Here be Dragons

In thinking more about cryptozoological entities in terms of cultural phenomena and not just as their zoological referent, I've been researching maps and cartography. Generally, maps recieve little consideration as to the objectivity of their representated terrain. Presumably, this is because when one is trying to find their way back to the freeway, they don't want to add questons of neutrality into their already frustrated inqury.

Maps are typically referential, like a road map, identifying the location of something, or thematic, mapping specifc data (such as voting trends) across a geographic area. This demarcation of maps presents a binary similar to that of zoological thing and the cultural phenomenon. Maps of the referential variety are used by cryptozoologists to track down the literal animal where it literally lives. Whereas one might employ the dynamics of a thematic map to assess the effects of a cultural phenomenon like belief in cryptids over a certain period of time. This could be further broken down into particular variable including types of cryptids, ages of believers, political leanings, etc, etc.

In Networks, Territories, and the Cartography of Ancient States, author Monica L. Smith explains the ways in which "the realities of nonoverlapping ritual, social, and economic activities...have an impact on political cohesion." (Smith, p.832) While modern map-making has been more wary of the instability of power relations over time, ancient maps are still depicted as fixed entities. Historical territorial maps frequently represent ideological projections of crafty rulers. Smith writes, "Ancient historical sources, written from the point of view of an aspiring central authority, may overstate an enemy’s strength to gain support for extensive military campaigns or underplay military losses to keep morale high." (Smith, p.837) These biased and fragmented details are translated into objective facts regarding the extent of various states' territories. Oversimplifying the complex flux of power relations over time, a "convenient fiction" of uninterrupted authority is instilled. Smith goes on to describe the role of networks in examining "more accurately the mechanisms developed to manage the inherent economic, social, and political challenges to the imposition of state authority...In a network, nodes and connectors are dependent upon each other, with a large potential number of combinations that enable [the] links to be sustained in a robust but flexible manner.” (Smith, p.838)

Smith outlines (so to speak) the strategic use of networks by the Inka empire in the South American Andean region which thrived from AD 1400 until 1532 (Smith, 839). Of particular note is the Inka road system. "As access routes for the movement of people and goods, these formalized roads were created to provide access to population centers but also to serve as a cost-effective reminder of state authority in otherwise remote regions for which there was little other daily evidence of Inka investment" (Smith, p.839)

A precursor to today's globalized information and telecommunications networks, there were a lot of interstital areas between points in the Inka system. "When viewed as a series of network links, the Inka road system encompasses a large amount of empty space in the Andean region in which there were few resources or inhabitants. Rather than being uniform or homogenous, these links show that Inka state control was concentrated on nodes of population and economic activity" (Smith, p.839)

The Degree Confluence Project seeks to "visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location," using the precision of GPS technologies. How and where do Other activities, phenomena, and, or cryptozoological critters intersect within deceptively saturated official maps of the way things work?