[APG Public List] [APG Members] historical overlays & mapping (was place names)

[LBoswell]

But switching the topic to historical overlays, suggestions for online sites 
that have good collections would be welcome (have lost my bookmarks, or 
they're hidden somewhere in the haystack that is my "favourites" list in 
this browser).

Also I've seen many example where historians, anthropologists,  and 
archaeologists  convert historical maps, some of them quite roughly drawn, 
to match up with modern maps.  I'd like to see more on the principles that 
they use to do that.  Based on comparing landmarks obviously, but some of 
the results are good, though of course there has to be a recognition that it 
also must involve some educated guesswork.

In a sense Google Earth must be using similar principles in its overlays 
because it's fascinating how nicely they line up.  I've tested that by using 
text descriptions and other old maps to pinpoint an archaic street location 
in London, then checked it against Google Earth's overlay, and they line up 
very nicely so far. Maybe for Google Earth's overlays, it involves choosing 
the right historical maps (ones known to be accurate representations)?   But 
in the case of archaeologists, the maps used often are quite sketchy and 
vague, yet mating them to modern maps seems to be done quite nicely.

(and on place names, it's too bad "GPS" was inserted into the discussion 
because it really wasn't about GPS at all, it was about degrees of latitude 
and longitude.  I think I was the one who threw GPS into the mix, but it 
wasn't helpful to think of these coordinates only in context of GPS).

Larry