Identification of Unidentified Historical Sites in Macedonia with the Aid of a Comparison of Ptolemy's and Present-Day Coordinates

Abstract

In this paper, the coordinates (latitude and longitude) of places in regions of central Macedonia (Pieria and Emathia) contained in Claudius Ptolemy's Geographiki Yphegesis were used to investigate the location of historical sites mentioned in Ptolemy's text. Initial research was carried out in order to find which of the sites mentioned by Ptolemy have an identified position today. A computation of the coordinates of the same sites was then made using a modern cartographic system. Finally, these two sets of coordinates (Ptolemy's and the modern ones) were compared and a mathematical model was developed to transform Ptolemy's cartographic data to the present-day coordinates. In this way, the combination of the mathematical elaboration of the available data together with research on historical geography may lead to useful data in removing the uncertainty of Ptolemy's coordinates in the regions under investigation.

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