog, the tasks of GIS visualization, analysis, and interpretation of the historical data remain difficult for modern researchers. This difficulty is primarily due to the distortions introduced because of misunderstandings of the true shape of the known world by the ancient sources, and is caused by the compilative nature of Ptolemy’s work

Summary

Introduction

This paper presents results of a continuation of our multiyear research of Claudius Ptolemy’s classic Geography, a uniquely rich ancient work that provides coordinates of more than 6,300 places known to the celebrated astronomer and geographer. Despite the overall abundance of information contained in Ptolemy’s impressive catalog, the tasks of GIS visualization, analysis, and interpretation of the historical data remain difficult for modern researchers. This difficulty is primarily due to the distortions introduced because of misunderstandings of the true shape of the known world by the ancient sources, and is caused by the compilative nature of Ptolemy’s work. Conclusions and outline the future research directions in the final section

Literature Review

Point Identification and Linguistic Analysis

Handling Tentatively Identified Points

Precision Analysis

Conclusions and Future Work