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As White says “geopolitics goes beyond those separate categories. It has something to say to all disciplines, and enters into areas beyond humanism as habitually understood”

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#Colors on map

The picture shows part of a composite image of the Geological Survey’s ‘index to colors’ charts from the 1960s. These illustrated the 497 standard colors that by that time had come to be used by the Survey Drawing Office in the production of geological maps.

Many of the colors had initially been available as water-color paint cakes that were specially formulated for the Survey and were individually numbered and specified to the standard colors text. Many have delightful names such as “Coral rag, pale (60) with a little Tunbridge Wells Green (41)” and “Weald, pale (43)

A selection of the water-colour cakes that were still being supplied to the Geological Survey as late as 1959 for hand-colouring unpublished Library copies of six-inch geological maps and field slips.

By 1832 when Henry De la Beche started detailed geological mapping in Devon and Cornwall, colouring geological maps according to stratigraphy was a well established activity. William Smith had produced his wonderfully coloured geological map of England and Wales and part of Scotland a good seventeen years earlier in 1815 and George Bellas Greenough produced his version in 1819, so it was natural for De la Beche and the new Ordnance Geological Survey to adopt a similar colouring scheme.

#Edinburgh’s Geology

People have used the landscape of Edinburgh and its geology in different ways over the last 10,000 years: finding suitable sites for settlement, defence and agriculture, and using the fine local sandstone for impressive buildings, and coal for fuel. The character of today’s city, with the Old and New Towns designated as a World Heritage Site, derives greatly from the bedrock, and the way in which this has been eroded.

There are two contrasting rock types in the area: sedimentary rock, derived from slow accumulation of sediment in river systems and shallow seas, mostly during the Carboniferous period, from 360 to 300 million years ago; and igneous rock, cooled from magma in volcanoes or trapped underground to form intrusions.

The big contrast between these rock types is in their hardness: igneous rocks tend to be tough and slow to erode, so they form the hills, including the Pentlands and the Seven Hills of Edinburgh. Sedimentary rocks are softer, and get worn down to create the gently undulating topography surrounding the hills, where most of the city is built.