Wisdom of the oracle

Delphi is located on the southern slopes of sacred Mount Parnassus, about 12 miles from the Gulf of Corinth. While some come here to question the oracle, most attend the site to celebrate a festival of Apollo or Dionysus. This reconstruction shows the entire Delphi complex, from the stadium at the top to the Sanctuary of Athena at the very bottom. The area of the plan is indicated in red.

The most famous oracle in Greece is that of Apollo at Delphi. It was discovered long ago that a cleft in the side of Mount Parnassus emitted a gas that caused seizures among the goats that grazed nearby. When a goatherd was also affected, the locals interpreted his convulsions and ravings as divine inspiration.

This became the place decreed by Apollo to be the omphalus (navel) of the world. Delegations now travel from all over Greece to seek advice, the words of Apollo interpreted through the medium of the Pythia, high priestess of Delphi.

The Pythia is crowned in laurel and seated on a tripod perched over the vaporous cleft. Any man (women are not allowed in the sanctuary) wishing to ask a question about the future must first be ritually purified by washing in the Castalian Spring, which is where Apollo killed the Python dragon.

The request is written down and given to the Pythia by a priest. Her utterances are usually so disjointed that her servant-priests are needed to interpret the answer—even then, they often get it wrong, to the questioner’s usually dreadful misfortune.
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The celebrant climbs a steep road toward the sanctuary entrance at its eastern corner. During a major festival this road is lined by numerous stores selling the pilgrims food, mementoes of their visit, and sacrificial offerings to place on the many altars. From the gate, the Sacred Way rises steeply in a zigzag, between the votive altars and then the state treasuries of several city-states.

It takes a sharp bend in front of the Athenian treasury before passing close to the rock on which in ancient times the mythical prophetess Sibyl sang her predictions in Gaia’s shrine. From here, the procession continues up past the Porch of the Athenians. This stoa (a covered walkway) is built in the Ionic order, and has seven fluted, or grooved columns, each made from a single stone. According to the inscription, it was erected by the Athenians after 478 BCE to house the trophies taken in their naval victories over the Persians.

 The Sacred Way now bends around to take the last, steep rise up to the great Doric temple dedicated to Apollo. Inside is the adyton, the seat of the Pythia.

Facing the steps to the temple’s entrance is the large altar of the sanctuary. It was paid for and erected by the people of Chios, in the 5th century BCE. The monument is made of black marble, except for the base and cornice, which are of white marble, resulting in an impressive color contrast.

Heart of the Polis—the Agora

AAthens is governed by an assembly of 500 elected members— called the Boule—who meet in the New and Old Bouleuterion. A “steering committee” of 50 selected Boule members, called the prytani, meets in the circular Tholos, which also houses the official weights and standard measures. B The old law court (top right) fell into disuse early on and cases are heard in the Hellaea, which is incorporated in the new south stoa. C The ancient race track has disappeared under the agora’s center, which is filled with market stalls and small stores.

The Greek agora, or marketplace, is a natural place for exchanging gossip, debating matters of state, and for public discussion. It is the center of trade and of politics, where the government meets and from where wars are conducted.

At the heart of every Greek city is the agora. It is the center of a city’s commercial life, and a social focus where people gather to meet friends. The finest agora in all Greece is found in Athens, which was once the place where an ancient race track existed for the annual religious games. Gradually, it developed into a market, and from there to the political hub of the city.

Farmers from the surrounding region still come to the central open space, erect their stalls, and sell meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, cheese, fruit, and eggs. Around the edges craftsmen have their numerous workshops, while here and there knots of men looking for work gather in spots where employers are known to hire for particular trades.

The political hub
To the east and south are the great stoas, or porches, colonnaded arcades that offer welcome shade and also provide space for small shops and business offices. The shops are open rooms with a counter across the front, and since they cost more to rent than a market stall, they tend to sell luxury goods.

On the western side of the agora sit the various government buildings that house the Boule and the Strategion. This is the center of the Athenian military command. In times of war, the Boule appoints a supreme commander—the strategos—who is responsible for the navy and the army. In other times, there were a number of strategoi, who acted as generals.

Together with altars and temples, you have in one place the essence of a Greek city.

Nabta

    Oldest Astronomical Megalith Alignment Discovered In Egypt. By Science Team

ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 1998)
An assembly of huge stone slabs found in Egypt's Sahara Desert that date from about 6,500 years to 6,000 years ago has been confirmed by scientists to be the oldest known astronomical alignment of megaliths in the world.

Known as Nabta, the site consists of a stone circle, a series of flat, tomb-like stone structures and five lines of standing and toppled megaliths. Located west of the Nile River in southern Egypt, Nabta predates Stonehenge and similar prehistoric sites around the world by about 1,000 years, said University of Colorado at Boulder astronomy Professor J. McKim Malville.

The Nabta site was discovered several years ago by a team led by Southern Methodist University anthropology Professor Fred Wendorf. A 1997 GPS satellite survey by Malville, Wendorf, Ali A Mazar of the Egyptian Geological Survey and Romauld Schild of the Polish Academy of Sciences confirmed one of the megalith lines was oriented in an east-west direction.

A paper on the subject by the four researchers will appear April 2 in the weekly British science journal, Nature.

"This is the oldest documented astronomical alignment of megaliths in the world," said Malville. "A lot of effort went into the construction of a purely symbolic and ceremonial site." The stone slabs, some of which are nine feet high, were dragged to the site from a mile or more distant, he said.

The ruins lie on the shoreline of an ancient lake that began filling with water about 11,000 years ago when the African summer monsoon shifted north. It was used by nomads until about 4,800 years ago, when the monsoon moved southwest and the area again became "hyperarid and uninhabitable."

Five megalithic alignments at Nabta radiate outward from a central collection of megalithic structures. Beneath one structure was a sculptured rock resembling a cow standing upright, Malville said. The team also excavated several cattle burials at Nabta, including an articulated skeleton buried in a roofed, clay-lined chamber.

Neolithic herders that began coming to Nabta about 10,000 years ago -- probably from central Africa -- used cattle in their rituals just as the African Massai do today, he said. No human remains have yet been found at Nabta.

The 12-foot-in-diameter stone circle contains four sets of upright slabs. Two sets were aligned in a north-south direction while the second pair of slabs provides a line of sight toward the summer solstice horizon.

Because of Nabta's proximity to the Tropic of Cancer, the noon sun is at its zenith about three weeks before and three weeks after the summer solstice, preventing upright objects from casting shadows. "These vertical sighting stones in the circle correspond to the zenith sun during the summer solstice," said Malville, an archeoastronomer. "For many cultures in the tropics, the zenith sun has been a major event for millennia."

An east-west alignment also is present between one megalithic structure and two stone megaliths about a mile distant. There also are two other geometric lines involving about a dozen additional stone monuments that lead both northeast and southeast from the same megalith. "We still don't understand the significance of these lines," Malville said.

During summer and fall, the individual stone monoliths would have been partially submerged in the lake and may have been ritual markers for the onset of the rainy season. "The organization of these objects suggest a symbolic geometry that integrated death, water and the sun," Malville said.

Although some believe the "high culture" of subsequent Egyptian dynasties was borrowed from Mesopotamia and Syria, Malville and others believe the complex and symbolic Nabta culture may have stimulated the growth of the society that eventually constructed the first pyramids along the Nile about 4,500 years ago.

"The Nabta culture may have been a trigger for the development of social complexity in Egypt that later led to the Pharaonic dynasty," he said. The Nabta project was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation.

The site also contains a wealth of cultural debris, including small, fire-blackened stones from ancient hearths built along the ancient lakeshore as well as manos, metates and carved and decorated ostrich eggshells.

Mỹ Sơn

Perhaps because so many people travelling down the Vietnamese coast are en route to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, My Son, about an hour from Hoi An, often gets overlooked. Yet it’s an incredible, eerie site of towering temples, covered in jungle creepers.

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Paro Taktsang

Clinging to the edge of a 900m cliff, Taktshang Goemba (Tiger’s Nest Monastery) is famous in Bhutan but like so much of the remote kingdom, little-known outside. The monastery is not open to visitors but you can hike to a viewpoint to take in the epic scenery.

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The Nabta megaliths were recently discovered in the Egyptian Sahara.

Oldest Astronomical Megalith Alignment Discovered In Egypt

The Nabta megaliths were recently discovered in the Egyptian Sahara. The circle of stones is astronomically aligned, although no one is sure of its exact purpose. It dates to between 4500 and 4000 BCE – making it 1,000 years older than the circle at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England.

The Nabtans erected five megalithic alignments all radiating like wheel spokes from a central cluster of stones.

Nabta boasts numerous fire hearths located around a stone calendar circle about 300 meters north of the mega stones. This stone circle is very small compared with the great structures of Stonehenge and Carnac but it demonstrates similar astronomical affiliations. Archaeologists, using global positioning systems, have surveyed the large radial stones and found that their alignments are exactly on the axis north-south and east-west as are the stones of the calendar circle.

The east-west line has been calculated to align with the rising and setting sun of the summer solstice more than 6,000 years ago.
Many cattle bones have been discovered, adding to the speculation that this was a place of animal veneration. The ancient Egyptians deified cattle, especially the cow. One tumulus contained a fully articulated cow while numerous other, more basic, tumuli contained some artifacts, unshaped stones, and disarticulated cattle bones.

Galilee

The vast majority of Bible narratives occur in the hills, from the Galilee in the north, down through Samaria to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. “There is some rainfall (above 24 in.). The nights are cool in summer, cold in winter, when frost and snow are unusual but not unknown” (George Cansdale 1970, 27). The forests that once covered these hills are mentioned in stories of David. His son Absalom was killed in a forest, when his long hair caught on the branches of the trees. At one time, the region was alive with wild animals, which found plenty of grazing land, as well as fruits and nuts from the variety of trees.

The rock formations in the sandstone provide many holes and clefts that have served as homes to humans and beasts throughout the centuries. This was an excellent hiding place for David when he was fleeing Saul, and it was later used to shelter the Zealots and outlaws in Jesus’s day.

Galilee, the home of Jesus and his disciples, is north of the Plain of Esdraelon. The upland ranges of the hills here “stretch away northward, gradually rising as they come nearer to the high mountains of Lebanon. They rise in a series of steps, with scarp edges, facing generally south or south-east. The lower steps in the ‘staircase’ were and are fertile basin lands, separated from each other by barren limestone edges. In the time of Jesus, these basins were known for their grain, fruit and olives. They formed a prosperous, well-populated area. But the higher steps rise to a bleak and windswept upland. This is isolated and infertile, and lacks the forests of the higher mountain slopes farther north” (Pat Alexander, Eerdman ’ s Family Encyclopedia of the Bible, 6–7). This was sometimes divided into the Lower and Upper Galilee, with the northern section often under foreign control.

Galilee was a busy region, crossed by the great trade routes, bringing many strangers with news of the outside world; a mixed community with fishermen casting their nets on the Sea of Galilee and farmers tilling the soil of their fertile farmlands. It was full of people who were more racially mixed than in the Jerusalem region, and considered hayseeds by these city-dwellers.

Peru: 'sensational' Inca find for British team in Andes

The Inca platform where the ancestor stones were found. Photograph: Observer

Discovery of sacred ancestor stones has archaeologists 'dancing a jig'
Dalya Alberge
The Observer, Sunday 5 December 2010

A British team of archaeologists on expedition in the Peruvian Andes has hailed as "sensational" the discovery of some of the most sacred objects in the Inca civilisation – three "ancestor stones", which were once believed to form a precious link between the heavens and the underworld.

The find, which was made on an isolated Andean mountainside, provoked joy among local specialists and the experts present from, among others, the British Museum, Reading University and Royal Holloway, University of London. No examples of the stones were thought to have survived until now.
"It was a very moving moment," said Dr Colin McEwan, the British Museum's head of the Americas, as he recalled seeing the stones for the first time.

Dr Frank Meddens, research associate of Royal Holloway, who was also on the expedition, said they had "danced a little jig on top of the mountain" after discovering the objects that they had only read about in 16th-century Spanish documents.

The Incas would have been just as overawed. The conical-shaped stones were among the most significant items in Inca society and religion. Key elements in ritual events, they were thought to facilitate a connection between different realms of the world – the celestial and the underworld of the ancestors – with the Inca king, as the divine ruler, acting as intermediary. And they were considered more precious than gold.

"This is a whole new category of object. It is nothing short of sensational," said McEwan of the three stones in red and white Andesite, a hard, granite-like rock, which were excavated some 2.5 metres beneath an Inca stone platform. The platform too was recently excavated and is a structure of distinctive stonework that once symbolised the imperial control of conquered territories.

The site – at Incapirca Waminan – is one of 20 undocumented high-altitude Inca ceremonial platforms explored by the archaeologists around the Ayacucho basin. Such sites were potent imperial symbols of religious and political authority as the Incas expanded outwards from Cuzco, a sacred city of temples and palaces in the central Peruvian Andes.

Ancestor stones represented deities, ancestors and the sun, and were imbued with supreme symbolic significance. They were greeted with incomprehension by Spanish chroniclers of the early 16th century, who sacrilegiously likened their shape to sugar loaves, pineapples and bowling pins. The insult, however, was returned: when the 16th-century Inca ruler Atahualpa was shown a copy of the Bible by the Conquistadors, he reacted with similar contempt.

According to Spanish sources, the stones were used in public solar rituals, sometimes draped in gold cloth and paraded. One witness wrote: "The stones… were held to be blessed and sacred."
Symbols of the ancestral essence of the Inca king, the objects were placed on display when the supreme leader was absent from Cuzco, the capital of the Inca people, in an attempt to demonstrate the perpetual presence and his power. The Incas believed their king to be a living god who ruled by divine right.

As the Incas had no system of writing, the significance of the archaeologists' unprecedented find is reinforced by the identification of ancestor stones in the decoration of a unique 16th-century Inca vessel (cocha) in the British Museum. Spanning 50cm in diameter, it bears a carved scene showing a central solar disc and two kneeling figures with their hands clasped as they honour an ancestor stone. They are flanked on either side by an Inca king and queen and high-ranking lords.

The Incas created a huge empire that stretched more than 2,400 miles along the length of the Andes and whose economy was based on taxed labour, with its people farming and herding animals, working in mines and producing goods such as clothing and pottery.

The sites for ceremonial platforms were chosen for their vistas of the snow-capped peaks, which were worshipped as mountain deities. It was at such sites that the Incas sacrificed children – the ceremony of capacocha – at moments of potential instability.

These structures also had sacred central spaces known as the ushnu, with a vertical opening into "the body of the earth" into which libations such as maize beer were poured. The ushnu platforms served as a stage from which the Inca king and his lords could preside over seasonal festivals and ceremonies.

First humans arrived in Britain 250,000 years earlier than thought

Archaeologists digging on a Norfolk beach found stone tools that show the first humans were living in Britain much earlier than previously thought

Ian Sample, science correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 July 2010 18.04 BST
A spectacular haul of ancient flint tools has been recovered from a beach in Norfolk, pushing back the date of the first known human occupation of Britain by up to 250,000 years.
While digging along the north-east coast of East Anglia near the village of Happisburgh, archaeologists discovered 78 pieces of razor-sharp flint shaped into primitive cutting and piercing tools.
The stone tools were unearthed from sediments that are thought to have been laid down either 840,000 or 950,000 years ago, making them the oldest human artefacts ever found in Britain.
The flints were probably left by hunter-gatherers of the human species Homo antecessor who eked out a living on the flood plains and marshes that bordered an ancient course of the river Thames that has long since dried up. The flints were then washed downriver and came to rest at the Happisburgh site.
The early Britons would have lived alongside sabre-toothed cats and hyenas, primitive horses, red deer and southern mammoths in a climate similar to that of southern Britain today, though winters were typically a few degrees colder.
"These tools from Happisburgh are absolutely mint-fresh. They are exceptionally sharp, which suggests they have not moved far from where they were dropped," said Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London. The population of Britain at the time most likely numbered in the hundreds or a few thousand at most.
"These people probably used the rivers as routes into the landscape. A lot of Britain might have been heavily forested at the time, which would have posed a major problem for humans without strong axes to chop trees down," Stringer added. "They lived out in the open, but we don't know if they had basic clothing, were building primitive shelters, or even had the use of fire."
The discovery, reported in the journal Nature, overturns the long-held belief that early humans steered clear of chilly Britain – and the rest of northern Europe – in favour of the more hospitable climate of the Mediterranean. The only human species known to be living in Europe at the time is Homo antecessor, or "pioneer man", whose remains were discovered in the Atapuerca hills of Spain in 2008 and have been dated to between 1.1m and 1.2m years old.
The early settlers would have walked into Britain across an ancient land bridge that once divided the North Sea from the Atlantic and connected the country to what is now mainland Europe. The first humans probably arrived during a warm interglacial period, but may have retreated as temperatures plummeted in subsequent ice ages.
Until now, the earliest evidence of humans in Britain came from Pakefield, near Lowestoft in Suffolk, where a set of stone tools dated to 700,000 years ago were uncovered in 2005. More sophisticated stone, antler and bone tools were found in the 1990s in Boxgrove, Sussex, which are believed to be half a million years old.
"The flint tools from Happisburgh are relatively crude compared with those from Boxgrove, but they are still effective," said Stringer. Early stone tools were fashioned by using a pebble to knock large flakes off a chunk of flint. Later humans used wood and antler hammers to remove much smaller flakes and so make more refined cutting and sawing edges.
The great migration from Africa saw early humans reach Europe around 1.8m years ago. Within 500,000 years, humans had become established in the Mediterranean region. Remains have been found at several archaeological sites in Spain, southern France and Italy.
In an accompanying article in Nature, Andrew Roberts and Rainer Grün at the Australian National University in Canberra, write: "Until the Happisburgh site was found and described, it was thought that these early humans were reluctant to live in the less hospitable climate of northern Europe, which frequently fell into the grip of severe ice ages."
Researchers led by the Natural History Museum and British Museum in London began excavating sites near Happisburgh in 2001 as part of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project and soon discovered tools from the stone age beneath ice-age deposits. So far, though, they have found no remains of the ancient people who made them.
"This would be the 'holy grail' of our work," said Stringer. "The humans who made the Happisburgh tools may well have been related to the people of similar antiquity from Atapuerca in Spain, assigned to the species Homo antecessor, or 'pioneer man'."
The latest haul of stone tools was buried in sediments that record a period of history when the polarity of the Earth's magnetic field was reversed. At the time, a compass needle would have pointed south instead of north. The last time this happened was 780,000 years ago, so the tools are at least that old.
Analysis of ancient vegetation and pollen in the sediments has revealed that the climate was warm but cooling towards an ice age, which points to two possible times in history, around 840,000 years ago, or 950,000 years ago. Both dates are consistent with the fossilised remains of animals recovered from the same site.
"Britain was getting cooler and going into an ice age, but these early humans were hanging in there. They may have been the remnants of an ancient population that either died out or migrated back across the land bridge to a warmer climate," said Stringer.

Sanchi stupas.

In 75 B.C., the tenth king of the Shunga dynasty, Devahuti (also known as Devabhumi) was murdered through a conspiracy by the minister Vasudeva, who founded the short-lived dynasty of Kanvas. Four Kanva kings ruled for only forty-five years; their dynasty’s end came at the hands of the Andhras in 30 B.C. The Sanchi stupas near Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh were built during this period, but it is not possible to trace the precise contribution of the Kanva rulers to this building complex.

The Sanchi region is full of stupas, which number 60 in all: 8 in Sonar; 5 in Satadhara; 3 in Andher; 37 in Bhojpur; and 7 in Sanchi. Most of these are miniature; only a few are large. The building of stupas commenced in the third century B.C., when Ashoka, then governor, married Devi, the daughter of a local businessman. He selected the site of the hillock, which after the construction of the great stupa was known as Mahachetiya. The dimensions of the original stupa are known, though the existing stupa was built two centuries later. A portion of the original Ashokan pillar can still be seen near the southern gate.

The Mahachetiya (Stupa I) is 54 feet (16.5 m) high and covers a circular area 120 feet (36.5 m) in diameter. The hemispherical dome has a truncated top, surrounded by a low railing (harmika) consisting of a stone shaft topped by umbrellas (chhatravali). The body of the stupa is made of bricks surrounded by stone balustrades. At the ground level runs the pathway for clockwise circumambulation around the stupa during worship. This path is surrounded by a railing with 9-foot (2.7 m)-high pillars, placed at an interval of 2 feet (.6 m), with three crossbars. Unlike the Bharhut railing, the Sanchi railing is uncarved.

The four gateways that provide access to the stupa, however, are of great aesthetic merit. An inscription on the southern entrance records that it was executed by the guild of ivory carvers of Vidisha. The minute, low-carved renderings vary from gate to gate, although some episodes have been repeated. The representations are of Jatakas (previous births of the Buddha), life events, yakshas, nagas, mythical beings, nymphs, flora and fauna, processions, and a number of decorative motifs. Like Bharhut and Bodh Gaya¯, Sanchi also suggests the presence of the Buddha through symbols. Similarly, Gajalakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, is standing on a lotus, anointed by two elephants. The number of Jataka tales narrated here is only four, while at Bharhut no fewer than thirty are depicted. Nevertheless, the stupa at Sanchi is one of the most impressive examples of ancient Indian art.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Agrawala, V. S. Indian Art. Varanasi: Prithivi Prakasham, 1965. Arthashastra of Kautilya. Chap. 2. Translated and edited by L. N. Tangarajan. New Delhi and New York: Penguin, 1992. Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. History of Indian and Indonesian Art. New York: Dover, 1965. Gupta, Swarajya P. The Roots of Indian Art. New Delhi: D. K. Publishers, 1980. Lohuizen-De Leeuw, J. E. van. The Scythian Period: An Approach to the History, Art, Epigraphy, and Palaeography of North India from the First Century B.C. to the Third Century A.D. Leiden: A. J. Brill, 1949. Ray, Niharranjan R. Maurya and Post Maurya Art: A Study in Social and Formal Contrasts. New Delhi: Thomson, 1975. Raychaudhuri, Hemchandra C. Political History of Ancient India. Rev. ed. Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Saraswati, S. K. Survey of Indian Sculpture. New Delhi: Munishiram Manoharlal, 1975. Sharma, R. C. Bharhut Sculpture. New Delhi: Abhinav, 1994. ———. The Splendour of Mathura Art and Museum. New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 1994. ———. Buddhist Art: Mathura School. 1995. ———. “Development of Indian Sculpture from Mauryan to the Kushana Period.” In Life, Thought, and Culture in India: From 600 B.C. to c. A.D. 300, edited by G. C. Pande. New Delhi: Munishiram Manoharlal, 2001. Smith, Vincent A. The Jain Stupa and Other Antiquities of Mathura. 1901. Reprint, Varanasi: Indological Book House, 1969.

WHIRLWIND

Russia
The personification of a whirlwind, sometimes referred to as Vikhor'. In one story he abducts Nastas'ya of the Golden Braid, the wife of Bel Belyanin and mother of Peter Belyaninovich, Vasilii Belyaninovich, and Ivan Belyaninovich, and keeps her in a wondrous palace encrusted with diamonds and other precious stones on a plateau atop a high mountain range. There he also holds three maidens captive as the tsaritsas of his three kingdoms—the Copper Kingdom, the Silver Kingdom, and the Golden Kingdom, the tsaritsa of the latter being Elena the Fair. Each of the four palaces in Whirlwind’s realm was guarded by a multi-headed dragon that could only be placated with water drawn from a well nearby.

Whirlwind renewed his strength periodically from a barrel that contained a magical water that bestowed great strength on anyone who drank it. He also kept a second barrel, which contained a water that sapped the drinker’s strength. These two barrels ultimately were his downfall.

Ivan and his two brothers set off to search for their lost mother. Ivan finally found her, after climbing the tall mountains and passing through the three kingdoms. Nastas'ya of the Golden Braid told Ivan of Whirlwind’s secret, and by drinking of the strength increasing water and then swapping that with the strength-sapping one, Ivan was able to defeat Whirlwind, cutting off his head with a single blow, burning his body, and scattering the ashes in the wind.

Whirlwind had two servants, Lame and One-Eye, who could work wondrous magic. After Whirlwind’s death, these two served Ivan.

Bathymetric map

A bathymetric map is a map that measures water depth across an underwater area. Although many people think of bathymetric maps as measuring ocean depths, this type of mapping can also apply to seas and lakes. A bathymetric map is a lot like a topographical map, except that the features contained in it are underwater. It may use various representations, including color and contour lines, to represent ocean or sea depth in a particular area. Some bathymetric maps use what's called a digital terrain model (DTM) to show how underwater depth levels differ in a region.

When cartographers began to make bathymetric maps, depth was often found by lowering some type of physical probe down into a body of water. This method could be time consuming and inaccurate. In modern times, this method has been replaced by sonar to give mapmakers a much better picture of what's on an ocean floor.

A bathymetric map can serve many different functions. Many of these types of maps give navigators a better understanding of underwater features that could threaten the safety of the specific sea path for a boat or vessel. A bathymetric map can also be helpful in diving missions, where search parties are looking to identify something located on an ocean or sea bottom, from a lost ship to jettisoned cargo. Many interesting undersea diving missions that have unearthed long-sunk treasures or famous lost ships have taken advantage of bathymetric mapping to more easily reach an undersea location. Bathymetric mapping is also used for "paleobathymetry," the study of ancient changes to underwater topography.

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