What Year Was This Globe Made?

foreign about a week ago I was at a yard sale where out of the corner of my eye I spotted this old metal globe and boy was I excited when I first saw this thing I mean how could I not be just look at it you could even call this a time capsule of sorts where we can see the borders and countries of a bygone era have been preserved these are the lines that once defined our world not so long ago but therein lies the question how long ago while this might seem trivial this is actually very important information when shopping at yard sales as the age of this globe could very well determine its value something made in the 90s isn't as cool as something made in the 80s or the 70s or 60s and so on the older this globe is the more of an antique it is and so the only way for me to know if this was worth the eight dollars or not is to figure out what year this globe was made okay so when I first picked this up I couldn't help but notice this huge yellow area spanning across Europe and Asia today this roughly corresponds to Russia but even bigger gobbling up parts of Eastern Europe and all of Central Asia making this none other than the Soviet Union this is a good sign considering the USSR collapsed in 1991 this must have been produced sometime before then making this at the very least older than I am I also think it's funny how Russia Ukraine and the Baltic states are all depicted as their own distinct republics While others like Kazakhstan Armenia or even Belarus are left out if I knew more about the Soviet Union this might clue me into a more specific date but well I don't so let's keep looking around the rest of Europe here we can see Yugoslavia is still together as well which I thought might give me more information but I was forgetting that Yugoslavia fell apart on almost immediately after and as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union so that doesn't really push the age of this any further back the same goes for Czechoslovakia which also broke up in the 90s so I think we're gonna have to look outside of Europe if we want to push this date back any further than the 90s moving over to the Middle East things appear pretty similar to how they are now the first thing I picked up on in this region is the fact that Israel is on this map which leads me to believe this comes from at least after World War II but I don't know the fact that Israel and Jordan are depicted in white kind of makes me think that they were under the rule of the British by this point which is also filled in with white Saudi Arabia also looks different and in fact here it's only referred to as Arabia and this red line seemingly divides it in half though there doesn't appear to be any explanation behind this division it's all just Arabia including what would eventually become Qatar and the United Arab Emirates though further south I was surprised to find both Yemen and Oman still here except with drastically different borders I have a feeling this would tell me all I need to know if only I had studied up on my Arabian history before this but well I didn't so let's move on over to Africa nearly the entire Western half of the continent is this green color the very same color as France making this French West Africa and French equatorial Africa then there's anglo-egyptian Sudan North and South Rhodesia bekawanaland all again shown in white the same as the rest of the British Empire for a second I thought the Congo might have been Independent by this time but sure enough if you look under this Rim we can actually see this is none other than the Belgian Congo with its capital of leopoldville clearly Africa was still heavily colonized by the time this map was produced and it was only after the devastation of World War II that most European powers relinquished their colonial possessions leading me to believe this could be a lot older than I initially expected perhaps even pre-war well actually looking it up both French West Africa and French equatorial Africa achieved their independence in 1958. Sudan was granted Independence in 1956 and the Congo became independent in 1960. so I guess this could have been made sometime after the war as well but no later than the 50s looking around Africa for additional Clues I couldn't help but notice these two countries located inside of South Africa while today these are known as Lesotho and Es suatini all the way back then they were known as basuto land and Swaziland you might even remember that I was only in 2018 that Swaziland changed its name to eswatini but I'll be honest I was completely unaware that Lesotho went through the same process as well having officially changed its name from basuto Land all the way back in 1966. another telling name here in East Africa is the British colony of Tanganyika it was only after they gained independence in 1966 and United with the nearby islands of Zanzibar that the modern country of Tanzania took shape though again this doesn't really help us push the state back any further than the 60s I thought maybe because Morocco was more North African it might have kicked out its Spanish colonists in the Strait of Gibraltar and this whole Territory called Rio de Oro earlier than some of these other countries but it actually wasn't until 1975 that the Spanish withdrew from their African Holdings so this doesn't really help us either overall the earliest date I could put this to using Africa was 1950 56 but I have a feeling we can do better than that so let's keep looking around the world for some more clues spinning over to the Americas real quick we'll find what I consider to be the funniest part of this globe as virtually not a single thing has changed about this entire hemisphere after looking over this for a good while I could only find three real differences between this and a modern map and the first one was a bit of a curveball as I was looking at Canada and couldn't help but notice this little Province right here was a different color than the rest of the Dominion this is the province of Labrador which I think many will be surprised to learn governed itself for nearly 80 years during which time it was considered separate from the rest of Canada it was only the Great Depression that forced the local government to seek to rejoin the British Commonwealth in order to pay off its debts and thereby entered into the Dominion of Canada in 1934 if this map really is from the 30s well that would be amazing but what I'm confused by is that while Labrador is colored yellow the island of Newfoundland remains white this is strange because for basically their entire history these two areas were grouped together into their own dominion when they entered into Canada they did so together and remained to this day the province of Newfoundland and Labrador so it's pretty strange to see what is either one Dominion or one Province filled in two different colors I mean maybe I'm just missing some very short-lived labradorian Independence Movement but if you ask me this detail feels more like a mistake on the part of the map makers than an actual reference to any period in Canadian history as for the United States well you can just tell this was made in the U.S because all 50 states are shown as if each one were a nation despite no other country's sub divisions being shown well except for Canada I guess by the added detail literally not a single change has occurred on this part of the map revealing just how stable this part of the world has been for the past hundred years or so this brings us to South America which also looks almost identical to its modern layout the first real difference I could find came from looking at the British and Dutch guianas which have since changed their names to Guyana and Suriname which okay isn't that big of a difference but more of a reminder that French Guyana remains a colony of France to this day though similar to Africa British and Dutch guianas only achieved their independences in the 1960s so this doesn't help us much but finally after looking at this part of the world for longer than I'd care to admit I noticed Paraguay looks a lot smaller than I remember with nearly half of its territory belonging to Bolivia this only change in 1932 after the Chaco War where despite having only a third of the population of Bolivia and poorly equipped soldiers Paraguay managed to seize control of this region and took its modern form which I think confirms for us that this must have been made sometime before World War II and no later than the 30s the only other difference between this and a modern map of the Americas is something I think all of my Argentinian viewers might appreciate while they might not be labeled as the Islas malvinas the Falkland Islands are colored yellow same as Argentina and not white like the UK and the rest of its territories though again I couldn't tell if this was a decision based on contemporary events or simply another mistake on the part of the map makers either way that's about all the clues I could find in the Americas though checking out the Falklands is what led me to discover probably my favorite part of this entire Globe Antarctica here we can see the continent had been explored well enough to lay down its basic shape but not well enough to realize these two landmasses were connected what we know now as the Antarctic Peninsula was thought of as the Antarctic archipelago a testament to just how old this really is to my surprise there's even a named settlement here on the Ross shelf which can you see is where we'll find Little America I actually just so happen to already be familiar with this place thanks to a video I made some time ago about America's exploration efforts in this area so I already know how Admiral Byrd first established this camp in 1929 to serve as his base of operations though different versions of this Camp were abandoned and re-established year after year until 1958. so again this doesn't really give us any clearer of a picture as to when this was made and that leaves us with one last area of the world to search Asia there's a lot going on here and the first thing I noticed is that both India and Pakistan are filled in with white well Bangladesh doesn't even exist so I think this means the British still controlled these lands as well yeah looking it up the British Raj ended in 1947 so this must have come from before then though Afghanistan is independent something it achieved all the way back in 1921. So this must have come from sometime after that we can also see several Indian cities have changed their name since this was produced as well as we can see Bombay instead of Mumbai allahabad instead of prayagraj and Calcutta instead of Calcutta though actually a lot of the Southeast Asian names have changed Sri Lanka was still called Ceylon Myanmar was still being called Burma Thailand still went by Siam and Vietnam Cambodia and Lao were all part of the French colony of indo-china oh and I almost forgot about the Netherland Indies which only became Indonesia in 1949. none of which really helps us date this any further back running out of options it's finally time for us to look at China which as we can see has also changed quite a lot for starters to bet stands out clearly against the rest of China revealing how it was once considered to be its own independent country it wouldn't be until 1951 that Tibet was invaded and annexed by The People's Liberation Army then over here we can see this region called sin King which was considered part of China and yet separate from China as indicated by this red line This Clues us into the drastically different culture found here compared to the rest of China with a population of mostly Turks who practice Islam while this area hardly resembles China it was conquered by the Qing Dynasty and has thus remained Chinese territory ever since though the very least its name has been changed to xinjiang to better reflect the Chinese attempts at assimilating it a lot of the names of Chinese cities have changed as well Pei ping is still used for Beijing Nan King for Nanjing Canton for Guangzhou and so on even Taiwan is under a different name Formosa the name attributed to the island by the Portuguese but perhaps the most telling part of China is this area here Manchuria while this has been considered part of China for thousands of years now it's always been somewhat on the periphery of Chinese civilization so you can imagine my surprise when I looked to see the capital of China during this time was found here in the city of chengchung a place I've never heard of before looking into it Chang Chun was only briefly made the capital of China after Imperial Japan invaded in 1932. so this must have been made sometime after 1932. so I think I've narrowed this thing down to sometime between 32 and 34. let's just call it 1933. however I wanted to see if I could get any more specific than this so I continued looking around this area until I happened to notice this a country I've never learned about before sitting between Mongolia and the USSR its name was tanu chuva and it was first recognized by the Soviet Union in 1921 and lasted until 1946 before it became absorbed into the USSR initially that gives us a 20-year range but when you take into account the fact that in 1926 tanutuva officially changed its name to the tuvan People's Republic it means this could only have been accurately printed sometime between 1921 to 26. this obviously cannot be the case however as Manchuria was only invaded in 1932 and Little America was only settled in 1929 so what we have here is I've believe another inaccuracy in all likelihood no one bothered updating the name of such an obscure country and that's how we got this seemingly anachronistic detail but even if that's the case that would still mean this globe was made sometime in the 1930s which would make it nearly a century old if so that would make this not only a true antique but an astonishingly well preserved one at that and worth far more than just eight dollars so is that it did I solve the mystery is this really that amazing of a find well this is where book smarts really stops being useful and Street smarts really take over because one good look at this thing and you can just tell it's not actually a hundred years old something's fishy about this globe and the fact that I couldn't find a single date on it makes me think this isn't the full story lucky for us while searching every corner of this for some kind of legend or key I did find out who made this the Ohio art company typing this into Google and pretty quickly I found a wide selection of near identical products each with the same description vintage globe from either the 60s or 70s and that's what made me realize what this really is while the map printed on this may be from the 30s the globe itself is a reproduction something that was mass produced in the 60s and sold as a decorative vintage glow hope this isn't an authentic centuries-old treasure it's a piece of mass-produced Decor someone must have bought to make themselves look well traveled and worldly and I think the reason it took me so long to realize this is because this is still 50 years old so there is an authentic layer of rust scrapes and bumps that make this feel aged I also think something made for a mass market like this being metal instead of plastic really threw me off I mean even parts of that have plastic so this being metal really gave it the feeling like it came from another era and knowing that this wasn't used for like navigation or exploration but was simply a household knick-knack the inaccuracies on this map make a lot more sense you see I think this map was intentionally chosen precisely for its bizarre borders its funky coastlines its obscure names unexplored corners and most of all it's whimsical inaccuracies so that no matter how well-versed you are in world history this nonetheless presents a challenge to decipher if the whole purpose of this thing was to romanticize a time when things were different then it totally makes sense to take a map from the 1930s one of the most dynamic periods in world history and so it's no surprise there are a lot of names that would never be used again on here but that's what made me realize if this was supposed to be sold as some retro throwback to a better time than what this globe really is is a celebration of the world Circa 1933 and I can't help but wonder why someone would want to intentionally memorialize a time when the world looked like this what exactly are we supposed to be nostalgic for French West Africa the British Raj the Netherland Indies without any more context this kind of just seems like a piece of imperialist paraphernalia I mean I guess sure if you're like Tibetan or something I'd understand why you'd remember this time fondly but if you're just some random white guy and you look at this and go oh yes the good old days then I don't know that's that's not really the same and that's especially pertinent when you remember that this was made and sold in the late 60s and early 70s or in other words right around the same time all these colonies were becoming countries I mean think about it 1955 France loses control over indo-china 1956 Sudan gains Independence 1957 Ghana kicks out the British 1958 French Africa is freed in 1960 Congo breaks away from Belgium 1964 Tanzania takes form 1966 British and Dutch Guyana break free and then a few years later some guy from upstate New York buys this to look back fondly on the time before all these changes occurred not the best look if you ask me altogether this led me to the informed decision that this was not in fact worth eight dollars as it's not as old or as innocent as I first thought that's why I only ended up paying three dollars for it a fair bargain if you ask me because while it might not be a real antique at the very least it provided us with a glimpse into the Antiquated lines and letters that once defined our world even if only briefly and anything capable of teaching us a lesson in history geography and the dangers of romanticizing a simpler time can only be described as a good find if you enjoyed my explorations of this globe you might be interested to learn that Caltech just released a new 5.7 terapixel map of Mars and in an upcoming video I use this tool to explore the planet like never before while this video won't be on YouTube for another few weeks you can watch it right now over on nebula the premiere streaming platform built by many of your favorite YouTubers including me this is where you get early access to videos from me as well as many of the best educational creators days sometimes weeks before they're up everywhere else without being forced to watch ads or listen to sponsor reads like this plus there's loads of original content on here as well like the show modern conflicts just like how the borders and names on this globe revealed to us much of the political Strife that shaped our recent history in this series Joe from real life lore looks at how disputes around the world can continue to cause changes to our Maps and if you sign up using my link in the description you can get all this from nebula's lowest price ever of just two dollars and fifty cents a month or thirty dollars for the whole year which also comes with free access to nebula's classes where you can learn some of the skills of being a Creator directly from the creators in all honesty a lot of the research for this video was basically just looking up when countries caught their independence so a course like how to Google like a pro is really all you need to make a video like this one so once again if you use my link in the description not only will you be taking advantage of a great deal getting early ad-free access to your favorite content creators but you'll also be helping to directly support me in the process okay and that's about it for this video thank you to everyone who's still watching I know this was a little different than my regular videos so let me know if you enjoyed as I have a few more old Maps I'd like to take a look at in future videos if that's something you'd like to see make sure to hit the like button to let me know and subscribe so you don't miss out on what I look at next lastly I'd like to thank my patrons for their continued support I know I haven't been as active as I usually am but that's about to change so thank you for sticking with me and I'll be back soon with another one let's get the thumbnail though right here's the thumbnail right or no should it be this side something like that

Channel: Atlas Pro

Views: 169,936

Keywords: education, geography, science, atlaspro

Id: 2u3ujFhxEug

Length: 23min 0sec (1380 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 01 2023