A note on the old map. Its grid of meridians and parallels is accurate, but the cartographer drew the villages of the Pindus and Zagori schematically, shifting some of them by 2 to 17 km from where they really stand. Tick “Where the old map placed them” to see each shift: the gold ring is the position on the old map, the dot is the real village.
Beyond Yesterday · early 20th century
The Old Map
The Balkans the Manakia brothers walked through, drawn in the early 20th century and laid on its own grid of meridians and parallels over the land as it is today.
Map by V. Diamandi Aminceanu · BnF / Gallica
The map. Drawn by V. Diamandi Aminceanu, after Carl Peucker and the Austrian General Staff; I. V. Socecu workshops, Bucharest, early 20th century; scale 1:1,250,000. Copy held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (source: gallica.bnf.fr / BnF). Longitudes on the map are counted from Ferro; the overlay is fitted to its grid (mean error under 0.5 km).
Why the villages drift. In the Pindus the map draws the villages schematically, 2 to 17 km from where they stand. Switch on “Where the old map placed them”: the gold rings show where the cartographer put each village, the dot is where it is today. Satellite: Sentinel-2 cloudless 2020 by EOX (Copernicus Sentinel data).