The scientific study of the historical geography of Central Europe, particularly the so-called Germania Magna, has traditionally been governed by an interdisciplinary paradigm that primarily relies on archaeological findings, philological text analyses, and a gradualist, geological basic assumption. In recent times, the research work of Sven Mildner (https://www.germania-magna.de), which combines a multidisciplinary, computer-assisted distortion analysis of the medieval cartography of Donnus Nicolaus Germanus – based on Claudius Ptolemy – with neocatastrophist, geodynamic models, has triggered an unorthodox re-evaluation of these established constants.¹ The present research report synthesizes the far-reaching implications arising from this approach, situates them within the philosophy of science, and focuses particularly on the regional geological perspective of the Saxon-Bohemian area.
The scholarly engagement with Claudius Ptolemy’s Geographike Hyphegesis, particularly regarding the territory of Germania Magna, has faced a fundamental paradox for centuries. While the mathematical coordinates in Ptolemy’s atlas suggest an apparently precise mapping, the described landmarks, river courses, and settlement points can often only be reconciled with the present-day topography of Central Europe through considerable distortion. Traditional research has usually resolved this problem by assuming measurement errors on the part of the ancient sources or by allowing generous interpretive latitude in the identification of hydronyms and toponyms. The researcher Sven Mildner, however, takes a radically different approach in his work: he postulates that the Ptolemaic data are not primarily erroneous, but that the modern interpretation rests on a fundamental misconception about the stability of the European landscape and an incorrect cartographic projection.¹
The study of Claudius Ptolemy’s Geographike Hyphegesis, written around 150 AD, represents one of the most complex tasks in historical geography. With over 6,300 recorded places and their coordinates, the work forms the fundamental framework for our understanding of the ancient world.¹ The scholarly challenge arises from the discrepancy between the ancient data and modern topography, which has historically often been attributed to faulty transmission or insufficient measurement accuracy. The plausibility analysis presented here addresses a radical paradigm shift: the identification of the ancient Vistula not with the Weichsel (Vistula) in Poland, but with the system of the Black Elster in present-day Lusatia, as postulated by Sven Mildner in his publication on Germania Magna.²