Who first noticed Italy was a boot?

[psychonaut]

I’m sure whoever managed to come up with the first reasonably accurate map of the Italian peninsula and Sicily must have observed, at least mentally, that it resembled a high-heeled boot kicking a stone or a ball. But what’s the earliest surviving written record of this observation?

[Johnny_L.A]

@psychonaut

Who first noticed Italy was a boot?

A Canadian?

Sorry, what was the OP aboot?

[elmwood]

Probably someone from Michigan.

[ombre3]

Very good question.

Very bad and inane replies.

More intellectual input badly needed.

[Kimstu]

AFAICT, the “boot-shape” description at least post-dates the ancient cartographers such as Strabo:

In describing its detailed geography, however, Strabo did not employ, at least overtly, Eratosthenes’ division of the world into irregular quadrilaterals or sphragides, but he often used geometric figures or comparisons to everyday objects to describe the general outline of a country. For instance, he says that the province of Gallia Narbonensis presents the shape of a parallelogram; that the rivers Garumma [Garonne] and Liger [Loire] are parallel to the Pyrenæus [Pyrenees], forming with the ocean and the Cemmenus Mountains [Cevenne] two parallelograms; that Britain is triangular; that Italy has been shaped sometimes like a triangle, sometimes like a quadrilateral; that Sicily is indeed triangular, though one side is convex and the two others slightly concave.

Emphasis added Triangle? Quadrilateral? Doesn’t sound like a boot to me.

[Kimstu]

Narrowing it down! The window has been reduced to only about 1850 years! Woo-hoo!

Charlotte Yonge’s Young Folks’ History of Rome, 1880:

I am going to tell you next about the most famous nation in the world. Going westward from Greece another peninsula stretches down into the Mediterranean. The Apennine Mountains run like a limb stretching out of the Alps to the south eastward, and on them seems formed that land, shaped somewhat like a leg, which is called Italy.

I presume “leg” counts as “boot”, more or less?

[Kimstu]

Whew!

As far as its figure goes, the Italian peninsula had already struck the fantasy of ancient people, even if its cartographical representation was very inaccurate and highly schematized.
In fact Polibio (II c. B.C.) compared it to a triangle and Strabone (I c. B.C.) to a quadrangle, while other authors assimilated it to an oak or ivy leaf. A decisive approach to a more precise and detailed cartographic representation, arrived only in XIIIrd c A.D. , with the appearance of navigational charts. The commonplace comparison of the shape of the Italian peninsula to a human leg was gradually spread, only to be replaced, in the XVIth c. A.D., by the still favored figure of the boot (“lo stivale” in Italian), that has been even given poetic resonance by Giusti.

[Horatio_Hellpop]

Medieval maps tended to have North on the left side and East on top. The known world was a disc with Jerusalem at its center. (Source: Terry Gilliam’s The Crusades). I suspect that “North on Top” maps became commonplace circa 1500, and at this point, Italy hung down in a boot-like shape.

Italy wasn’t a nation-state until pretty late in the game. When it wasn’t fractured into numerous city-states, northern Italy was mapped up with Germany in the Holy Roman Empire, central Italy was mapped as the Papal States and southern Italy was mapped up as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (To this day, a northern Italian marrying a southern Italian is considered miscegenation). None of these looked very boot-like.

[CC]

The first person to describe Italy as boot-shaped was a person named Ernie.

[Casey1505]

No references to the joke about why Italy is shaped like a boot. Bummer.

[psychonaut]

@psychonaut

I’m sure whoever managed to come up with the first reasonably accurate map of the Italian peninsula and Sicily must have observed, at least mentally, that it resembled a high-heeled boot kicking a stone or a ball.

According to The History of Boots, high-heeled boots did not appear until the 1600s, so I guess my initial idea was wrong.

Anyway, there are some more interesting observations in this Usenet thread.

[psychonaut]

@psychonaut

According to The History of Boots, high-heeled boots did not appear until the 1600s, so I guess my initial idea was wrong.

Anyway, there are some more interesting observations in this Usenet thread.

Looks like the board software is too stupid to understand established URL standards. The second link about should be to <news:570548158.2zXrM70XvI@ID-187157.News.Individual.NET>, not <http://news:570548158.2zXrM70XvI@ID-187157.News.Individual.NET/>.

[HeyHomie]

@Casey1505

No references to the joke about why Italy is shaped like a boot. Bummer.

You’re going to have to help me out here. Sorry.