GoogleEarth skipped the 3rd dimension and went straight into the 4th one. If you want to see historical maps - and if you have GoogleEarth installed in your computer, - you simply need to expand the Featured Content -> Rumsey Historical Maps (Layers panel).

Unfortunately, no Medieval maps are available yet. Some of the earliest maps available are of Asia 1710 , Paris 1716 and Africa 1787.

However, it would be technically possible to have a Middle Ages map. In fact, how interesting would it be to have the our perception of the world through time?…

I am not sure whether the modeling required for these layers that juxtapose to Earth are flexible enough to allow a juxtaposition of the Earth the way that Lactantius or Cosmas Indicopleustes proposed…

And this is where Digital Humanities becomes so wonderfully complex. A historical problem becomes a problem of Mathematics, CAD and programming. How to juxtapose a flat texture to an interactive 3D model?:) Maybe virtual worlds such as Second LIfe offer some interesting approaches, as they constantly need to map 3D structures on 2D surfaces.

Posted by Ana Boa-Ventura