trains, planes and automobiles: map analysis

the reason I chose this as a map was to better illustrate the changes made in
human transportation. In the past a journey across the Atlantic Ocean could take
months and now is accomplished in just a matter of days. The dark blue lines of this
map are the shipping lanes, highways of the seas as they are called. There was
plenty of sea fearing people and nations thought history, like the Vikings who
discovered America well before Columbus was even born. However, we went form
just a few to a worldwide transportation lanes of ships that can go all over the world
in a short time. Then we have the rail lines, these lines in my opinion determine the
layout of civilizations. In each and every cluster of rail lines you will find a city or
country that is developing and growing. With the rail lines we transport people and
goods faster than ever before. By fallowing them to their clusters you will find the
countries trading centers and for most places a place of economic growth. I
personally found the north American continent rail lines to be fascinating. Back in
the Civil War one of the main resources the north used to win was the rail roads.
They were able to transport goods, troops and supplies faster than the south could
dream. Another rail road fact was the rail road race of Africa during the colonization
era. Britani, Germany and France were in a financial race to build a railroad across
Africa. Whoever built theirs the first would be the primary line and in a sense Africa
would belong to them. now lest move to the highways of the world. Like the Rail
Roads we can easily see that the highways cluster in and around places of
economic growth. However, there are by far more Highways Then Rail Roads and
while they are both used for transportation the highways are primarily for shorter
distances. One by seeing the layout of the highways we can not only use them as a
way to find metropolitan areas but to also see the effect we have on the
surrounding environments. Back 40 to 50 years ago most highways had to fallow
river banks and go around mountains and hills. However, now we are able to dig
right though them in some cases entire foot hills have been destroyed to make
room for a highway. So while this has a positive effect for the development of
humanity it also has a negative effect on the environment. Finally, we have air
planes. While planes are used to transport goods they are primarily used for
transporting people. Despite the fact that they are much faster than boats they do
have a weight limitation that are not shared with boats and transporting goods by
boat is a lot cheaper. But now we can see from this map just how many flights are in
the air at any given day. This map is just the main flight paths that are used daily all
over the world. With this faster mans of transportation we can travel and see more
regions of the world faster than ever before.