Drawing maps used to be a big part of the geography curriculum in the U.S. One guide for students, published in 1900, is Schutze’s Amusing Geography and System of Map Drawing by Lenore Schutze. Tips for Africa, “The Skull” as Schutze sees it:
1. Cut a square into four smaller squares, and erase the southwest one.
2. Mark the cross-line from east to west, “The Equator.”
3. Draw Tripoli at the north of the division line from north to south, and Cape Town at the south end.
4. Locate the mouths of the Nile River west of the middle of the north side of the second square, and draw from them to a point north of the Equator, on the east side, and print “Cape Guardafui.” Draw the Red Sea south of this line.
5. Draw from Cape Guardafuit to Cape Town, and print “Cape of Good Hope.” Zanzibar, Pretoria, and Pietermaritzburg must be south of this line.
6. The west side of Africa extends somewhat above the north side of the first square, and does not quite reach the Equator.
7. Madagascar slants in about the same direction as the line from Cape Guardafui to Cape Town.
The entire page on Africa from Schutze’s Amusing Geography and System of Map Drawing (1900) p. 43 is below:
[…] a comment » circa 1900 and via making maps, does anyone else find it odd that they use a skull to […]
very joking map.but it is very nice.a face looks like africa.
Thanks for posting the story – I’m teaching a lab section of a geography class, and our first lab was drawing the globe. It was interesting (terrifying) to see what students could and could not draw.
Thinking about the world in terms of the body is interesting: Suggestions of man as the measure of all things; but then there are also discourses of imperialism and colonialism, questions of representation worked into seemingly innocuous drawing exercises.
All said, neat story.
[…] Tuesday – Return field trip forms, How to draw Africa: https://makingmaps.net/2008/10/03/drawing-maps-africa-ca-1900/ […]