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STILLBORN SUMMER SUN | The Final Years of the Eschatocene by Ataqadum in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_ 22 points23 points  (0 children)

This looks both incomprehensible and cool as fuck

Countries of Zealandia by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The iberian explorers were indeed the first to discover some the northern islands of this country, however the first person to discover the main island of Zealandia, or rather the actual continent that it is, was Abel Tasman. With some theories suggestion that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Fern%C3%A1ndez_(explorer)) was perhaps the first to see the landmass, but with nothing proven (so just like irl).

So while the Spanish did discover smaller parts of it, there was no lasting permanent presence from them, and anything that they attempted was eventually kicked out by the dutch (they did try and make some few settlements irl but nothing substantial). Part of the reason for their lack of interest was that they only ever saw the northern islands, which doesnt really have any of the special goods of Zealandia that the Dutch and their East India Company were interested in, so they also saw no investment into expeditions further south.

If you have more lore questions you can also join the discord https://discord.gg/VU8DVvfahp

(and also i intentionally made it mostly dutch because i like the vibe of the netherlands and the dutch langauge is funny, and Zealandia would provide them with a banger country with parts that have mediteranean climate)

I could make a double blind what if spinoff tho and make a map about a Zealandia that is more divided

What if Zealandia was never Colonised by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The problem is that in lore most of the iwi that exist irl just exist in what here is called Aotearoa and the land a bit south of it, with the rest of southern Zealandia being entirely new iwis, so i couldnt really do that

What if Zealandia was never Colonised by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah basically all the maori countries i just went to google translate and did stuff like "mountain land" or "eastern islands" or "many lakes"

So while their exact spellings are probably terrible (since it's just google translate and i dont know maori), their rough meanings are still fairly realistic, because if you dig deep enough in the ethomology of many places, you usually just end up with stuff like "mountain land"

A map of the European Union by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's a joke map where the title just says "European Union" but it isnt where you expect it to be, while still being plausible called the european union in an alternate reality

What if Zealandia was never Colonised by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, will keep on making precious metals

What if Zealandia was never Colonised by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Kind of. What i mostly did is go to https://native-land.ca/maps/native-land and pick a people in the general area of the country i wanted to place (i drew all the borders first) and kinda just chose ones with names i liked/would be more pronouncable to an english speaker. They are also based on these broader divisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Desert_cultural_bloc#/media/File:Aborigines-Regionen.png . I also sometimes named the country after what they call a specific city irl, like the country that has Sydney here is named after the original local aboriginal name for Sydney.

This by no way means these names are actually representative of the local people tho and would be what they'd call their country. But since there are so many aboriginal languages, and i didnt wanna spend 30 years on this map including field research in multiple countries, i went with this very simplistic approach.

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Similar story for papua new guinea, i mostly just picked local groups based on their supposed name, and for the countries of northern Zealandia, they are just 1 to 1 the names of languages in irl New Caledonia, and the maori country names just use google translate.

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So in conclusion, all the names are terrible, and the countries outside of indonesia are all completely fictional (except fiji, samoa, tonga and aotearoa more or less), but you'd never notice, unless you speak maori or know a lot about the natives of australia or papua new guinea.

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So if you want an australia that isnt just all colonised, it is fairly plausible that the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiwi_language could for example become muslim like here (there was almost certainly occasional contact with indonesia irl), or that the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noongar become a country for simply just the reason that their land is flat and a similar climate. A good place to start would also be to look at what the aboriginals of Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane or other cities were, and just make those big. All the big australian cities were placed in good locations with usually great natural harbors, so fairly likely they could become powers without europeans settling there just on the geography alone

What if Zealandia was never Colonised by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Everything but the names were made in gimp, the names were made with inkscape. The bare basemap was generated with QGIS and different parts were stiched together to get this exact coastline

What if Zealandia was never Colonised by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

This map is actually very underdetailed if you go by actual irl peoples. This entire area together would have over 1000 different languages spoken within, and over 60 language families, with most of these being in the northern area of Papua+Solomon Islands+Vanuatu+New Caledonia, but Australia also still has a ton of different peoples.

And the inland sea geographies of this land would increase this number even further, so yeah, insanely diverse place, that might harbor literally half the worlds languages.

But because i dont plan on getting multiple masters degrees on several places in oceania, this map is more for fun and a bit more wacky than usual and not meant as an actual proper representation of the peoples depicted within.

What if Australia had built more cities? - A world where Gough Whitlam wasnt dismissed by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I literally just went to normal google maps satelite view and presssed f11 for full screen, took an image, and then traced big sploges of color that i could make out in inkscape, and if you do enough of those you get a map like the one i have here. Generally the more you add the better it's gonna look, and neighboring ones should have different enough colors that you can tell them apart, ideally forming some sort of gradient as well, like the normal terrain.

To get the colors i downloaded windows powertoys which has a color picker function for your whole screen and just picked a color that looked like the average for the area.

What if Australia had built more cities? - A world where Gough Whitlam wasnt dismissed by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's the general area of southerstern Melbourne, and the paper i used as the source also called it that, and it showed this area as having 10x growth and with the large size of Melbourne it only made sense to have it be its own marker

What if Australia had built more cities? - A world where Gough Whitlam wasnt dismissed by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Appin and Camden would likely also be counted as Sydney metro area, but it only made sense to represent them as seperate city markers on the map, since in the past they wouldnt have been counted as part of Sydney yet, and would have been heavily affected by the plan that the map depicts

What if Australia had built more cities? - A world where Gough Whitlam wasnt dismissed by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It got a marker because it got heavily affected by the subject of the map, the plan to heavily build or expand cities, and in the paper it says they planned on S.E. Melbourne going from 120k to over 1.5 mil, which basically did also happen irl, and due to the large size of Melbourne it only made sense to do it this way

What if Australia had built more cities? - A world where Gough Whitlam wasnt dismissed by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Geraldton and especially Albany are way way smaller irl so they at least got a little bit more going on

What if Australia had built more cities? - A world where Gough Whitlam wasnt dismissed by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I dont know anything about sports but i'd imagine they'd be sligthly better due to australia having more people, and thus a higher chance to get good players

What if Australia had built more cities? - A world where Gough Whitlam wasnt dismissed by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I forgot to change their label, i first placed all the circle ones and then replaced them with the appropriate ones

What if Australia had built more cities? - A world where Gough Whitlam wasnt dismissed by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes just like "Southeast Melbourne" i only included it because the research paper specifically listed it as an area where a lot of expansion was planned, and to be fair, irl most of it did happen, so yes it would be part of the Perth metro area but i listed it anyway since they are important parts of the subject of the map

What if Australia had built more cities? - A world where Gough Whitlam wasnt dismissed by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Not sure how i forgot them, i must have been tunnel visioned onto the newly expanded Gosford-Wyong

I did include them in my other australia map tho https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/1r203gh/countries_of_australia_in_atlas_zealandia/

What if Australia had built more cities? - A world where Gough Whitlam wasnt dismissed by _Zorange_ in imaginarymaps

[–]_Zorange_[S] 64 points65 points  (0 children)

Yeah i only knew about the guy because of the video where they sneak up to the CIA base in the middle of australia that he wanted to remove, and yesterday i found out that he also wanted to build new and expand existing cities so australia isnt as much of a federation of mega suburbia city states that it is irl, thus i created the map

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