Inspired by, for sure, and there are more writers in this sort of series, Eça de Queirós, Júlio Dinis, Shakespeare, Balzac, etc.

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Wonderful hand-drawn maps

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Last month, I asked Slate readers to send me their hand-drawn maps . The request was part of my series on signs , the tools that professionals use to orient us and direct us from point A to point B. But official signs aren't the only things that help us get around. Since early man first drew on his cave wall—including marks that some scholars argue were maps of local rivers and settlements—we've been sketching out routes to guide one another to the market and to the mountain top. These humble maps can be beautiful. They can also be messy, indecipherable, inaccurate, and unattractive. Slate readers sent in nearly 200 maps, and they ranged from hasty scribbles on scrap paper to elaborate, multicolored renderings. No matter what it looks like, a handmade map offers several advantages over a road atlas or the directions you get from Google. Read on to see some of your most interesting hand-drawn maps—and to discover why homemade maps are often superior to the ones d...
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It's all Greek to me ;-D

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