File talk:Roman Empire map.svg

I had to stare at this picture for about 20 seconds before I could recognise the land features: I was interpreting the gray as water and the green and white as land. I suspect that this is because the green is outlined in white (which is actually water) even where there is no water. This makes it natural to subconsciously assume that white and green go together (land) while gray is water. This could of course just be me being an idiot, but I am quite familiar with the shape of Europe/Western Asia/the Levant/North Africa and even after getting my bearings I keep wanting to interpret it the wrong way, so I suspect that perhaps other people might have a similar difficulty. FWIW

Start a discussion