The Corner

Dept. of Human Progress

Last month, we heard the news that archaeologists had unearthed the Western world’s oldest map — scratchings that depict Italy’s bootheel. Now comes an astronomical cartographer’s new rendition of the Milky Way galaxy, showing our solar system’s place in it and measuring the whole thing in kiloparsecs. Interestingly, our map of the Milky Way looks about as primitive as that one of the bootheel.

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.
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