Official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute and Weekly Webzine Site

Since 1996 ~ Over 5,000 Webpages in Archive

Volume 1370

MAPPING BARSOOM,

Can it be done?
by
Rick Johnson

Ever since Burroughs wrote the first Mars story, people have been attempting to map the Red
planet, each achieving various degrees of success but none accurate enough for the rest of us to
say, "well, I may as well burn my attempt, this one works!"

Why is this?

We make suppositions that are completely fictitious and counterproductive so

here are the reasons why everyone fails and how we can use these to our
advantage.

FIRST, Barsoom is NOT Mars!

SECOND, Maps Lie!

THIRD, People are NOT Cartographers!

Once we compensate for these problems, most of the obstacles facing a re-
mapping of Barsoom fade away.

1: BARSOOM IS NOT MARS!

Let us begin here.

Barsoom is a world about 4,222 miles (6,787 km) in diameter and 13,257
miles (21, 311 km) in circumference with an atmosphere breathable by any
earth person without difficulty or trouble. We know the size because
Burroughs received these measurements from John Carter. We know the air
pressure and composition because both John Carter and Ulyssus Paxton were
transported from Earth (14.5 pounds per square inch air pressure with a 75%
Nitrogen and 25% Oxygen content) to Barsoom and could not only breathe
easily upon arrival but could do so after considerable and immediate exercise.
Therefore, the atmospheric pressure and composition was similar to that of
Earth near 2000 feet altitude in the case of John Carter (the Superstition
Mountains where John Carter is presumed to be gold hunting starts at about
2400').

Mars, however, has an atmospheric pressure of .15 psi (about 1/100th of

Earth) with a composition of mainly Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Appearing there
suddenly would suck your lungs from your chest almost instantly. If somehow
you could concentrate the air into something equal to near Earth pressure,
you would still die within minutes from Carbon Dioxide poisoning which causes
the blood to become alkaline. There simply isn't enough free oxygen on Mars
to keep a person alive.

To understand this, Go from Miami, Florida (at sea level @ 14.5 psi) to Denver
Colorado (a mile high @ 12.5 psi) and see how easily you can breathe. (note:
Mt Everest at 29,028 feet or almost 5 miles has an air pressure of 4.4 psi
which is almost 400 times the thickness of the air at the surface of Mars) Try
to do your morning three mile run the day after you arrive and see how far
you get. When the Olympics are situated in Mexico City or Denver, athletes
arrive at least a month ahead to get used to the thin air, to build their red
count and to adapt to the lesser air pressure before they even attempt serious
exercise. Yet, Earthmen can breathe and exercise easily on Barsoom from their
first moment of arrival with no difficulty. Neither do the local inhabitants show
no sign of overly developed rib cages to house expanded lungs. This implies
that despite claims to the rarity of the Barsoomian atmosphere, so long as you
remain under a mile of the surface, there is little difference between Earth and
Barsoom as to air composition or pressure.
The temperature of Barsoom ranges from hot during the day to cold at night.
This is comfortable enough so that both John Carter in Helium and Ulyssus
Paxton in Toonol, both at about 30 degrees north and south respectively, can
be comfortable during the day in what amounts to little more than a g-string
and a few belts to hold weapons (note that Arizona where John Carter found
his gold is at about 33 degrees north which is similar to Helium at 30 Degrees
south and both are desert). At night, they are cold but not fatally so even
when covered with but a few layers of silk and fur blankets. Even in the South
Polar region, an area expected to be frozen, John Carter makes little to no
change in his accustomed costume which implies a relatively constant
daytime temperature across the planet changing only when the sun sets.

Mars, however, has a surface temperature well below freezing. At 30 degrees

north (the same latitude of both the Toonolian Marsh and city of Helium) the
Viking Lander measured at mid-June a nighttime temperature of -89 degrees C
(-128 F) and a daytime temperature of -25 degrees C (-12 F). This is so cold
that the polar icecaps at -143 degrees C (-225 F) are not water but frozen CO2
or dry ice. Any person would freeze solid within minutes to become solid ice
within an hour. At the Poles, this would happen within seconds.

Barsoom is covered with reddish moss with an occasional forest, swamp and
grove of various plants. The Toonolian Marsh, the Great Helium Forest, the
Koalian Forest, the Forest of Lost Souls and the list goes on. Vegetation
abounds in sufficient amounts to feed thoats and zitidars and with enough free
water to support these forests and swamps and enough subsurface water to
support the moss which covers the sea beds.

Mars is rock! Red rock! Lots of rocks and not one plant in sight and a
humidity of Zero! No photos of packs of calots stalking thoat herds across the
countryside. No mantilla groves or man-flowers. Nothing!

It's obvious, painfully so, that what we are seeing is not what Burroughs is
describing. Arguments here range from Barsoom exists in a parallel universe
to Barsoom is ancient history millions of years gone.

Yet, when Dejah Thoris describes Jasoom to John Carter, he immediately

recognizes the planet of his origin. She is even familiar with the history of the
planet, a history that matches the memories of John Carter. When Ulyssus
Paxton observes Jasoom through a Barsoomian telescope, he not only sees his
own Earth, but does so in his own time, observing the war that caused his
Earthly death. What we see when we stare with telescopes may be similar to
Barsoom but what we see when we visit is not. And neither of these resemble
what both Carter and Paxton experience in person. And somehow, what they
see when they observe Earth is accurate.

What goes?

Simple. Our observations are wrong!

2.

Remember when Science insisted that the Earth was flat? Everything we
knew about science and physics proved that the Earth was flat! Today you
can even find scientists who still insist that it remains flat and who have
successfully forced certain American schools to teach this belief! When
people experienced the curvature of the Earth by simply sailing a few miles to
sea, they KNEW that science was wrong! Yet, scientists insisted that what
these sailors had experienced was a mass hallucination simply because
science KNEW that the Earth was flat and so the experiences of the sailors
must be wrong!

Then science finally changed, accepted the experiences of those who knew
and said the Earth was round but the universe was flat! Did they learn their
lesson? No!

Some scientists have proven that the Earth was formed 3.5 billion years ago
yet other scientists can just as easily prove that the earth was created in 3007
b.c.e. Historical and geologic records prove the validity of the former yet the
latter scientists insist that these historical records are a lie and have
succeeded in getting their beliefs taught in American schools. Once again,
science disagreed with the experiences or those who were there and science
is right?

Explorers had told Naturalists for years about 'hairy men' in the wilds of Africa
to be told that this was impossible.. until the Mountain Gorilla was
discovered. Paleontologists knew for certainty that certain fish had been
extinct for millions of years.. until the Coelocanth was discovered, still alive.
And despite this list which is greater than I wish to cover, science still refuses
to consider even the possibility that Bigfoot or the Sirrush or the Don or
Chupacabra, Megalodon, Mangani or another endless list of cryptics may exist
(I myself have discovered two cryptics in the jungles of Okinawa, a 5"
diplovertebron salamander and a 3' red centipede, both of which biologists
have insisted were fakes).
The arrogance of the scientists is as endless as is the mistakes that they have
and are and will continue to make.

I have a rule about this. Whenever someone tells me one thing and I
experience another, I ask, "Were you there?" The scientists who insisted that
the Mountain Gorilla was a fraud never spent one moment to think, "Hey! This
guy saw something, let's reserve judgment, follow him back and see what it
was." The same goes for astrophysicists and astronomers who KNOW that
Mars is lifeless despite the visits of at least a dozen people who went there
and saw the contradiction. But I digress, rather than list the endless foibles of
science from the geocentric universe to the impossibility of apes to
communicate with people (which many still insist despite their experiences
with Koko) to the impossibility of man traveling at 60 miles per hour to. you
get the idea. Science is always making statements, proving the validity of
their statements with reams of paper and destroying the reputations of those
who experienced something else simply because the scientists KNEW that
they were right and don't confuse them with the truth.

But again I digress. This paper is about Barsoom. Specifically, how to map
the Red Planet by combining both the personal experiences of the explorers
with the observations of the astronomers.

So, when science tells me that Mars is uninhabitable yet both John Carter and
Ulyssus Paxton have been there and survived, then I must say that NASA
needs to get their heads out of their moniter and look at the experiences of
the explorers and not their own arithmetic numbers. Numbers can prove
anything even if you are using them to prove a lie! The more exact a scientist
tells me he is, the more I know he is wrong. Like an accountant seeking to
prove a balanced budget or a creationist seeking to prove that their god
created everything in 3007 b.c.e., something has to give and I'll side with
those with personal experience over someone who never left a keyboard
every time.

Therefore, the Mars described by NASA is not the Barsoom of ERB! They are
the same planet so the observations of science must be incorrect because
they counter the experiences of the explorers who were there.

Perhaps the math is wrong. After all, Einstein could not balance his own
checkbook nor was he able to learn how to tie his shoelaces so I tend to
suspect any math described by this man.

Perhaps the observations are wrong. Maybe there is dust in the telescopes or
the lenses have warped, maybe the instruments are measuring the wrong
thing or landed in the one place that is similar to Antartica in the Winter or
Death Valley in the Summer, maybe the scientists are misinterpreting the
data. I am not a scientists but I have seen so many scientists insist that they
were right and the observations of those who were there were wrong, then
most of them had to eat crow.

So let us work from the belief that IF John Carter and Ulyssus Paxton managed
to visit and survive on Barsoom, then the planet is habitable and the
observations we have, including the temperature, air pressure and
composition and even the photos the astronomers took are inaccurate. Why
this is I will let a future scientist determine as modern scientists laugh at the
suppositions of their centuries old brethren, only to be laughed at themselves
as time passes.

3.

Since 1912 when Burroughs published the journal of Carter's experiences

upon Barsoom, people have tried with little success to compare his
descriptions to the Red planet and create a workable map of Barsoom. In
most cases, these have failed. Zodanga is described to be in two different
places. NASA photos and astronomical observations place hills in areas that
are described by Carter as flatlands. If you map the directions given by
Carter, you end up someplace different from where he was. Even looking at
the two maps drawn by Burroughs which he based on the descriptions of John
Carter don't match.

Why? Because,

MAPS LIE!

Before we go into this, we must first understand what a map is.

A map is an attempt to describe a three-dimensional object on a two-

dimensional space. We are trying to put a round apple onto a flat piece of
paper and it simply cannot be done. For thousands of years people have tried
to do this and not one of them has succeeded. Some maps are more accurate
than others in some areas but none are correct. Only when you create a
three-dimensional sphere can you accurately map the planet.

Take a soccer ball which is essentially a duo-decahedron. That means you

take twelve pentagons (a five-sided shape) and sew them together to form a
sort of sphere. Then you inflate the object to deform the pentagons into a
curve and you have a ball. Look at this ball and as you turn it, you see every
pentagon as perfect. Now set it on the table and take a photograph of the
ball. Lay some tracing paper over the photo and trace the lines of each
pentagon not as you know them to be but as the camera shows. Look at the
tracing and suddenly, those pentagons that you know are perfect are perfect
ONLY in the one facing the camera. The further you get to the edge, the more
distorted they become. It is as of they were pushed into a narrow shape that
no longer resembles the original, yet you know they are perfect. What you
have tried to do is map a three-dimensional object in two-dimensions and you
failed.

Doing the same thing with a globe results in a similar problem. Canada and
Siberia and Greenland are shown as being unbelievable huge on paper but
when you look at a globe, they are much smaller.

But, there is hope! Cartographers have spent a thousand years to develop a

number of means to do this and although none are completely accurate, each
has its uses.

To understand this next part, instead of showing pictures and maps, I will ask
you to collect a book atlas and a cheap globe and follow along as we explore
the Earth. It doesn't matter if the atlas and globe are out-of-date. Because
political boundaries change so fast you can easily buy both globe and atlas at
any thrift store for a dollar or two each. The globe you can paint over later
and use to create your own map of Barsoom once you understand the
principles. But possession of both of these as we talk will be invaluable.

When creating a paper map of a sphere, the only accurate map is a Globe!
Globes are three-dimensions and so accurately portray a three-dimensional
planet. But, a globe large enough to be useful would be too large to use. I
once saw in Maine the world's largest globe which towered three stories and
still, when I found Arizona on it, the scale was to small to use. Somehow we
need to make the information on a globe workable on a desk-sized paper
format and there are a number of ways to do this.

First is the Globe which is accurate but impractical.

Second is the Cylinder

Projection. This takes the
sphere and stretches it to a
rectangle. This is the method
preferred by almost everyone but
it has a big problem. Blow up a
balloon then draw the earth on
that balloon as shown on a
globe. Then release the air, cut
the balloon from top to bottom
and stretch it to cover a piece of paper. See how the top of the globe distorts
and stretches? Look at the shapes of Greenland, Europe and Canada at the
top of this map and compare it to the Azimuthal map below.

Any Cylindrical Projection is accurate ONLY at the exact center of the map and
along a line exactly east-west and north-south from that center point, here
marked in red. The farther you get from these two lines, the more distortion
you get. The four corners of that Cylindrical map are so distorted as to be
totally useless. Consider that when you do this to a globe, the central east-
west line in the Equator which is some 26,000 miles from edge to edge of your
map. The top and bottom edge of the map are the same distance on paper
but in reality, they are the poles and so are a point. This is why Canada,
Siberia and Greenland look so huge. They aren't! But the Cylindrical
Projection distorts them to look that way. Compare the top of any world map
from your atlas to the same thing on your globe. Almost all of us have tried
to use this method for our Maps of Barsoom when we seek to compare his
notes from John Carter to a map of Mars. We all fail because we forgot about
the distortion at the poles and the four corners of these maps.

Choose a point such as Ecuador on the flat map and Ecuador on the globe.
See how they match. Look north of Ecuador on both and the farther you get
from that country, the less accurate the map becomes.

Now when you are making a map of your city, then a Cylindrical Projection
works well because for such a small area, we can assume the world to be flat.
But for anything larger, the map becomes more and more inaccurate.

But almost every map of any place, Earth or Barsoom, is based on this
inaccurate mapping system. We take a location on a flat Cylindrical map and
measure a distance and direction and cannot help but be wrong. Therefore,
believe any flat map of Barsoom to be inaccurate!

To date the most accurate method

developed is the Sinusoidal map which
resembles a peeled orange laid flat. Take
your globe and cut it into sections, each
cut following a line of longitude from the
north pole to the south pole. If you cut
every ten degrees, you will have thirty-six
of these pieces, each pointed at the ends
and bulging in the middle as a cat's eye. If you cut every 110 degrees, you
will have the illustrated 3-section Sinusoidal map. Now lay these on your
paper in proper order and you will have an accurate map of the Earth but they
will only touch at the equator. The closer you get to the poles, the more
empty space you have. Although the sections are still curved, they are flatter
than a sphere.

It is thus impossible to accurately show the entire planet on one flat map.

What we can do is to make fairly accurate flat maps of smaller parts of the
planet. To us a basketball is a sphere but to an ant it is flat. To us the earth is
flat but to an astronaut it is a sphere. The idea is to use a scale small enough
to effectively ignore the curvature of the Earth.

One way to do this is the Conic Projection. Since all longitudes merge to a
point at the poles and all latitudes are parallel, the Conic Projection warps
both to give a false, but still more accurate picture of the area.

The final method is the Azimuthal

Projection. Here we take a photo of the
Earth from various viewpoints and mark
the points on this map. This is the most
accurate way of converting a globe to a
map but is accurate ONLY for the point
exactly in the center of the map. The
closer you get to the edges, the more
inaccurate the map becomes. Burroughs used this method for his own map of
Barsoom.

So the rules here are:

 • It is impossible to make a flat map of any planet that is completely accurate.
• Any map you make will be accurate only at the center and the further you get from that
center, the less accurate the map becomes.

So you have one choice: Make a globe that gives the general information then make a series of
flat maps to give details of much smaller areas. A flat map of the Toonolian Marsh would be
mostly accurate as would a flat map of Omean or Helium but not of the entire hemisphere.

4.

No matter how you read the journals of John Carter or the reworkings of
Burroughs, you cannot escape the one fact of life.
MAPS LIE!
There are a lot of reasons for this that range form copyright to security to lack
of space but no map can be believed completely.

1) The former Soviet Union deliberately made maps that were wrong, placing
bridges, roads and even cities in places miles from their actual locations, inventing
military targets that did not exist. Their thought was that if you lived in Moscow,
you knew where that bridge was and could find it but an ICBM crossing 10,000
miles would land where the US thought that bridge was according to a map. If we
looked at a map and thought a major military base was in Siberia, we'd sacrifice
ordinance, manpower and time leveling that empty tundra when the real base
would be hundreds of miles away and safe. Even today you must have a permit to
carry a cell-phone and GPS in Russia and anyone carrying a camera, cell-phone
and GPS in America is looking to be arrested by Homeland Security as a possible
terrorist. It's happened to Geocachers because the police and the government of
many nations are afraid that a possible enemy will get hold of an accurate map
and use it in a military manner!

2) If you want to start a company that makes and sells maps, why
spend all that money sending people out to draw the maps and
renting satellite time or aircraft when you can simply visit the
library, check out Rand-McNally and copy their map for a few
cents? You can redraw the thing and sell it cheaper because you
saved all that research. So, most map-makers put flaws into their
maps. They create streets and cities and places that don't exist.
Thus, they can drag the competition into court and say, "See,
Joeblow Street doesn't really exist. We drew it on our maps as a
copyright proof because anyone who went there would know there
is no Joeblow St so since Gerber Maps shows Joeblow St, they
obviously photocopied our maps and are selling our hard work!"

3) There is only a limited space on a map. You simply cannot put

 everything you want on a map that someone is trying to read
while driving down a residential street. So you aim your map to
the audience you are trying to attract and leave out items that
won't fit. For the guy who is traveling from LA to Chicago, he
doesn't care about every important historical marker, he only
wants to know the freeways, toll-roads and where to get a
hamburger. So you make a map for him and the fact that the map
ignores almost every small town off the freeway is acceptable to
him.

But if you are a tourist, you don't care much about freeways, you want to know how to get to
Montezuma Well or if Walnut Creek has cliff dwellings? If you are a delivery man, your map will
show every street in town and which are one-way but ignore historical sites.

And a map of Arizona won't have room for even the major streets in the cities
you pass. So you put the most important information on the map according to
the needs and desires of the consumer and the room you have. My map of
Tucson won't list Tohono Chul Park but it will list the major intersections and
streets. The Tucson Tourist Bureau will give me a map that shows that
intersection and the park and where to park your car but it won't show the
park itself. The Park gift shop will give me a map that ignores the city but
gives you the walking paths through the park and notes on which areas have
the best flowers to see. Information on any map is dependant on the amount
of room you have and the interest of the consumer.

5.

PEOPLE ARE NOT CARTOGRAPHERS!

Maps were made by people who did the best they could. They started at point
A, paced off the distance to point B, turned x degrees and passed off to point
C and so on, all the while taking notes. No matter how careful they were,
even professional surveyors were often wrong. How do we know this?
Because when aircraft and cameras were invented and satellite photography
was perfected, we took a picture from the air or space then laid that photo
over the map and 'lo!' the map was wrong. A mistake of an inch over a mile
or a single degree adds up and it took a photo from a distance to correct this.
We did the best we could and still got it wrong and if there was even the
smallest warp in the camera lens, the photo was wrong too!
When you are exploring a region, you don't have time to roll out a 500' steel
tape with compass. Even if you use a GPS and laptop, you won't have time to
do a good map. This is especially true when you are running for your life.
"Well, we ran about south for maybe a half hour, but it seemed like a day, and
then we turned to our right and saw in the distance a big tree! That's where
we buried poor Phil!" Try to find that tree now! This is why the legendary
Pirate Maps leading to buried treasure don't work.
For most people 'south' means anything from 320 degrees to 40 degrees.
Spread your fingers and point your index finger north according to the
compass. Unless you are a professional cartographer, those two fingers, your
first and your ring will mean 'north' even though one points NNE and the other
NNW.
Here is a simple way to understand this. I live in Tucson. My oldest daughter
lives in Phoenix. I tell people she lives 125 miles north of me. And that's all
that you care to know.
BUT!
Is Phoenix really 125 miles from Tucson? Depends! Do we measure from city
limits to city limits or from center of population to center of population? Both
these will change as people move around and the city incorporates more
land. Or from Downtown to downtown or from main post office to main post
office? Each of these will give a measurement that varies by as much as 50
miles either way so Phoenix can be anywhere from 100 miles to 200 miles
from Tucson depending on the places from which you or I will measure.
And is it really north? According to my map, Phoenix is about 40 degrees west
of North which actually makes it WNW. More north than west but we here in
Tucson still say that Phoenix is 'north' of Tucson.
And does my daughter really live in Phoenix? Phoenix is either a specific city
as in the City of Phoenix or it is a group of separate cities that all are so close
together that you have to look at the name on the police car following you to
know where you really are. There is Goodyear on the west and 25 miles east
(depending on how you measure) is Apache Junction. Between the two are:
Mesa, Chandler, Peoria, Glendale, Sun City, Scottsdale and a half dozen other
cities that share the Valley of the Sun which really isn't a valley at all but a
bunch of mountain ranges that are all over the place with a mostly flat area
between them all.
And to get there, I tell people, "go west to I-10 then north," when I really
mean, "take any road that goes in a westerly direction until you find I-10 then
follow it in a general NW direction but winding around mountains and desert
until you come across a large city that goes on for another hour of freeway
driving."
Even trained people make mistakes and suffer accidents. I recall one time we
are in the field and I noticed that we appeared to be going in circles. So I
asked the Lt. "What's going on?" He got angry and said "We're lost!" Now this
was a man who had gone to a bunch of military schools that trained him to
NOT get lost in the desert.
So I asked, "Why not ask those people for directions. Which elicited the reply,
"They are armed with better weapons than we have and they don't like
American soldiers. Pretend you don't see them and hope they do the same."
"Well, why not look at your compass and map?" I asked and he replied,
"Because I lost the map a while ago and I left my compass at camp."
Finally I offered, "Here, borrow my compass and binoculars then." I always
carry back-ups for this reason.
Eventually we got back to camp safe, tired and hungry but I had and still have
no idea of where we were. But I learned some good lessons; Don't trust
another person who thinks that they know where they are, don't rely of
electronics such as a GPS, learn non-technical methods of finding your way
around and carry your own maps, compass and survival gear.

6.

So how does this help us to understand Barsoom?

Well, the first thing is to remember that John Carter never gave Burroughs a
map. He gave descriptions. And Carter or Paxton or Hadron were neither
geographers nor cartographers. They were soldiers trying to do a job which
did not include making accurate maps of the planet. So when Ulyssus Paxton
said that Amhor lies "about 700 miles north of Gooli," he could have meant a
broad area anywhere from 600 to 800 miles deep with a compass heading
between NNW to NNE. That covers between 60,000 to 180,000 square miles
of area or about the size of Wisconsin or larger than England and Wales
combined (on the conservative side) and possibly as large as Sweden and
larger than Morocco or Spain. This gives us a very large area in which to
search.
Thus, rule #1 is that unless an exact latitude
and longitude is given, be very broad in your
location of the city. Incidently, we in Tucson
refer to Phoenix as being 'north' but Globe as
being 'northeast' even though I have family in
both cities. Check this map for their real
locations.

Second, we must accept that with any flat map,

distances are accurate ONLY within a few miles
of the origin. The further you go, the more
deviation we have. I took a flat Cylinder
Projection Map of Europe made by a famous
map-making company. I then measured the
distance and direction from Rome (which
happened to be in the center of my map) to
Moscow (which happened to be near the upper
right-hand corner of my map. I converted that
map distance (6 inches) to miles (1500 miles)
according to their scale and took that same
measurement to my world globe. I measured 1500 miles on the globe scale
and used a rule to go 1500 miles exactly NE from Rome. I ended up
someplace past Kirov. Kirov is, according to my flat map, about 500 miles
WNW of Moscow.
Between these two maps I was 500 miles and maybe ten degrees off. Had I
programmed my Destination Compass according to my flat map, I could easily
arrive in Aaanthor facing a hoard of Torquas Green men when I was aiming for
Lothar.
Rule #2 is that the farther your directions are, the less accurate they
become.
And when we convert from one distance to another, we run into math errors.
One kilometer equals .62 miles and one mile equals 1.6 miles. So if we take
1000 km and convert to Miles, we get 620 miles. But if we convert 620 miles
to kilometers, we get 992 kilometers. This is a difference of eight miles for no
other reason than the number of decimal places we were willing to use when
we mentally made the conversion.
Actually one mile equals 1.609 kilometers but how many of us are going to
use more than one decimal point when in casual conversation? I tell people I
made $26,000 last year but according to my W-2 I actually made $26,357.31.
I tell people that Phoenix is 125 miles north of Tucson but I am only on the
Freeway for 104 miles plus six miles of in-town driving in Tucson and . you get
the idea.
Rule #3 is that in normal conversation, unless you MUST be exact, we round
up or we round down. Only a computer is exact. And when John Carter
describes Thark as being a certain direction and distance from Helium, he is
guestimating both and so is probably wrong.
So, how does this help us to map Barsoom?
First of all we MUST use a globe. Not a flat map,
but a real globe. Take that cheap globe I made you
buy and paint it pale red. Cover the Terrestrial
images until we have a blank reddish canvas upon
which we will do our deeds. Light color is best
because you need to be able to see your markings.
Next draw your lines of latitude and longitude on
the globe. Do this in 10 degree increments. Now
we are making a broad assumption here when we
list 360 degrees of longitude and 90 degrees
latitude north and 90degrees of latitude south.
But, I will justify this suchly. John Carter gave so
many details about measurements such as a Haad was 1949.05 feet or a tal
was .88 second, that if Barsoom used 100 or 500 degrees on their globe, I
think that this would have been worthy of mention. Therefore, since he was
silent on this even when giving the location of a city in degrees and minutes of
latitude and longitude, "Aaanthor lies at Latitude 50o South, Longitude 40o
East of Horz but the Red Man uses 500 degrees to their circle feeling that it is
easier to calculate." No, he said 50 S by 40 E and stopped as if to imply that
Barsoom used 360 degree circles too. Plus he states that a Karad is one
degree or 1/360 of a circle, so, we can safely assume that the cartography of
Barsoom is the same as on Earth and use a 360o circle.
Next, from the texts we know the exact locations of a few cities:

• Exum is on the equator at 0 degrees E-W. Horz is on this same 0o E-W but of an
unknown Latitude and all east-west are measured from these two cities. So mark Exum
on the equator and that is now Zero degrees or our 'Greenwich'.
• Aaanthor is 50S x 40E
• Dusar is 15N x 20E
• Gathol has an area from 0N-10N x 10W-20W with a mountain near the center
• Jahar is 30S x 35E
• Thark covers 40S-80S x ?
• Twin Cities of Helium are 30S by 1900 miles W of Zodanga

Obviously I haven't given you every location on the planet but this is a start. Feel free to re-read
the journals of Barsoom and keep a notebook by hand.

But for those cities that Burroughs described with latitude and longitude, mark
those on the globe. These are your starting points which are considered to be
authorative. Obviously according to Rule #2, Zodanga may be at 30S or it
could be as much as 10o north or south by as much as 100 miles closer or
farther away than stated. Because of this, give Zodanga a large circle
covering 20 degrees N-S by 50 degrees E-W but without a longitude for
Helium, we are lost here. Also Carter was probably working from a flat map
and accepting the distortions as fact which throws off his descriptions of
distance and direction.
But wait! We have a Azimuthal map drawn by Burroughs himself. I don't have
a date for this but it shows two locations for Zodanga and so was re-drawn as
more information was given. So we can look at this map and see that we have
the lat-lon for some three dozen cities. If we assume that this is authorative,
then we now know the exact locations of these cities. Some of these include:

• Exum at 0 x 0 'Greenwich'
• Horz at 0 x 48N
• Gathol at 15W x 5N
• Greater Helium at 106E x 28S and more. I will refer you to An Atlas of Fantasy by J. B.
Post -- pages 166 and 167 for a copy -- or check http://www.geocities
.com/RikJohnson_erb/erbbmap.html for the original maps by the Master as an example.

Once we have marked these cities and locations, we can use these as the base for given
directions. When he then says that the city of **** lies 'x' miles from the city of *****, we can
make a rough guess as to the locations of that city. It won't be exact but it will get us within ten
degrees or so. And when we hear a measurement in Haads, we must be careful when we
convert it to miles.

But, North or SouthWest directions and distances have more meaning on a

globe than on a map. Remember my Rome to Moscow blunder so ten
degrees latitude (from the equator of Barsoom to your ten degree north line)
is equal to 368.2 miles. Get a soft, flexible rule and mark this 10o on your
rule. This mark is equal to 368.2 miles or 997.4 haads. You can use this to
measure your distances on the globe. You will notice that my rule had Haads
on one side and miles on the other. It is flexible because I will need to curve it
around the globe and avoid mistakes.

Since we know from the Burroughs chart that Amhor is at 115W x 45N and we
know that Toonol is at 99W x 20N, we can mark these locations as accurate.
Then when we read that Duhor is 5000 Haads from Amhor and 7800 Haads
from Toonol, we can take our rule upon which we have marked our distances,
place the '0' point on Amhor and draw a circle then repeat at Toonol. Where
these two circles intersect is the approximate location for Duhor (simple
trigonometry). And as we know that the Artolian hills are east of Duhor, we
can map those too.
Add as many details as you can such as the boundaries for the Artolian Hills
and the Toonol Marsh. Estimate the Koal and Invak forests. Draw the known
valleys of Kamtol and Torquas. Here is where you must be careful but
imaginative. Note that Carter describes the Valley Dor as 'near the south
pole', not "at" the south pole. This is important because a) John Carter could
easily see both moons from the Valley, b) the Valley was not covered in ice but
had temperate climate and c) John Carter wasn't freezing in Dor as he was in
Okar. Therefore Dor must be in the southern hemisphere but not at the south
pole, obviously in a remote location with few cities. We shall return to this
later.
Now that we have marked as many locations as we can on our globe, we take
graph paper, mark our lat-lon numbers with a heavier line for the equator and
Exum and transfer our cities from the globe to the Cylindrical Projection map
that we have just drawn. Why do we do it this way and not start with the flat
map? Because the flat map must be inaccurate by virtue of converting a
curved object on a flat paper.
Once we transfer the cities from the globe to the map, we have an inaccurate
flat map of the planet but we need this for the next step. This flat map is
equal to any made by a dozen other researchers but probably a bit more
accurate. Make a number of photocopies of this map to be used in Part II.
But for now we have an extremely accurate globe and map of Barsoom. Feel
free to decorate it as you wish. Guess at the size and shape of the Helium
Forest, add whatever details you find in the literature. And, if you wish, add
additional locations from the many fan-fictional stories written over the years.
From this you can easily create smaller sectional maps of important areas. A
map showing only Helium and the surrounding area, a map of the Toonolian
Marshes. A map of the Forest of Lost Souls. Now you have a very accurate
globe of Barsoom, a very inaccurate flat map of Barsoom and a series of very
accurate sectional maps of the various areas of Barsoom.

My collection will be posted at my ERB site and forwarded to Abner Perry's

excellent Burroughs Map Site. Please feel free to send me your versions with
your own additions.
In Part II we will cover how to combine this Barsoom Map to the NASA maps to
find a decent compromise.
 Rick Johnson, PO Box 40451, Tucson, Az. 85717
http://www.geocities.com/DesertHenge
http://www.geocities.com/RikJohnson69
http://www.geocities.com/RikJohnson_ERB
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TucsonPaganPaddlers/

The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs

BILL HILLMAN
Visit our thousands of other sites at:
BILL & SUE-ON HILLMAN ECLECTIC STUDIO
ERB Text, ERB Images and Tarzan® are ©Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.- All Rights Reserved.
All Original Work ©1996-2005 by Bill Hillman and/or Contributing Authors/Owners
No part of this web site may be reproduced without permission from the respective owners.

Official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute Site

Since 1996 ~ Over 5,000 Webpages in Archive
Presents
Volume 1562

MAPPING BARSOOM II
Compromises
By Rick Johnson
Unfortunately there is no perfect solution to this problem of matching Barsoom with Mars.

Here is an experiment. Take a blank piece of paper and draw a map of your
country freehand. Add in states, provinces, territories. Cities, rivers,
everything you can remember. Be as accurate as is possible. If you are lucky,
you may remember the latitude and longitude of your own city (Tucson is 32N x
111W) which you can use as a starting point (note, I just checked Topo-Zone
and Tucson where I write this is really 32° 15' 45"N, 110° 57' 41"W but who
cares to be that exact).

Note that all of these were drawn by adults, half by college graduates.

Assignment: Draw a map of the US from memory. Add as many details as you can
remember such as rivers, mountains, cities, states, etc. The west coast should be
 near the left side of this sheet and the east coast should be near the right side so
we can overlay your drawing with a real map I have photocopied.

Create an accurate scale of distance and use this to help. (Canyon

Lake is 108 miles due north of Tucson. Phoenix is about 125 miles
a little west of North. Nevada, Missouri is 1200 miles NE.
Albuquerque is 8 hours from Tucson east of Flagstaff. Flagstaff is
three hours north of Phoenix.) Be specific, accurate, careful.

NOW, open an atlas and place your hand-drawn map over a real map. How accurate were you?
Probably not very. Yet, we persist in giving verbal directions to strangers and expect them to find
the place they seek?

If we cannot be accurate when we describe a place we know well, how can we

expect Edgar Rice Burroughs, a writer, to be accurate when describing
Barsoom as described by John Carter, a soldier, when neither of them are
cartographers? Even the maps drawn by John Carter were made while living on
the Hudson years after leaving the Red Planet.
So, any attempt to create a workable map of Barsoom is doomed to failure. All
we can do is find a happy compromise that most of us can use.
Here is my method.
I intend to create a number of maps here based on what we know form various
sources, then I shall combine these into a very few possible maps of the Red
Planet.

EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS

This first map was created by looking at the original sketches of Barsoom as
noted by Edgar Rice Burroughs. As mentioned before, you can find these two
Azimuthal maps on page 166 & 167 of An Atlas of Fantasy by J. B. Post and
scanned in at
http://www.geocities.com/RikJohnson_ERB/erbbmap.html
Once we have these maps, we transfer the cities and locations onto a flat map and add details
from the literature as described in part one of this series. The result is the following map:

Barsoom According to Edgar Rice Burroughs

As discussed in Part One, the more you diverge from the equator and 0 degrees Longitude, the
more inaccurate the map becomes. Therefore we will use this map for reference only.

NASA

The next map was taken from the NASA-MOLA map.

It is here that we run into problems. Where do we put the equator? Where is
Helium? Without any real reference points, we are simply lost for where do we
start. I admit that this was my main problem until I read Den Valdron’s article
on Mapping Barsoom and he made a number of points to locate Gathol,
Artolian Hills, Toonolian Marshes and one excellent point that we cannot ignore
which is useful for all other maps. The Valley Dor!
We all used to believe that the Valley Dor and the Lost Sea of Korus were at the
South Pole. All previous maps showed it there until Mr. Valdron pointed out a
few problems:

1) The climate was NOT arctic but similar to that of most of Barsoom, hot
during the day and cold at night. Hardly an antarctic environment.

2) Both moons could be seen in the sky and this would require a polar orbit
which is countered by many references in the literature that describe the
moons as rising and setting in an east-west orbit.

Therefore, Dor cannot be AT the south pole but can be NEAR the south pole.

Now consider that if you are the head of a secret religion that has almost
absolute power, you don’t want anyone wandering into heaven and disrupting
your game-plan. Stealing an attractive slave-girl from the Plant-Men for your
nefarious deeds wouldn't be as much fun when the Helium Tourist Board shows
up with the Tour Guide calling out from his flyer "and to our left is a Holy Thern
about to do something disgusting to a newly captured pilgrim. Let's slow down
and watch for a moment."

No, you'd place Dor in as remote a place as you could find then use your power
to ensure that NO ONE visited or built there. Now when we look at the
Burroughs maps of Barsoom, you see a blank area that stretched from about 80
to 150 degrees west and from 10 degrees south to the south pole. Why is
almost every other area on Barsoom inhabited by Green Men or Red Men but
not this area?

I suspect that it is because HERE is where the Valley Dor exists and the Therns
go to great lengths to keep that part of the map clear and people out.

Therefore we can pencil in Dor and Korus here. And it is here that we can start
our mapping project. Look for an area that is essentially empty of the normal
references

The Tharsis Montes can be the Artolian Hills. The Valley Marinaris can be the
Toonolian Marshes. Elysium Mons can be Gathol so if we stretch things a bit
(and there will be a lot of stretching done here, the only two places in the south
that could house Korus and Dor is either Hellas Planitis or Argyre Planitis. Since
the only unexplored area on Barsoom (per the Burroughs Map) is south of the
Toonoliam Marsh and Southeast of the Artolian Hills, then Argyre is the only
possibility for Korus simply because it is the only area in a deserted section of
Mars that is even close to the possible location for Korus. And if we look at the
MOLA map. We see a chain of craters and fissures that go from Argyre to
Valles. Is this the River Iss?
At this time I will refer you to Den Valdron’s paper on GEOGRAPHERS OF MARS
I: MATCHING MARS AND BARSOOM A NEW APPROACH - ERBzine 1419 which
goes into far more detail as to why we should accept this idea.

As for the Toonolian Marsh, Burroughs was specific as to the size of the Marsh
being 1800 miles east to west. Yet the Valles is far larger, perhaps a dozen
times as large which would seem to place it as something else.

But, The Valles is so large that were you to stand in the center, the cliff walls
would be over the horizon and some of the side channels would be larger than
the Grand Canyon. And There is the key. For a people who were restricted to
ground travel until 900 years ago, the Valles would not be seen to exist as a
separate feature simply because it is far too large to encompass. But a smaller
side channel could easily trap enough water to form a marsh so the Valles isn't
the Marsh, a smaller side channel of the Valles is!

And the literature describes the western edge of the Marshes as hilly which
describes the mountainous regions that stretch to Tharsis.

Of course, this means that the Artolian Hills are far too close to the Toonolian
marshes but frankly, did Helium perform extensive aerial surveys and
photographic mapping missions when fliers were invented? If not, then I
submit that there is a big difference between land and air distances.
Remember the old adage where a man asks a farmer how far to the nearest
Service Station. The farmer says ‘three miles as the crow flies’ to which the
man asks, “how far if the crow is walking and carrying a flat tire?” According to
my GPS, I was only 300 feet from my goal last Sunday. But by the time I had
docked my kayak to a tree, climbed a cliff, hiked up a mountain and around
cacti and brush and gullies, I had covered more than a mile on foot to reach
that 300 feet so to a man on thoat-back, the hilly distance between the Artolian
Hills and the Toonolian marsh would seem much longer than to a man in a flier.

Gathol is an island in the middle of the Ocean and Elysium Mons fits that
description. So if we mark on the MOLA map all the major sites, we can have
a warped map of Barsoom, remembering the distortion caused by any flat
map. The result is this:
And once we redraw the MOLA map onto paper, this is the result:

As you can see, due to the limits of space I have avoided filling in every city
and site on a map this small but have marked the boundary of Throxeus which
may be divided into Eastern Throxus and Western Throxus which along with
Korus, Omean and Torquas, give us the five oceans of Barsoom. The exact
locations of the cities will be shown as we look at the MOLA map in more detail
seeking craters and hills that would be moisture traps and fit the general
descriptions of the explorers of Barsoom.

LOWELL

Percival Lowell was a big influence upon Burroughs and his telescopic sightings
of Mars show something that the MOLA maps do not, canali. These canali are
not ‘canals’ but ‘lines’ and resemble the waterways described by John Carter.

Unfortunately, Carter describes only a very few waterways, and these leading
from Helium to the east and southeast as they cross Tharkan territory. The rest
are left undescribed. Yet, when we look at Lowell, we see something
interesting. Almost every waterway stretches from the north pole and few from
the south. Why? The obvious answer is that the North Polar ice cap is stable in
size but the southern ice cap ranges in size from so large it almost seems to
cover the southern hemisphere to so small you can almost jump across it.
Now, logically, if you were building a waterway system to melt polar ice and
send it to the cities, taking the southern ice cap under these conditions would
be technically unfeasible. You'd need collection points every few kilometers
across almost half the planet. As the ice cap grew, many of these would be
damaged as the water froze and glaciers grew, forcing the locals to constantly
rebuild them.

But the stable northern ice cap would need only a few collection stations so it
would be easier to build and maintain a system from the north and dig a
waterway to the south rather than have to constantly repair expensive melting
and collection stations.

So the Lowell map gives us waterways, collection stations and even more cities
in the form of spots along the canali.

But again, were to start?

Korus!

There is an area in the southern region that is almost devoid of canali and other
man-made features and if we place Korus there, we can move ‘north’ to locate
the Toonoolian March, then ‘northwest’ to find the Artolian Hills and the rest
falls into place. Note that I am using ‘north’ as a general direction and not as a
compass point for the same reason we in Tucson refer to Phoenix as ‘north’.
With Lowell, we have an advantage in that the spots at the intersections of
many of the canali can easily be seen as cities surrounded by farm and grazing
lands so we now know where to place the cities. The problem is to decide
which spot is which city. I have concluded that Ptarth, a major city, would be a
larger spot with more waterways than would be a smaller subject city. The
result of this is as drawn becomes this:

Barsoom According to Percival Lowell

FINAL MAP

What we can now do is to compromise were we must, assume that many of the
directions given by John Carter were guestimates, assume that Lowell drew
what he thought he saw through a small telescope and assume that the
computer program used by NASA to convert the MOLA data was equal to
anything created by Microsoft and we see many glitches and wonder how we
can accept anything as true?

Well, we do the best we can. And for me, this means start with a large flat map
marked in a grid pattern. Mine is 20 x 10 inches to give room for detail. Then I
pencil in the cities as shown on the Burroughs maps. Then the features shown
by the MOLA map and the waterways shown in the Lowell Map. Then I move
things around until they seem to fit. The result is this:
Now I must keep in mind many things:

1) Most waterways come from the North and major cities and empires would be
along these waterways. EXAMPLE: The Nile River has hundreds of cities and
thousands of farms along the river banks but ten miles from the river, nothing!

2) Isolated cities would be in locations away from waterways. These would be

oasis cities in a deep crater or isolated by mountains which could trap and
contain moisture.

3) Mountains and hills follow chains. This is because of plate tectonics where
the Rocky-Andes chain is caused by the North and South American Plates
smashing into the Pacific Plates and ‘wrinkling’. Mars has no modern plate
tectonics but did they have any in the past?

4) Forests and marshes would be in areas that trapped prevailing winds and so
collected moisture. EXAMPLE: Hawaii is lush tropical garden on the NE shore
where the winds deposit water along the mountains but the SW shore is desert
because by the time the winds reach that area, they have lost all their
moisture. Arizona is a desert for the same reason, the western winds loose all
their moisture to the Rockies and the Eastern winds drop their moisture along
Texas and New Mexico.

5) Most of the older Orovar Dead cities will be along the coastline of Throxus in
the north and the smaller seas of Korus and Torquas in the south. Isolated
Dead cities elsewhere would be along dead rivers and lakes (craters) or the
occasional oasis.

6) There are four major Green Hoards that are known. Thark, Warhoon, Torquas
and Thurid. All of these are in the southern deserts. If any others exist, they
would be very small, possibly cast-offs from the larger hoards and struggling to
barely survive against their more numerous Red and Green foes who would
gladly exterminate them.

And we see a few things that cause us to ask questions:

1) Why are the Green Hoards all in the south? Because the waterways in the
north are too heavily guarded and the Red Race forced the Green Race into
undesired areas. EXAMPLE: Look at how America treated the Indians for an
understanding of this.

2) There is a band of green that runs from the Artolian Hills SE to the Toonolian
Marsh then south to the Koal Forest, east to the Manator and Invak forests. Is
this because of the wind patterns and mountains/craters acting as moisture
collectors pulling snow melt from the Artolians and moving that moisture along
a set flow pattern?

3) Cities like Helium that possess a forest but are isolated from this green band
are generally in valleys (craters) where the caldera rims act as moisture
collectors. Note that when a Barsoomian says ‘valley’ he probably means
‘asteroid impact crater’ and when he says ‘hills’ he probably means ‘impact
crater ridge’.

4) The waterways come from the stable Northern Icecap and tend to ignore the
southern variable ice cap.

5) The River Iss runs from the Toonolian marsh where it takes the overflow and
follows a meandering line of craters and fissures through the Koal Forest
generally south to empty into Korus. The Therns would repress construction
along this sacred river but build way-houses and station boats for pilgrims so
you'd have a small shelter every days journey (about 20 miles or 30
kilometers). Also, as the Iss flows, it would fill an occasional crater to form
small lakes and marshes which may be inhabited.

Incidentally, it is the ISS that prevents the Toonol Marsh from becoming a lake
by draining the excess water. This is in the same way as the Congo River on
Earth drains Africa and prevents Zaire from becoming an inland sea. Dam the
Congo and in a couple centuries, central Africa would be a fresh-water lake.

When you look at this pattern, suddenly the novels make much more sense.
Now the movements of John Carter and others have a reason. You can also
look at the map and ask yourself, “are there isolated cities in these areas?”
“Major nations would exist along this band” and Green Hoards would live in the
southern deserts with occasional raids into the fertile north. Perhaps a smaller
hoard, driven from the south by the Warhoons or Tharks would take refuge in
the north and being so small, would be ignored as irrelevant or hunted down as
a potential threat.

CONCLUSION

Remember the one thing I have been saying from the beginning, flat maps lie
due to distortion so should be accepted as advisories only. Look at Greenland
on a flat world map then on a round globe to see this in action. Therefore,
place your cities and features on the flat map but my final suggestion would be
to make a globe of Barsoom and an atlas of smaller flat maps that are specific
to certain areas such as one for the Toonol Marsh, another for the Torquas Hills,
another for Helium and the surrounding areas.

. Zodanga
Helium and Surrounding Area
From descriptions given by John Carter and Dejah
Thoris
In A Princess of Mars

Waterways go from Helium to the SE. One

passes 50 miles south of Thark, another passes
200 miles north of Thark. There is another
unnamed waterway north of Thark moving
roughly east-west but probably to the
unnamed city east of Helium.
 Some cities between Thark and Helium are
friendly to Helium, some unfriendly. This
changes as Helium conquered and made
alliances with its neighbours.

Roughly NW of Helium is a large unnamed city

with smaller cities between. We have little to
no information on the north and south-west
areas.

This is what I created from descriptions from the text and data from the MOLA maps. The Valley of
Helium is actually a large impact crater whose walls act as moisture collectors to water the Helium
Forest. Thus the prevailing winds come from the SE. The Waterways are those described by
Dejah Thoris in Princess of Mars and so go SE to pass Thark and east to Zor. There are other
waterways but this particular map is accurate to the Novels and not the Lowell Maps which show
more waterways to the Twin Cities.

And this is the Toonolian Marsh with possible nearby cities. It shows the
western mountains that help contain the Marshes and protect Phundahl from
attack by air and ground.

When you are done with your own sectional maps, I would appreciate a copy
for my website and I am certain that many other sites would like to see these
sectional maps for as time goes, and we learn more of the Red Planet, our
knowledge becomes encyclopedic.
Koar.

Next:
Fan-Fic/Pastiche additions to the Barsoom Map.

See Mapping Barsoom I: Can It Be Done? at:

ERBzine 1370

The ERBzine Guide to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars is located

at:
ERBzine 1351

BILL HILLMAN
Visit our thousands of other sites at:
BILL & SUE-ON HILLMAN ECLECTIC STUDIO
ERB Text, ERB Images and Tarzan® are ©Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.- All Rights Reserved.
All Original Work ©1996-2006 by Bill Hillman and/or Contributing Authors/Owners
No part of this web site may be reproduced without permission from the respective owners.

Official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute Site

Since 1996 ~ Over 5,000 Webpages in Archive
Presents
Volume 1565

MAPPING BARSOOM III

 The Past
By Rick Johnson

Since modern geography is based on the geology of the past, mapping Barsoom as it was a half-
million years ago when the seas covered the world is easier than one would think. We actually
have a number of maps that help, the one by Burroughs as described by John Carter, the one
drawn by Percivel Lowell and the MOLA map by NASA. It is how we compare these that makes the
difference.

Consider a city like Tucson, Arizona. It's in the middle of the desert with dry
washes, mountains, cacti and no water to be found within a hundred miles. So
why would anyone build here? How could you survive for water, a source of
constant water, is THE most important requirement for a city.

Well, the Santa Cruz River wasn't always a dry wash. Just like the Salt River,
home of the Salt River Apaches, The Santa Cruz ran year-around. And it was
this water source, the nearby Sentinel Peak as an early warning tower and the
fertility of the desert soil that attracted the early settlers. Then the farmers
took over. Pecan Groves 20 miles south sucked water from the river and a
hundred miles south of them, farmers in Mexico took what they needed until
today, jumping off the Grant Road Bridge into the Santa Cruz as a suicide
attempt will work only if you wish to break your leg and die of thirst on the river
bed months before you drown. Yet, today's city is a testament to the past
geography. Ghost towns dot the courses of once flowing rivers and following
one will lead you to the other.

Barsoom is no different. Ancient cities were built along sources of water that
kept them alive and it is these dead cities that delineate the shorelines of the
ancient seas and the water courses of the ancient rivers.

So how?

First of all, we must delete from each map all modern political features. No
modern cities that were built after the seas were gone. But we must leave the
ancient Orovar cities of Aaanthor and Thark, the oldest known cities of Gathol.
Why? Because these define the limits of the seas in ancient times.

We know that Gathol was built upon an island in Throxeus. Therefore, we now
have an island and know that this island existed within the ancient sea and
where that sea once was. We know that many of the ancient Orovar and now-
dead cities were built upon the shores of the ancient seas, so by leaving these,
we have an idea of where these shores once lay. And we know that the Toonol
Marsh was once a part of Throxeus which gives us further shorelines.

We also know that the western edge of the Toonol Marsh is bordered by hills, as
are the western areas of the lands of Manator and the totality of Bantoom, both
of which indicate shoreline features. Hills in the sea such as Gathol imply
islands, hills on the shore imply sea-cliffs.

Now we have an idea. Not much but something to use as a base. So we turn
to what maps we have.

We start with the Lowell map and we remove all the canali for if these were the waterways, then
they were built after the seas dried and would cross dead sea bottom and lands with equal
abandon other than the earlier lines would indicate ancient cities but how do we tell an old land
canali from a new sea-bottom canali? The dark areas do give a clue. Are these desert or
grassland/forest? We do know that the waterways mainly come from the North Pole so the
majority of the canali imply the north pole (obviously, Lowell flipped the map he drew).

Next, there is the MOLA map which is

distorted as are every flat map. But the
MOLA will show highlands and lowlands
and with this we can begin the process of
mapping the five oceans of Barsoom.

Notice that here, blue represents lowlands,

red mountains, brown highlands and green
moderate lowlands. Were we to assume
the yellow to be seacoast, then the green becomes shallow water and the blue
deep water. Thus we have our main coastline to show that much of the
northern hemisphere was under water and as Throxeus was the greatest of the
five seas, this must be Throxeus. We see that Elysus Mons is an island within
Throxeus so this can easily be Gathol and this island proves that yellow is shore
for were green to be land, then Gathol would be a peninsula, not an island.
Gathol, as an island, forces us to accept green as shallow coastal seas.

Hellas Planitis is the Sea of Torquas, the green Arryo Planeta is the shallow sea
of Korus with that line of green craters north and then curving east becomes
the River Iss which will meander around to enter Korus from the south. Why
does Iss enter Korus from the South? Because the Valley of Lost Souls is near
the mouth of the Iss and Korus and John Carter crossed that valley to reach
Omean. Ice-bound cliffs were described which implies a near antarctic area.
So the River Iss must enter Korus from the south.

That bluish strip above Argyo is the Toonol Marsh and the three white-capped
mountains become the Artolian Hills.

Thus if Omean is the next ocean, then Korus, Torquas and Throxeus become
four of the five. But what of the fifth?

On Earth we refer to the Seven Seas which are North Atlantic, South Atlantic,
North Pacific, South Pacific, Arctic, Indian and Mediterranean even though the
North and South Atlantic are one ocean. So if we look at Throxeus, we see two
land masses jutting north into Throxeus, effectively dividing it into East and
West Throxeus. There are our five seas: West Throxeus, East Throxeus,
Torquas, Korus and Omean.

The result is shown thus:

Admittedly, this is a very coarse outline

but for a first draft it gives an idea of
where to go. Note the coastlines shown
in red. These clearly define the four
main oceans of Barsoom.

We also know that certain cities were

Orovar sea-ports. Torquas, Aaanthor,
Xanator, and by implication of this map,
Exum and Horz. Thark and Warhoon,
however, are inland. But Lothar was also
a seaport that sailed Throxeus? How can that be when Lothar is near Aaanthor
in Torquas?
I believe the answer is in York. York was a major city in England and when
people moved to the New World, they brought their memories of York and
called their new home, 'New' York. The Lotharians were a sea-coastal people
until they were forced to migrate across the muddy marshes to found their
current city. So Old Lothar would be a seacoast city and as the people
migrated, they named their new home Lothar in memory of their old.

Was Torquas an isolated sea? Perhaps, but as the lands dried, the people would
naturally migrate along whatever water they could find and that means that
the muddy marshes they followed may well be a bay or straight that connected
Throxeus to Torquas. Mola shows two possibilities, one lowland that moves
north between two mountains to Throxeus and another than wanders northeast
to Throxeus. Either could be the one. For simplicity I chose the northern route
because as the bay dried into marsh then dried up, that would form a moisture
trap to form the forest of Manator.

As the Toonol bay dried into the Toonol Marsh, the River Iss would meander
south, passing through another seaport that became isolated. Being a lower
area, this seaport would become the Koal Forest and Koal, once a seaport,
would isolate itself for protection from the hoards desperately seeking water.

Amhor, once an island, is now a hilly region housing the new city of Amhor,
resulting in this freehand drawing:

Note that the Artolian Hills are that

brown ridge to the right that extends
to the brown ridge on the left. Amhor
is an island above a larger island that
delineates the Toonol Bay (now
Marsh) and the brown smudge to the
left of Toonol are the Phundahl hills.
With the exception of Thark and
Warhoon, all cities I marked are
coastal. Obviously Thark and
Warhoon are either on a river or an
oasis. I have no data and so no opinion on which.

We now have a general idea of the place but we need more details. If we look
at the Lowell map, we see strips of dark land stretching across the planet,
these would be the fertile ones of forest and lush grassland with the lighter
areas desert or veldt.

Now, if Korus were the center of the Issus religion and therefore, 'heaven', then I'd want it isolated
to prevent the great unwashed masses interfering with my works by playing tourist. And as Korus
probably lies within the Great Desert south of Toonol, this is where it should be. The rest of the
planet now falls into place. If we ignore the canali/waterways and modern cities, we can add the
lush areas such to make this:

Then we see that Thark and Warhoon were farming cities and not seaports. We also see a few
other dark spots from the Lowell map, some of which could be cities and others water pumping
stations. Which is which?

Why live at 80 degrees north in the snow if you don't have to? Look at a map
of Earth. What cities do we have that far north? Honestly, none. But at 70N
we see: Hammerfest & Vordo, Norway, Murmansk, Russia, and Barrow Alaska.
None of which would be considered worth visiting unless you were stuck there.
Even the Inuit would move south if they could. So the most northern spots
would be melting and pumping stations to feed a dying planet. In fact, any
spot in the ocean would be a new station so look at those along the coast or
inland to reveal a number of ancient cities, including: Korad, Exum, Gathol,
Amhor and a number of unnamed cities that may or may not be dead.

Our freehand map now looks like this:

and when cleaned up, we see the final result:

The Yellow race would be in the north above the Artolian Hills, the Black in the southern deserts
fighting the Green Hoards and perfecting their military skills, the red along the equator and north to
Horz until the seas dried to force them together to form the Red Race.

Here then is what Barsoom looked like a half million years ago. Imagine the
fleets of sail following the winds across the oceans, the shallow barges
following the mighty Iss and Torquas Bay, the stone piers filled with bow-
carrying Panthans and the unnamable fish pulled from the seas to feed the
masses. See the Green hoards, small in number existing in the southern
deserts vainly seeking to sack the walls of mighty Thark and Warhoon, to finally
succeed as these cities were abandoned. The Orovars driven to a few isolated
lands, some to intermarry for survival to form the Red Race, others to hide from
Green and Red man. What wonders could we see of Barsoom at it's might, a
people who turned technology not to war but to comfort.

Rick Johnson

See the other Rick Johnson features at:

Mapping Barsoom I: Can It Be Done? ERBzine 1370
Mapping Barsoom II: Compromises ERBzine 1562
Barsoom Questions ERBzine 1578

The ERBzine Guide to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars is located

at:
ERBzine 1351

BILL HILLMAN
Visit our thousands of other sites at:
BILL & SUE-ON HILLMAN ECLECTIC STUDIO
ERB Text, ERB Images and Tarzan® are ©Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.- All Rights Reserved.
All Original Work ©1996-2006 by Bill Hillman and/or Contributing Authors/Owners
No part of this web site may be reproduced without permission from the respective owners.