Imposing Order on the World

The Frans Hogenberg portrait (1574) shows him pointing at the North magnetic pole.

This is not a leap year with 366 days and a February 29 is a reminder of the ways we (try to) impose order on the world. Some of those ways seem to work pretty well - atomic clocks, GPS, compasses, maps, and globes. One person who tried to impose some order on our world who we can learn about in the One-Page Schoolhouse today, is Gerardus Mercator. If you need a one-word description of him, it would be "mapmaker," but that is rather limiting. You could add cartographer, geographer, calligrapher, engraver, a maker of scientific instruments, and a publisher. He was interested in mathematics, astronomy, cosmography, terrestrial magnetism, history, philosophy, and theology.

Gerardus Mercator (5 March 1512 – 2 December 1594) was from the County of Flanders. He is most renowned for creating his 1569 world map based on a new projection. Mercator was one of the pioneers of cartography and, in his time, was known as a maker of globes and scientific instruments.

Mercator's early maps were in large formats suitable for wall mounting, but in the second half of his life, he produced over 100 new regional maps in a smaller format suitable for binding into his Atlas of 1595. This was the first appearance of the word Atlas in reference to a book of maps. However, Mercator used it as a neologism for a treatise (Cosmologia) on the creation, history, and description of the universe, not simply a collection of maps. He chose the word as a commemoration of the Titan Atlas, "King of Mauretania", whom he considered to be the first great geographer.

This world map was made by Mercator on two sheets in 1538. Only two copies of the map are extant.
This one is from the American Geographical Society Library; another is at the New York Public Library. 

In 1538, he produced his first map of the world, usually referred to as Orbis Imago. But it is his 1569 world map for which he is still remembered. You may have heard of the Mercator Projection, especially if you are a sailor. This cylindrical map projection became the standard map projection for navigation because of its unique property of representing any course of constant bearing as a straight segment.

Such a course is known as a rhumb or, mathematically, a loxodrome. Using it navigators can sail in a constant compass direction to reach its destination, eliminating difficult and error-prone course corrections.

But, as with many manmade ways of imposing order on our world, his constant linear scale in every direction has side effects. The Mercator projection inflates the size of objects away from the equator, starting almost imperceptibly but accelerating with latitude to become infinite at the poles. That means that while landmasses near the equator appear accurate,  landmasses at the poles, such as Greenland and Antarctica, appear far larger than their actual size.

The Mercator world map of 1569 is titled Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendate Accommodata. That is Renaissance Latin for "New and more complete representation of the terrestrial globe properly adapted for use in navigation."

While the map's geography has been superseded by modern knowledge, its projection proved to be one of the most significant advances in the history of cartography.

Mercator's 1569 world map showing latitudes 66°S to 80°N.

The Collaborative Study of Early Modern Humans

Because the story of early modern humans is not just about bones—it’s about biology, culture, climate, technology, and movement across continents. Each discipline fills in a different part of the mosaic. Research into the origins of Homo sapiens is deeply interdisciplinary. No single type of scientist can answer the whole story, so the field relies on a network of specialists who each illuminate a different piece of the puzzle. 

Paleoanthropologists are the primary scientists who study ancient human fossils—skulls, bones, teeth—and interpret how our anatomy evolved. They analyze sites like Jebel Irhoud, Omo Kibish, and Florisbad to determine what early Homo sapiens looked like and how they changed over time.

Archaeologists study the tools, shelters, art, and other cultural artifacts left behind. Their work helps reconstruct how early humans lived, migrated, and interacted with their environments. 

Geneticists (especially evolutionary geneticists) analyze ancient DNA (when available) and modern human genomes to trace lineages, migration patterns, and interbreeding events with Neanderthals and Denisovans. Their work is crucial for understanding divergence timelines (e.g., 500,000–800,000 years ago). 

Geologists and Geochronologists are scientists determine the age of fossils and artifacts using dating techniques such as radiometric dating, stratigraphy, and thermoluminescence. Without them, we wouldn’t know that Jebel Irhoud is ~315,000 years old or Omo Kibish is ~233,000 years old. 

Paleoclimatologists reconstruct ancient climates to understand how environmental changes shaped human evolution and migration. Climate shifts often explain why populations moved, mixed, or disappeared.

Zooarchaeologists and Paleoecologists are specialists who study animal remains and ancient ecosystems to understand the environments early humans lived in and how they hunted, gathered, and adapted. 

Anatomists and Comparative Biologists compare human fossils with those of other primates and archaic humans to identify what makes Homo sapiens unique. 

Linguists, while they don’t study fossils, historical linguists contribute to understanding human migrations and population splits through language evolution.

Have Some Popcorn

 

Back in 1630, Quadequine, brother of Massasoit, who was the leader of the Wampanoag tribe, introduced popcorn to the English colonists. 

He offered the snack of the future and movie theater staple as a token of goodwill during peace negotiations. The colonists called it popped corn, parching corn, or rice corn, and it was popped on top of heated stones or by placing the kernels, or cobs, into the hot embers of a fire. 

The Indians did not discover popping corn. People had been consuming it since 300 B.C. In 1948 and 1950, ears of popcorn believed to be 4,000 years old were discovered in the Bat Caves of west central New Mexico. 

In 1650, the Spaniard Cobo said of the Peruvian Indians, “They toast a certain kind of corn until it bursts. They call it pisancalla, and they use it as a confection.” 

The popularity of popcorn has rarely waned, even during the Depression, when its relatively inexpensive cost, at 5 or 10 cents a bag, made it one of the few luxuries even the down-and-out could afford. 

Americans consume more than 17.3 billion quarts of popcorn each year.

Life on Pangaea

More than 200 million years ago, Earth looked very different from the way it does today. Instead of separate continents, nearly all of the land on the planet was joined together into a single enormous landmass called Pangaea. This supercontinent was surrounded by a global ocean known as Panthalassa, which covered most of Earth’s surface. Pangaea existed during the late Permian and early Triassic periods, a time when life on Earth was undergoing dramatic changes.

Over millions of years, powerful forces deep within the planet slowly began to pull Pangaea apart. This gradual breakup started around 230 million years ago and continued at a pace far too slow for any single generation to notice. As the landmass split and drifted, it eventually formed the continents we recognize today, along with the oceans that separate them.

The concept of Pangaea was first proposed in the early 1900s by German scientist Alfred Wegener. He suggested that continents were not fixed in place but instead moved over time—a bold idea known as continental drift. At the time, many scientists were skeptical because Wegener could not explain what forces might cause entire continents to move.

That explanation arrived decades later, in the 1960s, with the development of the theory of plate tectonics. Scientists discovered that Earth’s outer layer is divided into large, rigid plates that slowly shift atop a hotter, softer layer beneath them. These moving plates can collide, pull apart, or slide past one another, reshaping the planet’s surface and carrying continents along for the ride.

What kind of life existed on Earth at that time?

At the time when Pangaea existed—during the late Permian and early Triassic periods—Earth was home to a wide range of living things, though they were very different from most life today.

On land, plants were already well established. Vast forests covered parts of the supercontinent, made up mainly of ferns, seed ferns, conifers, and ginkgo-like trees. Grasses and flowering plants had not yet evolved, so landscapes looked more rugged and sparse compared to modern forests.

Animals on land were dominated by reptiles and reptile-like creatures called synapsids, some of which were early relatives of mammals. These included animals like Dimetrodon, famous for its sail-shaped back (often mistaken for a dinosaur, though it lived long before dinosaurs appeared). Large amphibians were also common, especially near rivers and wetlands.

In the oceans, life was abundant and diverse. Seas were filled with trilobites (early arthropods), brachiopods, corals, ammonoids, and many types of fish, including early sharks. Marine ecosystems were complex and thriving, supported by microscopic organisms such as algae and plankton that formed the base of the food web.

Insects were also widespread on land and in the air. Giant dragonfly-like insects and early beetles lived during this time, benefiting from higher oxygen levels in the atmosphere than we have today.

It’s important to note that dinosaurs had not yet risen to dominance during most of Pangaea’s existence. They appeared later, during the Triassic period, after a massive extinction event at the end of the Permian—the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history—which wiped out most marine species and many land animals.

Today, there is strong evidence supporting the existence of Pangaea. Identical fossils have been found on continents now separated by oceans, suggesting those lands were once connected. Matching rock layers and mountain ranges appear on different continents, lining up like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Even the distribution of ancient plants and animals points to a shared geological past.

Pangaea remains a cornerstone of modern geology, helping scientists understand how Earth’s surface has changed over deep time—and reminding us that the planet we live on is constantly, if slowly, in motion.

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Pangaea Map: By Scotese, Christopher R.; Vérard, Christian; Burgener, Landon; Elling, Reece P.; Kocsis, Ádám T. - "Phanerozoic-scope supplementary material to "The Cretaceous World: Plate Tectonics, Paleogeography, and Paleoclimate (doi:10.1144/sp544-2024-28)" from the PALEOMAP project". doi:10.5281/zenodo.10659112 https://zenodo.org/records/10659112, CC BY 4.0, Link