Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I could be looking at them wrong, but if you switch to a "terrain" view on the maps, it would seem that for the most part, once it gets off the Rhine, the border follows ridge tops and low lands where they can.
Where they are odd, out of place changes, I don't know. Maybe there are long standing mineral rights claims in the area?
Pretty complicated border though. Glad ours is pretty much 3600 miles of straight lines lol. Where ours get all curvy, say at the Maine/Quebec border it follows a creek. When the creek comes to its source, it again seems to follow ridge tops between Maine and New Brunswick until it gets to the St. John river, and follows that for a while. Then for some reason takes a straight line south, cross country before meeting up with another creek, that leads to Grande Lake, which flows into Spednic Lake, which I think then follows the St. Croix river out to the Atlantic.
Huh........I don't think I answered your question.
...uummmmmmm.....they went back to exactly how they were before the great stalemate?
In the case of Germany you would have to go back into antiquity in order to map out former tribal boundaries that were over time expanded or contracted into neighboring tribes, feudal lands, and principalities before even beginning to understand the formations of moder Germany.
This is a fun little animation to demonstrate the point.
When the surveyors came by, they might have asked the property owners which nation they would like to be a part of. Or they might have arbitrarily divided the property owners between countries while allowing the property owners to keep their jagged property lines.
Terrain. In the first example you posted, it looks like Germany got possession of the little valley up to the river. This would have allowed them access to the river.
During a war, one nation's army may have been in possession of an area when the armistice was decided, do the country of that army gained possession.
There was the William Penn family way of establishing borders. In 1737, a group of investors led by the sons of William Penn negotiated a purchase of land from the Lenape (or Delaware) tribe of Pennsylvania. Called "The Walking Purchase", it specified that the borders began at the junction of the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers (modern Easton, Pennsylvania) and would extend as far west "as a man could walk in a day and a half."
Clandestinely, the Penns arranged for a rough road to be hacked through the forests in advance to speed their "walker" along. They then hired the three fastest runners that could be found and one of them managed to cover 70 miles. From there a perpendicular line was drawn to the North and all the land inside this box, some 1.2 million acres, was "sold."
The Delawares were not powerful enough to do anything about this swindle, so they appealed to the Iroquois for help. They were told to move somewhere else and quit making foolish treaties with the white eyes.
The African continent is really messed up. Many of its borders were drawn up by European powers, at the Berlin Conference - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia with no input from the African natives themselves. The resulting African countries often split tribal / ethnic groups right in two.
Iraq should never have the borders it does - there should be an ethnic Kurdish nation encompassing north Iraq and southeast Turkey.
The south (rebellious) end of Thailand is Moslem, and definitely should be part of Malaysia.
Eastern Ethiopia should be part of Somalia.
Easternmost India (Assam area) should be a different country altogether.
Northeast Italy used to part of Austria, and many people there want to rejoin Austria.
Thousands of Indians and Pakistanis have been killed in the ongoing border dispute over Kashmir province. In all fairness, Kashmir province ought to be divided between the two countries - since one distinct part of it is Moslem, and the other distinct part of it has a Hindu population.
Another curious thing is that, as the winding, twisting Mississippi River has straightened out in numerous places due to storms, many rural areas have found themselves suddenly part of another state, and isolated / landlocked from the rest of their former state. You can see this by examining a map of Missouri, Arkansas, or west Tennessee. Something ought to be done to adjust these areas to reflect current reality, so they're no longer cut-off.
Last edited by slowlane3; 02-11-2013 at 02:50 PM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
