Maps of the geology of Eastern Europe reflect the historic political instability of the region. Before the First World War, empires prevailed – Austrian /Austro-Hungarian, Russian, German. Within these were provinces or regions, whose names have been lost as they were subsumed and/or divided by subsequent nation states that followed the break-up of empires. With the drastic shifts of population and changes of languages and sometimes of alphabets, place names on early maps are often difficult to locate in the present.
The search for minerals and fuel drove much early geological investigation. The earliest account of mining was Georgius Agricola’s De Re Metallica (on the nature of Metals) and remained the authority for nearly two centuries after its publication, in Latin, in 1556
Best wishes for the New Year to all website visitors and customers. January's article features maps, memoirs and books concerning the geology of Wales and the rich history there of the development of geology. That Wales gives the names of three of the systems of the stratigraphical chart – Silurian, Ordovician and Cambrian and, until recently Precambrian, attests to the early exploration and conceptual thinking that occurred here.
This is the first in a series of articles about new and interesting catalogue entries. This month I’ve started with French Geological Maps, including the 1841 Carte Géologique de la France, the first geological map of all of France. Its authors, Pierre-Armand Dufrénoy (1792-1857) and Léonce Élie de Beaumont (1798-1874), were directed to produce this map of all France by Brochant de Villiers, professor of geology at the École des Mines, in response to the Geological Society of London’s Geological Map of England and Wales, published 1819-20.
