Two years ago, the National Geographic Society proudly unveiled the world atlas to end all atlases, the most up-to-date book of maps ever.
"And as our reward, the world promptly came apart," National Geographic magazine editor Bill Graves said Tuesday, announcing the newest edition of the society's Atlas of the World, including thousands of changes in maps and place names.Updating the nine-pound volume has made life miserable for society cartographers, who had hoped the last edition would be around at least five years.
But in the meantime, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia came apart, Greece changed most of its place names, Nigeria moved its capital and hundreds of cities, towns and villages in new nations also were renamed.
Yet the society also managed to compile a new high-tech atlas: a half-ounce, video compact disk that contains hundreds of maps, photographs, short movies and even music from various countries.
Nearly two-thirds of the maps in the basic National Geographic atlas have been revised, said Chief Cartographer Jack Shupe, standing before an array of 31 flags, representing new countries, changes in old ones or new flags that have been adopted since the 1990 atlas was issued.
More than 85 percent of the place names in Ukraine had to be changed for the new atlas, because that country separated from the Soviet Union and switched from Russian to Ukrainian names, Shupe said.
Greece, he added, forced extensive map changes by adopting a new system of translating names from one language to another, just as China had done earlier when Peking became Beijing.
Russia changed many place names, and the Soviet Union broke apart into more than a dozen new countries.