We Rule This Place

This is so cool that I'm just going to re-post it in its entirety. From The New Scientist (via Chart Porn, via Sociological Images, via Megan), these maps show the human colonization of the Earth. Also, it seems appropriate to post this during "Rand week".

The first one shows every road in the world.



The next one shows all the railroads in the world:



Nice work, humanity.

Finally, this map shows the amount of time it would take for you to reach any major city (50,000 people or more) from a given location on the planet. Since the key is really small, here's the summery: white means less than an hour, yellow means 2-3 hours, orange means about six hours, red means about 24 hours, and black means a few days. Also, the blue lines are shipping lanes, so this could be useful if you're ever ship wrecked.




And in case you're wondering, the most remote place on Earth is the Tibetan Plateau, where it can take three weeks to reach a city of 50,000 people. The real kicker: only one of those days is spent in a car, while the other 20 are on foot.

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