Imagine if you were blindfolded and drugged over a period of months, then when you woke up all your faculties were fully returned, but you had no idea where in the world you were, nor what time of year it was. Somewhere in a wilderness, somewhere on the globe, sometime during the year.
With no access to civilisation to assist you, how would you determine your location based wholly on the natural world around you?
Assume you were a healthy and intelligent person, reasonably familiar with survival principles you learned from the Scouts or the Military or pop culture, and were passingly familiar with the constellations.
This question isn’t about how to survive, nor how to source a rescue. This is purely to determine your location, within, say, a couple of thousand miles. Continent, quadrant, season, etc.
I suppose I would use the (not sure of the name of it) three tree method to walk in a straight line and get myself out of the forest. From there, it would just be a matter of finding some businesses, something written, people talking, culture etc. I’d imagine, once I get some of those details I could at least figure out continent/season.
Oh, in that case, without a sign saying “Serbia 3 miles” nope, not a chance. I don’t think I could tell the difference between a forest in North Dakota and a forest in Poland to save my life.
Having said that, I’m sure someone that’s well versed on wildlife or botany/forestry could figure it relatively quickly.
You could determine your latitude from the stars. Your longitude would be nearly, if not totally impossible to determine. There would be a few exceptions, for instance if the North Star seems stationary, you are at the North Pole. If you recognized a landmark you might know. There might be some few spots at a particular latitude that could be recognized by the weather and physical condtions like being on a mountaintop that you can determine as being of a certain height. Otherwise you have no idea where you are.
ETA: Noticed **Joey P’s **comment on plant/animal life, that would be another exceptional case.
I know the constellations of both hemispheres, so I would be able to determine approximate latitude fairly readily. Being a biologist who’s worked in many parts of the world, telling which continent I was on would be a snap from the birds, other wildlife, and plants. I could pretty much work out the general region of the continent as well.
Except for relatively homogeneous biomes like the Siberian taiga, I could almost certainly determine my location within 1000 miles; and with luck or a distinctive landmark within a few 100.
With your level of knowledge you could probably get closer than 1000 miles without luck. But even 500 miles means you are pretty well lost unless you travel to find landmarks or further evidence.
But it does look like the OP considers people and artifacts to be cheating, not simply travelling, so you’d be in pretty good shape. With that, you should be able to get under 500 miles except for a few vast desolate areas.
I think I could get to within 1000 miles with less knowledge than you have. Determining latitude isn’t that hard, and I could make a good guess of the continent I’m on based on the biology and weather conditions. So I’d have to be pretty far from a landmark to not get within that range. I’m thinking the middle of the Sahara might be pretty tough. Without additional resources, Antarctica might leave me more than a thousand miles off and dead before I could get a more accurate estimate.
Using traditional Wehthufukawe methods, I would, within a reasonable amount of time, be able to establish exactly where I was simply by knowing exactly where I wasn’t.
Maybe. I’ve covered a lot of ground by land, and there is a reasonable chance I’d end up plunked in an ecosphere that I have some familiarity with. I’m sure I could tell the Sahara from the Thar, the Himalayas from the Sierra Nevadas, the Amazon from the Congo rain forest, etc. But there are plenty of gaps in my knowledge, and it can be shocking how closely a place can resemble another place on another continent- I was disappointed by camping in Mongolia because the nature where i had an uncanny resemblance to the boring old places I’d camp as a kid in California.
This is what I figure for myself, too. I’m no biologist, but broadly I’d recognise the endemic flora and fauna enough to know what continet I’m on, and gather a fair amount from the stars, length of the day (you may have a watch, that can help I bet), and the humidity and weather.
Season would be easy relatively easy. Cold = Fall/Winter, Not-too-cold = Spring/Summer, unless I’m near one of the poles, where it’s always cold. Or on the equator, where it is always hot…thought I think I’d grok being on the equator from sun/stars eventually.
Continent–not too hard. If I’m seeing animals and trees I can readily identify, I know I’m in North America, if I’m seeing exotics, then I have a vague notion of what continent such animals can be found. If a wild tiger is gnawing my leg, I’m probably not in Kansas.
Other clues might be things like litter or trash in the area…cigarette butts with brand names, spent shell casings or candy bar wrappers…any human debris would be helpful.
I could determine my latitude from the stars, especially if I’m in the Northern Hemisphere and can see Polaris (as TriPolar has already noted).
In The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne has the castaways determine their exact position using observations, but the determination of latitude depended on their having a reliable pocketwatch on hand. He gives a full explanation, but were I lost somewhere with such an accurate watch, I’m sure I couldn’t recall it.
And the OP seems to indicate that I’d be deprived of my watch.
I know plants only well enough to determine whether I was in North America or not, and if so, what region I was in. If I was on another continent, I would know that, but there a good chance I wouldn’t know which one, based on plants.
If it happened to be warm enough for reptiles and amphibians to be active, and I had a few days to look for those animals, I could do much better. In North America, I would know where I was to within a couple of hundred miles. Some locations, depending on what species I was able to find, I could get closer than that. On other continents, I would know which continent, and depending on which species I was able to find, could probably get to with a few hundred miles of my exact location. The exception to this is Australia, where I would recognize the species but don’t know the ranges of the species.
Reminds me of a very short lived reality show called Lost.(No affiliation to the other show.) Teams of two were dropped off in the Mongolian desert and had to find their way back to the statue of liberty with just some bare essentials.
Assuming no equipment or other pre-made resources?
Latitude to 5° or so is pretty easy from astronomy. But better than that would be hard without proper equipment and real training. Longitude is possible, but only with extensive equipment, astronomy tables and training. So no real help there. This will likely have to be induced from other observations, flora and fauna. Elevation to within a few thousand feet, is certainly doable with simple tests/observations. With latitude and elevation, the season would be fairly easy by observing weather and total daylight times. Unique identifiers would have to take care of the rest. Flora, fauna, geological morphology and the like.
A reasonably skilled and well traveled amateur could probably tell roughly where they were. Depending on that information you could have really specific knowledge or not. As Colibri pointed out the Siberian taiga is largely devoid of identifiable subdivisions. So if I am at 65° north, surrounded by furs and spruce and somewhere below 5000’ in elevation I couldn’t identify my location at all without a unique fauna sighting (like a wild tiger). I probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between Canada and Siberia without real luck. After all the two main stretches of taiga are filled with many of the same plants. And even if I could explicitly identify the continent that is probably as far as it goes. But slap me somewhere that there is a unique identifier, or a series of them and I may be able to pinpoint my location to within 10 miles or so.
