Slashdot Mirror
Google Earth Recreates Ancient Rome
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.'"
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.
--
make install -not war
I know from multiple sources that all the buildings were actually painted in bright colours (before the fell into disrepair, obviously), and archaeologists know what the colours were, from the remnants of pigments. I was hoping this reconstruction would be more than just white and beige marble veneer...
Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. - Jean-Paul Sartre
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.
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 ...