National Geographic Society Millennium in Maps, Cultures Map. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. From the opening paragraph, "No culture is static. Ideas, technologies, products, and people move from one place to another. When cultures come into contact through migration, trade, or the latest telecommunications devices, they influence each other. Sometimes cultures cross-pollinate, exchanging foods, music, sports. At other times, say critics of globalization, a culture swamps another ike an invasive, fast-reproducing weed. Cultures have evolved in response to contact for thousands of years. But the pace has changed. In the past the influences of distant cultures came slowly, delayed by long journeys. Today, because of the telephone, the television, the Internet, telecommunications satellites, world trade, and long-distance travel, cultural influences can spread across the planet as fast as the click of a mouse." This item dates to 1999 and it is in excellent condition.
 

National Geographic Society A Traveler's Map of Spain and Portugal Map. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. From the opening paragraph, "Travelers to the Iberian Peninsula n the Middle Ages arrived by the grace of God and on foot, devout pilgrims trekking through the Pyrenees to reach religious shrines. By the early 1500s the empires of Spain and Portugal were enjoying a golden age of discovery, sailing the world and returning with cultural seeds from Africa, Asia, and the Americas to plant in homelands already enriched by the legacies of Celts, Muslims, and Jews. But incessant wars and religious repression eventually weakened the region. Modernization lagged, and in the 1930s dictatorships arose. Today the now democratic countries welcome 60 million visitors a year to the glow of Gothic cathedrals, the snap of Spanish flamenco, and miles and miles of beaches." This item dates to 1998, is printed on two sides and it is in excellent condition.
 

National Geographic Society Millennium in Maps, Physical Earth Map. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. From the opening paragraph, "Geologists entered the 20th century beset by mysteries: enigmatic patterns of earthquakes and volcanoes, continents shaped like puzzle pieces, and beds of the same fossils on opposite sides of oceans. By the mid-1960s enough evidence had been collected for most to accept a revolutionary answer for a multitude of questions - geology's grand theory of plate tectonics. Using this theory, earth scientists explain churning in Earth's inner layers, prehistoric climates, drifting continents, and spreading seas. As before their work is grounded in the physical makeup of the planet. But new technologies allow them to drill ever deeper into icecap and seafloors, gathering data about the distant past." This item dates to 1998 and it is in excellent condition.
 

National Geographic Society Traveler's Map of Britain & Ireland. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. This item dates to 1998, is printed on two sides and it is in excellent condition.
 

National Geographic Society Millennium in Maps, Exploration Map. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. From the opening paragraph, "Born explorers, humans have been crossing frontiers since prehistoric times. The results of such traveling became widely useful to others when they were written in journals and drawn as maps. Those records established the boundaries of the known world - however imperfectly known - and then extended them. For Europeans from the 15th century on, a pattern unfolded: first the discovery of new worlds, then exploraion to fill in the great voids of continents and seas. In modern times the questing spirit has gone beyond the bounds of Earth's surface as astronomy, aeronautics, bathymetry, and other sciences md technologies chart new frontiers of knowledge." This item dates to 1998 and it is in excellent condition.
 

National Geographic Society The Balkans, Plight of the Refugees (Of The World) Map. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. This item dates to 1998, is printed on two sides and it is in excellent condition.
 

National Geographic Society Great Peoples of the Past, The Greeks Map. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. From the opening paragraph, "The Acropolis reigned over classical Athens like Zues atop Olympus - exuding power and inspiring awe. A venerable target, it was burned by Xerxes' army in 480 B.C. but was restored later in the fifth century to thank the gods for the Greek victory over Persia - and to boost Athens's prestige. Both secular and sacred, the Acropolis housed the city's treasury as well as temples for religious rites and altars for sacrifice. Patron goddess of the city, Athena was honored with the magnificent Parthenon, icon of ancient Greece. Said Pericles, who ordered its construction, "We have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring and everywhere ... have left Imperishable monuments behind us. This painting of the fifth century Acropolis recalls that time of glory." This item dates to 1999 and it is in excellent condition.
 

National Geographic Society South Asia w/ Afghanistan and Myanmar, India Map. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. This item dates to 1998, is printed on two sides and it is in excellent condition.
 

National Geographic Society Great Peoples of the Past, The Romans Map. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. From the opening paragraph, "From its legendary founding in 753 B.C. by the wolf-suckled wins Romulus and Remus, Rome evolved through two centuries of kingship to emerge in 509 B.C. as a republican oligarchy. Even before the age of emperors commenced in 27 B.C., republican Rome had amassed formidable dominions, much of the territory coming as spoils in more than a century of wars against Macedonia and Carthage. By the time of its fall in A.D. 476 to bands of ading barbarians, Rome had reigned over a polyglot empire far longer than my government before or since. Rome's territories, though usually seized by force, were governed with a degree of justice rare in that time. Roman citizenship became a prize open to all males deemed worthy from every niche of the empire and regardless of ethnic Drigin, as attested by the African senator Septimius Severus, founder of the Severan dynasty in A.D. 193." This item dates to 1997 and it is in excellent condition.
 

National Geographic Society Caspain Sea Map. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. From the opening paragraph, "Though called a sea, the landlocked Caspian is geologically the largest lake on Earth, covering more than four times the surface area of its closest rival. North America's Lake Superior. Once the exclusive domain of Iran and the U.S.S.R,, the Caspian now figures prominently in the aspirations of three new coastal states: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. Notorious mvironmcntal negligence and long-suppressed ethnic conflicts - the toxic fallout of decades of communist rule - challenge the former Soviet republics as they struggle to build viable economies and stable governments." This item dates to 1998, is printed on two sides and it is in excellent condition.
 

National Geographic Society Natural Hazards of North America Map. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. From the opening paragraph, "Disaster can strike as quickly as lightning, though it may evolve as slowly as geologic ime, depending on its source. And sources abound. Inspired by the UN's International Decade for Natural Disaster Recduction, more than 50 scientists from Canada, the United States, nd Mexico have spent three years in a cooperative effort to map areas of potential disaster in their countries. The resulting maps, shown here, illustrate for the first time the reach of natural hazards across national borders. Such awareness may help lessen :ragic consequences when natural disasters strike." This item dates to 1998 and it is in excellent condition.
 

National Geographic Society Great Peoples of the Past, Mesoamericans Map. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. From the opening paragraph, "About 1200 B.C., when the Trojan Var was being fought half a world away, an agrarian people raising maize, beans, and squash began to build the first of many independent city-states in Mesoamerica. From this matrix of cultures came a calendar to measure time, glyphs to chronicle the lives of rulers, tables zhartine the movement of planets, and architecture to rival that of the Old World. Europeans arrived in 1519, and within a historical eye blink Mesoamerica's great cities and ceremonial centers were left in ruins as Spaniards scoured the land for gold. Native peoples were enslaved and Christianized, and the Aztec Empire, the last great indigenous civilization. dissolved. Powerless and poor through eras of colonization, dictatorship, and revolution, survivors have salvaged languages, folkways, and an unshakable vision of self-determination." This item dates to 1997 and it is in excellent condition.
 

National Geographic Society Dawn of Humans Map. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. From the opening paragraph, "Climate change alters vegetation and shifts shorelines. As our ancestors spread across Africa, Asia, and Europe, they learned to exploit the opportunities and survive the challenges they found in dynamic environments. Heirs to the curiosity md adaptability that set our genus apart, modern humans now occupy every imaginable habitat from the Equator to the Poles." This item dates to 1997 and it is in excellent condition.
 

National Geographic Society Great Peoples of the Past, The Mongols Map. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. From the opening paragraph, "Obscure tribes of illiterate nomads, the Mongols were the last of a long line of invaders from the steppes north of China. So apocalyptic was the Mongol climax to this warlike tradition that even Attila and the Huns paled in comparison. While the Mongol khans and their generals were drawing and quartering half of Asia, Europe quaked - but escaped subjugation with the loss I only a few armies. China remained under the Mongol yoke, in whole or in part, for more than a century, Russia for more than two. Accounts of the barbarity of the Mongols are staggering: Untold millions died by their hands. The world would not again see such wholesale massacres until the technological wars of the 20th century When the relentless advance of Mongol conquest eventually eased, a new opportunity emerged: United under Mongol despotism, Eurasia was suddenly open as never before to commerce and the exchange of ideas." This item dates to 1996 and it is in excellent condition.
 

National Geographic Society Years of Flight Map. This map is 20" wide x 31" long. From the opening paragraph, "More than 550 Million passengers will come and go through the world's ten busiest airports this year (2003). But the airplane's first century began with one person aboard one plane. On December 17,1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville Wright took the controls of a fragile craft propelled by a l2-horsepower engine (above). With brother Wilbur running along side, he lifted off the ground, then landed 120 feet away. That 12-second journey answered an age-old question: Is it possible for a person to fly? Not float or glide but fly with power and control? In the hundred years since the Wright's first flight, a legion of creative engineers and intrepid pilots have taken on another questio: Is anything impossible now that we have wings?" This item dates to 1998 and it is in excellent condition.