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Google Earth Recreates Ancient Rome
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Nov 15, 2008 11:19 AM
from the minus-the-gladiators dept.
from the minus-the-gladiators dept.
thefickler writes "Google Earth now includes ancient Rome circa 320 AD, thanks to Google, the University of Virginia, and Past Perfect Productions working together to bring the historical city to life. Clicking on Ancient Rome in 3D, users can revisit Rome from a bygone era and view highly detailed reconstructions of 250 buildings, as well as 5,000 other lesser detailed buildings. 'Pop-up windows provide information on the monuments and visitors also can enter some of the most important sites, including the Senate and the Colosseum, to observe the architecture and marble decorations.'"
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First Post! (Score:2, Insightful)
Would that be Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian??
Re:First Post! (Score:5, Funny)
Dunno, It's all Greek to me...
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Ego operor ignoro est totus Cupiditas volo.
Re:First Post! (Score:5, Funny)
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I call Slashdot home. Never will you find a more perfect nexus of horrid punnery and sheer nerd-ism.
You magnificent bastards...
Parent
Re:First Post! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Never will you find a more perfect nexus of horrid punnery and sheer nerd-ism.
Slashdot: you will never find a more wretched hive of nerds and punnery. We must be cautious. - Obi-Wan
La plume de ma tante!!! (Score:2)
La plume de ma tante!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Shouldn't that be:
EGO operor ignoro , Is est totus Cupiditas volo.
Anyway:
Romanorum vado domus.
Is this wise? (Score:5, Funny)
What would happen if this tool fell into the use of the wrong hands? What if Barbarians were to get a hold of this information?
Re:Is this wise? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Roman Detective Novels (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone even remotely interested in this should be aware of the novels of David Wishart. He is a Classics scholar who writes pop fiction detective novels set in ancient Rome @30 CE.
He has too modern references and word clichés for my taste, but the three novels that I've read of his have been detailed, engrossing, and amusing.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
History Goggle Earth (Score:5, Interesting)
I want to visit the real Rome with overlay goggles tuned to Google Earth's reconstructions, with GPS. So when I look at the ruins, there's overlay of the original sites. With animations of recreated everyday scenes, and famous scenes (like Senate arguments and speeches, revolts, Coliseum battles, etc) running for my amusement.
In fact, I'd love to see these overlays in goggles in any museum showing artifacts. They're always in crappy shape in their cases (the intact articles are probably all in private collections, the broken ones sold off to finance them). Goggles showing them in their original condition, and in their original usage, would turn those displays from mere trophy cases of booty into actual demonstrations of history and our global heritage.
Re: (Score:2)
In that case, why bother to visit Rome and these museums? Just keep a case
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The home version is exciting for that reason. But actually being there is still a blast. The point is not just the VR, but "bringing the scene to life". Actually being there, after actually going there, swings all kinds of human wetware into actually connecting with the scene. And connecting it with the current scene there. All of which connects the person to the history, with the actual artifacts as the base props that encourage the suspension of disbelief that is the most powerfully convincing special eff
Re: (Score:2)
Where are you getting your weed, man?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Orbital Rastas.
Re: (Score:2)
You've gotta meet them halfway, mon - irie heights.
Re: (Score:2)
This thing is called imagination and human children usually unlearn to use it as soon as they start seriously thinking about "growing up".
Re: (Score:2)
I have a good enough imagination to both imagine the application I just described, and to enjoy its augmentation of my senses.
But indeed, most adults don't. Which is why goggles like these would be popular.
Re: (Score:2)
That's right. But while one cannot grow a replacement arm if they lose one, having artificial implants to make up for the lost imagination is a step in wrong direction. Oh wait, TV and the other Media of Mass Manipulation are already setting us up on this path...
Well, people could use such goggl
GOOGLE GOGGLES! (Score:2)
GOOGLE GOGGLES!
Goat, Girl, Goo Goo Goggles, G... G... G... [google.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Gibson's _Virtual Light_ even more so. Stephenson's _Snow Crash_ is even better (as gadget, as story and as writing), and was written (just months) before VL was.
Re: (Score:2)
The analog is the reverse of the digital :).
No directions? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No directions? (Score:5, Funny)
Sure! Let's assume, like a majority of geeks, you're in SoCal...
1. Build Time Machine (0 mi.)
2. Travel Back to 320 AD (-0 mi.)
3. Walk to the East Coast of the US (3782 mi.)
4. Build boat (0 mi.)
5. Paddle to Italy (4890 mi.)
6. Head NE to Rome (45 mi.)
See? That was easy!
Parent
SPQR game back in 90's (Score:4, Interesting)
Ancient Art of War? (Score:2)
Just kidding.
AAW ruled, though
Not really! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not really! (Score:5, Informative)
depicting buildings in the classical "mediterranean" colour scheme), as bright, monochromatic piant was rather
expensive (ground semi-precious stones aren't cheap) - the statues however were, and we can indeed detect very
faint remnants of different pigments on them today. Last I heared it is still debated what pigment stands
for what colour though, but "bright" is consensus amongst scholars by now.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Not as geeky as posting an xkcd comic, but here's some related Sheldon comics on the subject:
http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/080523.html [sheldoncomics.com]
http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/080524.html [sheldoncomics.com]
Visit a modern city. (Score:2, Interesting)
Visit a modern city here [sesam.no] (Windows only).
It's AD 320 (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, this a a nit, but one that I am seeing more and more often.
The entry refers to Rome in "320 AD". This is simply wrong. It is AD 320. Any of you who posted Latin comments are aware of this modern mangling. 320 Anno Domini simply does not make sense. (See Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] on "Anno Domini".)
As with all issues involving time, it's pretty bogus, anyway, so perhaps /. should just use CE (Common Era).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah, I think not. AD has been good enough for everyone for 1500 years (it was devised in AD 525), and I don't see any reason to give it up just for political correctness. There's enough politically correct garbage going on now as it is without adding dates to it.
Paitence (Score:2, Funny)
Google Earth, heck... (Score:2)
Google Time (Score:2, Interesting)
How long before Google Earth simply features a slider, whereby you can not only view any part of the Earth's surface, but view it at any point in history? Drag the slider back a few centuries and watch the development (and destruction) of major population centres. Accompanied, no doubt, by a sidebar of discreet text ads offering to whisk you back via time machine to the era you appear to be interested in. Just be careful not to step on the butterfly.
Sooo... (Score:2)
Wow (Score:3, Funny)
And I thought the imagery in my area was out-of-date. :-)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Rome wasn't sacked in a day.
Can I send in Visigoths from Second Life?
Re: (Score:2)
That's exactly what would happen if this was done on Second Life! And it would be funny too
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
There actually is an ancient rome sim in SL:
http://www.rikomatic.com/blog/2007/01/real_world_plac.html [rikomatic.com]
Re:come on, why stop at Rome? (Score:5, Informative)
At that time, there was another developed culture of similar size on Earth, although at that time Han China had already split into three kingdoms. There were also other civilized peoples with developed cities in the Middle East, India and Mexico. It would be interesting to see all of them on Google Earth.
I think it has a lot to do with preservation. Remember, the Romans did a lot of their building with stone and Marble. Rome is strewn with buildings from the ancient Roman empire like the Colliseum and the Pantheon. The Chinese, however, used a lot of wood in their cities. Very little of the Han cities survive, making them a bit harder to reconstruct.
I certainly hope this isn't the last, though. I personally would like to see Babylon or one of the Mayan cities like Palenque or Tikal.
Parent
Re:come on, why stop at Rome? (Score:4, Informative)
The flip side of using a lot of marble and good stone in building is that a lot of Roman buildings were cannibalized for their stone. The Colesseum has been stripped, for one. (The best example I can think of is Piazza dell'Anfiteatro in Lucca, Italy [google.com], where the entire original amphitheater is totally gone, but the fossilzed shape remains in the piazza.)
As a result, most of what we still have is from places that were buried (a la Pompeii), were converted to other uses (the Pantheon is now a church, for example), or places that were abandoned (Ephesus, for instance).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:come on, why stop at Rome? (Score:4, Interesting)
and then convert Google Earth into an online RTS game that lets you pit these ancient armies against one another!
as a side note, i wonder if it'd be possible to create an MMO RTS game given the huge server farms Google has at their disposal.
Parent
Re:come on, why stop at Rome? (Score:5, Interesting)
It would, but I think one good reason to prioritise Rome is because the layout of the city changed in infuriatingly complicated ways during the centuries it was at its peak. The enormous building works instituted under some emperors (e.g. Augustus and Nero) make it very tiresome trying to work out what was where. It's basically impossible to represent that on a paper map: you need layers of maps. Such things are available, but an electronic version would be very nice.
If it weren't for that complexity, I reckon a single paper map would be just fine. In the case of classical Athens, say, a single paper map is basically fine, as the city's layout was fairly constant during its heyday. (Sure, they built a new acropolis, but it just occupied the site of the old one, mostly.) Conversely, studying archaeological sites whose history spans centuries or millennia -- say, Troy -- would be much easier with a diachronic map of the kind I envisage.
Unfortunately, what they've done isn't actually a diachronic map: it's focussed just on one period (320 CE). So, while glad of this for what it is, I for one am left annoyed at what might have been ...
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
EGO exspectata nostrum Romanorum vinco
There, fixed that for you.