About

Mapping the Lost City

This project is a collaborative experiment between Dr. Madeline Mackie and Dr. Gillian MacDonald designed during the 2025-2026 Cultural Heritage Informatics Fellowship program at Michigan State University. It is a direct outcome of one of the three rapid development challenges that aim to get graduate students to think about building digital cultural heritage projects. Each team was given these instructions:

Build the following using with either leaflet.js or mapbox.js – we’re calling this “Mapping Memory.” You are going to select at least 15 locations (more is fine) and create a theme or narrative that binds those locations together under the the idea of “mapping memory.” to do:

  • Develop a narrative that binds your locations together (or choose locations that fit into your narrative). Theme can be cultural, historical, (or para-historical…think The Canterbury Tales), literary, scientific (think John Snow and the Broad Street Cholera Epidemic). Think about this as if it were a real project, as opposed to a tech experiment.
  • Create a web page that displays a map of that location (set the zoom level so that the majority of the location fills the map on load).
  • The web page should have some sort of title of the project and brief description of the focus/theme/narrative.
  • Map should be on the landing page (as opposed to on a secondary page).
  • Landing/map page should have an onLoad pop up (like this or this) that provides a brief intro to the project. There are tutorials on how to do onLoad Javascript pop ups all over the web.
  • Map should take up the entire browser window (regardless of how large or small the browser window is), edge to edge (no margin).
  • Choose at least 15 places of memory for that location (your choice as to type, time period, etc…but they all have to fit into your narrative)…more is fine.
  • On the map, each of the places of memory should have a marker. The marker should be a custom marker, not the stock marker for that framework. Make sure that the custom markers scale (so they aren't super tiny when you are zoomed out) and work well (visually distinct, high contrast, etc) with the basemap you've chosen.
  • When you click on the marker, a popup should open. The popup should have the name of the place of memory, a brief description, an image of the place (taken from an openly licensed source), and a link to an authoritative website for that place (wikipedia, etc). Popup shouldn’t be open when the map loads – just when the user clicks on the marker.
  • The pop up should be styled (not default appearance).
  • The basemap should not be stock. Choose (or create) a basemap that speaks to your focus/theme/narrative.
  • You should have a slider (tutorial linked here) that when moved allows you to display markers based on their associated date/time period.
  • Have all of these files on an organizational GitHub repository (as opposed to an individual account repo).
  • Publish the files to the web using GitHub Pages.
  • Extra points to the group who uses a front end framework (Bootstrap, Ink, Foundation 5, etc).

As the directors (and apparently with not enough to do already…), we decided to take part in the challenge. Pages as cited above are all coded using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This project is an experimental digital cultural map tracing the locations of the proposed lost city of Atlantis. Despite what the Disney movie might tell us, the location of this psuedoarchaeological site has been the subject of great debate and has proposed locations around the world. The sixteen locations represent some of the debate including: Malta, Antartica, Ireland, the Thera Eruption, Sardinia, the Cyprus Basin, Lake Copais, Helike, Azore Islands, Snake Island, Doggerland, the Irish Sea, Doñana, Spartel Bank/Island, Richat Structure, and Le Danois Bank.

This project is a child of many digital cultural mapping workshops and projects developed in partnership with LEADR (including class projects like This is Indian Country and DAEA) at MSU.