Geospatial visualization can help historians answer and ask more questions than before to get a deeper understanding for their research. It can help to paint a more vivid picture if you know when and where something took place. But also knowing more about the location of certain events can lead to better questions. There are 2 main concepts in geospatial visualization, one being absolute space. This concept is what I would call the more technical concept. That’s because this concept deals with distance. It deals with distance in more of a numerical sense to see how far something has come or gone. When thinking about absolute space you want to think about an absolute measure of distance. You want to think about the distance units of measurement such as inches, feet, miles, etc. This can help us to ask more questions such as “how far would a slave have to run to get to New York from South Carolina given a known route?” If given a map with a legend to help you understand the map it will lead us to deeper questions and open our ability to make historical inquiries. The other concept is representation space and I consider the other half of the puzzle. This concept paints the full picture like the lay of the land. It helps to understand where you are based on your surroundings. Representational space helps to associate experience and common gathering ground with physical locations. An example would be a church, where Christian people are known to come and worship the lord but to a regular person might just be a building. Representational space helps to add the content to absolute space (distance). This can really help to dissect and make new and improved questions. With both concepts working together to make a map you can track movement from place to place. There are downsides to both concepts that make them not 100% perfect. For absolute space it is not known what is happening with the land. You know the distance that you traveled but you would know what you’ve passed or possibly even where you came from. It also doesn’t really account for the lay of the land. You could think that going North 100 miles would lead you to a “Ohio” but that doesn’t account for hills and valleys that affect that mileage number. This is one of the ways maps lie to you so maps only account for flat straight distance that don’t give accurate trip information. While on the other hand representational space’s down sides are that it can give a good picture but will not help with knowing relative distance. This is also one way maps lie. Without a guide the distance between areas on a map may be really off making trips possibly longer or shorter. Overall a good map that has absolute and representational visualizations can be used to document travel or make good historical inquiries about travel.