4 Comments

Xkcd.com/1688 has a fun flowchart for dating maps based on those sorts of geographic and toponymic changes. I used it to date an old globe my wife had and narrow down to the late 50's. Eventually noticed that Alaska was a state but Hawaii was still just a territory-meaning it slipped in the 230 days between Jan 3 and Aug 21 1959

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Came here to say this! Genuinely useful.

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I appreciate Mr. Gordian's map sleuthing. "West Pakistan" was a term in use at least since the 1940s, so doesn't help with dating the map.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1948/10/04/86755507.html?pageNumber=7

"Libya" appears on maps as such even in 1920s atlases I have, so also may not be diagnostic.

Among other possibilities is that it is a 1951 edition with a hodgepodge of updates.

Josh

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This was great!

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