File talk:Blank political map of Europe (polar stereographic projection) cropped.svg

This is a joke, right? So this map is supposed to use the boundary used by Herodotus (but not by Ptolemy or later geographers, let alone modern geography) for the Caucasus, but the modern boundary along the Urals? Very funny.

The fact is that the boundary along the Urals is shown correctly, but the boundary along the Caucasus is at best a funny anachronism. The prevalent boundary is that along the Caucasus crest, but it apperars that in the 20th century (and possibly still today?), Russian geographers use the Manych River instead (see also here). Nobody has used Herodotus' rivers since at least 1,800 years.

The boundary that has been used universally outside of Russia since about 1850 is shown here. If you want to disagree or discuss "povs", please do your research and show some decent references, anything else is just a waste of time. --Dbachmann (talk) 12:36, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

• It is impossible for one map to include all the possible definitions. Demanding for this particular map to consider your definitions is unfair considering that you have created a map of your own, which you placed on the Europe page despite it not having any citations or proof. If your map can reflect a single geographic point of view, so can this; at the very least I am providing a specific source, while your map claims the absolute truth which you supposedly possess. If you have the right to make the aforementioned demands on this map, then I will go to your respective map and press the same demands there.

• Also, when you are making claims like "Nobody has used Herodotus' rivers since at least 1,800 years", "used universally outside of Russia", you are expected to provide proof. I cannot believe that I even have to explain myself in the face of your trumped-up accusations.--ComtesseDeMingrelie (talk) 08:26, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

"Watershed of the Caucasus" [1] [2] Chipmunkdavis (talk) 06:48, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

ComtesseDeMingrelie is the only one vandalising maps around here. She keeps throwing up a random "convention" and then asks people to prove this convention is not in use. Since it has never been in use, and she has not shown a single map which uses it, this is as impossible as proving that nobody has ever claimed Tuvalu is part of Europe: since the suggestion is so unlikely, it is impossible to provide a reference that even considers it.

It is possible that the ancient Greeks before 300 BC drew the boundary south of the Caucasus. That's because they did not have an idea of what was north of it. Herodotus is not even aware of the Volga. This archaic convention fell out of use even during antiquity, and Ptolemy in AD 150, the geographer who was to remain the chief influence throughout the middle ages, used the Don River as the boundary.

After Ptolemy, literally everyone uses the Don River for more than 1,000 years. That's right, the continental boundary was the Don River from at least AD 150 to 1500. As knowledge of Central and Northern Asia improved during the 16th century, people started to reconsider the boundary during the early modern period, but nobody ever moved it back to where the Greeks had put it in 500 BC.

Prove me wrong, ComtesseDeMingrelie. Show us a single map published between 1700 and 1900 which shows the boundary where you claim "one common view" puts it, and I will gladly include it in the list of historical boundaries. As long as you cannot do this, stop wasting our time.

ComtesseDeMingrelie's convention would be interesting if the topic was the development of geographic knowledge among the Greeks between 600 and 100 BC. It isn't useful for anything else. --Dbachmann (talk) 09:19, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I even found a nice reference of Strabo stating that even in the time of Alexander "it was agreed by all" that the Don separated Asia from Europe (ὡμολόγητο ἐκ πάντων ὅτι διείργει τὴν Ἀσίαν ἀπὸ τῆς Εὐρώπης ὁ Τάναϊς ποταμός). This places the Phasis boundary pushed by ComtesseDeMingrelie into the time between 500 BC and 350 BC. Nobody has used it since the 4th century BC.

By contrast, the Don boundary to the north of the current standard was used from the 4th century BC throughout antiquity, the middle ages and the early modern period, for fully 2,000 years, well into the 19th century. During the first half of the 19th century, it was questioned for the first time, and by 1850 replaced by the current convention. During the 18th to early 19th century, nobody questioned the classical boundary along the Don as far as Volgograd, differences in conventions only concerned the part of the boundary north of Volgograd (i.e. how to draw the boundary northward into territory unknown to Ptolemy).

The real question is, what is the relation between the Caucasus crest and the Kuma-Manych boundaries. If you insisted on the Kuma-Manych one, at least you would have some 20th century references to show (at least one from 1914). I would be interested when and where the Kuma-Manych convention survived in the 20th century, and it would be helpful if people focussed on that, and actually contributed references instead of just vandalising image files. But that would be intellectual work, wouldn't it, so that's probably too much to ask. Instead you distract from the actual issue by throwing up completely wild boundaries suggested by no-one whatsoever and ask us to prove nobody has ever suggested them. This isn't how it works. You want to push "one common view", the burden is on you to show it is even a view, let alone a "common" one. --Dbachmann (talk) 10:18, 11 April 2011 (UTC)