@@andresacosta4832 The new Syrian regime would need to deal with Israel for the Golan Heights, since they seized the territory after Assad's regime fell
@@andresacosta4832 Since i can't see this rag-tag band of islamists overwhelming the IDF i'd say the Golan could only be returned in a peace treaty with mutual recognition.
Given the way OpenStreetMap validates things, you're not very far off. Even if official documents in Jordan and Syria agree that the border is a straight line, OpenStreetMap prefers to follow the functional line of control of there is one. And because of that natural landscape in that area, even if you're technically at coordinates controlled by Syria, if you're on the wrong side of a large river valley separating the two countries, you'd more likely get arrested by Jordanians.
@@PUARockstar LOL, Nexxarians' comment reminds me of how we just presumed Mexico never checked you coming in, but man, on your way out! lol...right okay
Okay. I've been picked up by a group of bearded gentlemen; and shoved into the boot of a truck. Will comment again when I figure out where they're taking me. 👍
As a Syrian I can confirm the border is straight there. All official education books and maps show the border to be straight. Edit:Stop fighting in the replys or assuming things and thinking it could be propaganda. Even in Jordan they have the same map with the same border.
I understand you, but all maps in Venezuela show that half of Guyana belongs to them. And all maps in Guyana show the opposite. Now some government has to be wrong. How sure can you be that official maps in Syria aren't also wrong?
The De Jure border is straight but seems that the de facto border is much more jagged. That’s what happens when your border runs for hundreds of miles through desert with no landmarks.
@@ozAqVvhhNue In Jordan it is the same I have Jordanian friends in their maps it is the same, btw it is a worthless desert with nothing of value, not to mention that the map with the curved border gives Syria extra land without losing any so if anyone would benefit by showing the altered map it would be Syria not Jordan.
@@NY_Mapper Yup, That is what the Brits and the french wanted after all and they have a great history of making borders that doesn't make sense or recognize local borders you can read more about the actual Syria region(natural Syria) which was occupied by the short lived Arab Kingdom of Syria.
I am Jordanian and almost all the maps I saw at school, university and government signs include a straight border line with Syria. The zigzag map started to appear recently and discussions took place on the Jordanian internet. We did not reach a clear reason, but it may be just widespread errors by map enthusiasts which were also adopted by some websites.
I think I’ve found the reason for this. It seems the irregular border only appeared 5 months ago, and was created by a user called ‘ASMapper’, who cites Esri World Imagery as the source. Lo and behold, there is a border strip on the imagery that follows the OSM outline, with the website dating the satellite images to 2019.
if you look on google maps, the border checkpoints are actually the same as the live ua map, probably the same as the us and Canada borders and the same and Gabon and equatorial Guinea.
@@EmperorTigerstar maybe other maps have used the on-the-ground borders then. Since some sections were completely new ways. (In OSM there are points, ways (lines & areas), and relations)
@@alextiga8166 There is a 0% chance of a war happening between Syria and Jordan for any reason, especially not something as trivial as this. The new Syrian government is exhausted and tired of war. The Jordanian government is thrilled over the moon to have a new friendly neighbor to its north. Both countries are excited for peace.
To the Maximum. What they drew were just "YOU GET A STRAIGHT LINE, AND YOU GET A STRAIGHT LINE! EVERY MANDATE GETS A STRAIGHT LINE!" And thus, ruined Northern Arabia.
Zooming in on the satellite imagery of the OSM border, you can see that it follows something that seems to be a berm with patrol roads on both sides of it. Therefore it looks like OSM is showing the de facto border, not the de jure one.
This must be similar to the way that OSM shows the Moroccan berm, but does NOT show the sections the berm crosses into mauritania. It has the border hugging the de-jure lines in that case until the berm (the de-facto line of control) juts back out from mauritania and curves back into WS proper
The patrol roads didn't exist before ISIS and for much of the border there had historically been no sand berm or fence. In many places these barriers are actually in the most defensible position nothing to do with the border. They are also heavily defended.
Here’s my best guess on what’s happening here. It seems that the de jure border is the straight line. The jagged line is the de facto border, and only came about in the last decade or so. The wiggly border is most likely a byproduct of the Syrian Civil War. Both the Syrian Army and Jordanian government were establishing military checkpoints and fortifications for security. Because they are in the middle of a completely desolate area where there is nothing but desert, they may have accidentally crossed into each other’s territory by a few miles/km. If this isn’t the case, my second guess is this simply being the result of both countries trying to establish a straight-line boundary in a total desert with no landmarks. Modern satellite imagery may have only recently discovered this inconsistency.
Yeah if you look on google maps saftelite view you can see a line being in the same jagged way as the live ua map. I assume it could either be a road or s border control line that was drawn poorly in the same way as the us-canadian border and the gabon-equatorial guinea borders. EDIT: i checked on google earth history, and the lines appeared around 1992, so it wasnt because of the syrian civil war.
This is probably true. OSM (the basemap for liveuamap) is primarily concerned with de facto reality. So if the borders are wiggly in the real world, OSM will show them wiggly. It's not wrong, it's just the on-the-ground truth.
Funny enough its nether both countries agree that the border is straight as in jordan all official government docs show it as such( education books , encyclopedias etc) and from talking to some syrians as well they also see it as straight . My best guess is a few online sources drew it wrong no one confirmand as it's isn't an important border with a natural small country and no one noticed or cared to fix it as the information that they want to show is still accurate.
@@anglaismoyen I've never edited OSM, though I am a contributor to Wikipedia, so I understand if there's some difference in philosophy that I'm not understanding here. But while I understand a desire to make the lines match reality, without any evidence showing that this is really some de facto new border are we not just blindly drawing international borders based on blurry roads on a satellite image? Even if we take the existence of this wall for granted, does it really mean the border is there now, even if both countries seem to agree it isn't? I can understand allowing original content for most things OSM is usually involved with, since you don't need many qualifications to look around a place and map a couple of roads that even government maps don't bother correcting, but we're talking political boundaries between entire nations here, and we only have satellite imagery to go off of. Is it OSM's place to correct border lines and potentially cause diplomatic incidents based on the guesses of random internet contributors? I am exaggerating a little here, and this might indeed be the "real" (or close enough to real) de facto border, but I don't think such a judgement should be made without any sources - because much like Wikipedia, OSM *is* a source, at least for the most of the world who aren't familiar with cartographic minutiae, and the only thing that these exercises accomplish is pollute other tertiary sources with dubious information.
The US Department of State also hosts world border shape files which are pretty accurate. The files also include metadata for which sections of borders are contested vs 'normal' One caveat is that the files are made in the context of what the US government officially recognizes, so the accuracy of Lines of Control is a secondary priority (but it will still show which sections those are)
the border fence of Jordan does in fact zig-zig across the official border several times. it's not on any actual map but very visible on satellite photos of Google Earth or whatever
@@goldenfiberwheat238 it's not just a flat and empty desert, it has big ass hills, sand dunes, dry riverbeds and fields of boulders. it's probably easier to move around than across them
Anybody email the University of Jordan about this yet? The geography department there ought to at least know who to talk to to get the facts straight on this.
semi-relevant I guess: I was in the Jordan-Syrian border town of al-Himmah last year and got to stand right down by the Yarmouk river. the locals told me that while the border fence is actually about 100m back from the Syrian side of the river, as soon as you'd cross over the border into the zone between the river and the fence you were "labelled a spy" by the government
I regularly use OSM and I was wondering about this for so long, thanks for the explanation. I suggest doing a similar border on the India-China border, as some sources show it to be quite straight wheras OSM and Google Maps have shown it as a bunch of squiggly lines.
As an OSM user, the "glitch" you're seeing is the way the map renders. It's in layers (by zoom) of png tiles which are updated with a render of OSM's data every so often, less often for lower-zoom layers. When you zoomed in, it swapped layers from one where the tile was unupdated ("dirty") and one where it had been updated. There's a way to comment on that user's changeset. I'd do that, if possible, to see why their source is (now) incorrect. I did a quick double-check to make sure that source wasn't just left over from an old border, I don't believe so. Though looking through the map, while the legal border might be different it does appear that that line follows a de facto lign of control, it's very obvious (hit "Edit") to see open-source satellite imagery layers people use to map). Interesting! Also, people, I can see you already tagging the border as incorrect with notes inspired by this video. Thank you for not brazenly editing the border yourself. That would just be making a Wikipedia-level edit war and that helps nobody!
Granted I'm not as savy with the website as others might be, but I could only find that the border was most recently edited a few months ago. But the part in question has definitely been there for at least a year.
@@EmperorTigerstar I checked the edit history on OSM and apparently the way (technical term for the boundary) was only "created" 5 months ago- meaning most likely there was some other "way" representing the border before that, but for some reason it was deleted and re-created. As for why the original way representing it was deleted, I have no clue. It seems this happened for a large part of the border - the only part of the border thats significantly different from what it should be that goes back more than 5 months was the easternmost segment near the iraq-jordan-syria tripoint. If I had to guess, the person who made the edit wanted to trace the de-facto border but figured it was easier to just delete and start over than modify the existing way (which, tbf, it can be at times). The changeset comments dont seem to be useful either - according to google translate, the changesets just translate to "The borders of Syria and Jordan". This video has been brought up in the OSM discord though and I imagine there will be some discussion there
I’ve ran into this inconsistency so many time when trying to create my most recent video. It was driving me nuts because I did not remember the squiggly border existing a few years ago.
I've been researching this, out of curiosity. This seems to have originated in 2015 with the refugee crisis. Apparently theres a de-facto no mans land, so to speak, called "The Berm"? However, I've found very little information on 'the berm' outside of, as I said, stuff about refugees from 2015-17. The most recent source mentioning The Berm is from Amnesty International in 2021. Google maps also shows the de-jure boundary as going straight through what apparently is an IDP camp called "Hadalat", that may or may not still exist as other satellite imagery doesent show it at all (such as Bing or Esri), and is completely absent from any maps as far as im aware. I've found no sources actually demarcating the berm though, so I have no clue what its boundaries are or if thats what the OSM borders are based on. Out of curiosity, I overlayed the State department's Large Scale International Boundaries dataset over OSM in QGIS and the only part where they seem to match are the westernmost areas where the border follows a river. Even then theres some discrepancies. What I can say, is that the de-jure boundary seems to be different from the de-facto boundary, and there seems to be little attention to that. TL;DR I have no clue whats happening here
Looking at the border via google earth, there are several points in which a sand berm like structure crosses from Jordan into to Syria and there are just as many points in which the berm either ceases to exit or moves into Jordan. My guess is that whoever started the mistake online interpreted the berm as a de-facto border between syria and jordan. Alsp 33°16'40"N 38°37'04"E on google earth street view is what looks to be a UNHCR center (maybe for refugees from Syria?).
There's another UA-camr who literally proved every major source had Yemen's size wrong, and BOTH numbers circulating were wrong for different reasons. (The larger one was based on an extreme maximillist idea that accidentally got based along putting the northern border too north in the desert. The slightly smaller one was done by combining the old North and South Yemen numbers....the North Yemen numbers having just copied the old Ottoman Vialyet with a utterly different shape and a typo leading to South Yemen counting a province twice for it's size. )
I'm from Jordan and yes since I have been following the recent events on the website I noticed the weird border right away and I can't think of any reason for this
There are several variables here. 1. The 1930's borders in the region were done by geographers who followed the water catchment lines. I.e. where the water flows to one river system on one side and a different river system on the other. This prevents conflicts over water in the desert. A stream does not cross the border. It confuses lots of people who think the borders were drawn by drunks or something. But there is a catch: Road building, farming and fencing can change the catchment boundary. It can no longer match the border as drawn. Drawing borders down the middle of rivers produces an equivalent problem because floods change rivers. Borders on mountains change with changing glaciation. 2. Roads are built along borders to facilitate border patrols but some times you can't drive there, its too steep, too unstable or driving down the valley creates a blind spot, So the road deviates from the line on the map. The guards being lazy, bored and often friends with the border guard on the other side agree locally on the line that is easiest to patrol. Military maps also take this defensible line. There are places in the USA where the border wall is a mile inside the USA and there are US farms between the wall and the actual border. In some places the border guards from two nations use the same road and if you ask them where the real border is they need to get a hand held GPS and stumble through bushes to find it (meanwhile everyone else has a beer or soft drink and laughs at him). In other places the border runs through houses and no one cares. 3. Negotiation is slow and some of the changes you see may be pending at the diplomatic level but the map maker is up dated because the diplomats themselves are using the map app in the process. However, because the decision is not finalized the map update source is still classified. I'm no expert, just someone that encountered the problem. I had a friend who created a border crisis in Australia, by draining water flooding an airstrip over the Queensland/ New South Wales border. He used diatomite to fix the flooding. The red tape permission to fix it will catch up to him in about ten years and he did it in the 1990's.
I am Syrian and when I was at school, all the textbooks that included a map of the levant or at lest syria in some way, used the straight line border. Even government buildings back then did as well.
FYI, OpenStreetMap have since updated the source info. A change made yesterday is described as follows: "Adding details to Joran-Syria border refining its origin. The source tag was leftover from 13 years ago and 12 years ago the border was remapped to following the on-the-ground border but the source tag wasn't removed." The source note now reads: "This border follows the group [sic!] truth of the the border between Syria and Joran [sic!], following roads and embankments that establish the border. [...]" The word "group" in there is probably a typo (autocarrot maybe?) and supposed to read "ground truth". "Joran" is obviously a typo and supposed to read "Jordan".
I do a lot of editing in OpenStreetMap, and after looking into this, I noticed a few things: 1. The source tag you saw was from a previous edit, and when the border was changed, the old source was never removed. Someone has since fixed this and replaced it with the following note: "This border follows the groud truth of the the border between Syria and Joran, following roads and embankments that establish the border." 2. The person who made the edits changing the border, ASMapper, seems pretty suspicious. In particular, they don't use sources on any of their edits and their profile has no information. 3. According to the OSM Wiki, the border mapping best practice is to map what is "on the ground," meaning that theoretical borders don't matter and the only thing that actually matters is who has control over the land. 4. I find it highly unlikely that an edit like this would go unnoticed. I'm sure other OSM editors noticed it, they just decided not to do anything about it or thought it was justified.
That might be a "best practice" in some situations but clearly not others. This border isn't disputed, the Syrian maps and the Jordanian maps agree on it. If there are Jordanians a few feet over the line in Syrian territory there, you can bet the explanation is that the border isn't too apparent on the ground and no one has asked them to leave yet. Not that they've seized land from Syria and created a de facto border.
hi jordanian here as some of the other commenters mentioned the map is straight on official sources i checked a lebanese atlas from 1993 (i think) and an official 2011 jordanian atlas from the royal geography centre and they both have straight borders at this part as a side note i dont recall ever hearing about this, not even the landswap in the mid-2000s, so its probably just a mapping error the wobbly border seems to follow a dirt road or possibly a dried up stream bed if that area ever gets any rainfall; that part of the border probably isnt fenced cuz its out in the middle of the dessert and its likely theres frequent border patrols in the surrounding areas making fencing this one bit somewhat pointless
OSM's de facto borders are part of its "on the ground" policy whereby data is mapped based on what can be seen on the ground, not what is official or what is local knowledge. E.g. if a street has an official name or a local name but a street sign says something different, the street sign name should be used. OSM also uses ESRI World Imagery for aerial imagery used for accurate mapping. This updates every couple of months or so and the border is adjusted to match the aerial imagery
Reminds me of Colorados border, they wanted to make it strait lines but thanks to lack of time and lacking technology they put the border markations all over the place so the border by the markations looks very off from the real border
@E4439Qv5 well again it's not the surveyers fault it's whoever wanted the state to be strait lines. The surveyers didn't have time or the tech to do so
It’s because of “ground truth” as it’s known as in the OSM Community, u can see if u zoom in onto OSM maps that it has a lot of Syrian military directly on their side of the border and roads also on their side, so on ground the border is “wiggly”
It is worrying what is happening with Uamaps, it has become the "paradigm" of the Syrian war, and others only imitate its letters without questioning them, like Wikipedia.
Looked at google maps and seen that both the Syrians and the Jordanians maintain their own border and both seem to use dirt mounds as border defense not fences. Wich I know for a fact is the same thing that is used on Syria-Iraq border because I saw a vid where is is crossed it they had a bulldozer to get through a dirt wall. They sometimes cross into each others territory but a no man's land is always betwen them wich can be quite large. The incorrect maps seem to show the on the ground borders and not the agreed upon ones.
Thank you to the citizens of Syria and Jordan for weighing in, both sides saying the border is straight at that spot. I was wondering if the official websites for each would show the border and comparing would give a perfect idea of which sources have the wrong border and/or if the border is disputed.
There is some sort of a barrier visible in satellite images following the OpenStreetMap line. It definitely can't be explained by the road since both the line and the barrier follow a different route from the road in some places.
Apple Maps uses OSM as well, but also many other data sources. It has the squiggly line but the satellite view doesn't show it following anything most of the time, just empty desert.
My theory is that while the formal border is straight, it might be due to Jordan's border fences zigzagging across the border. This was likely a precaution or local trolling of some sort taken during the hot phases of the civil war. I can't decide on which, though.
Hey, I noticed. Like other people, I was using liveuamap to see the situation in Syria and after the dust had (mostly) settled, I noticed the Syrian-Jordan border looked weird so I looked at google maps and it was different. But hey I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw this
I'd be actually really interested in a video on the specifics of how countries actually define the minutae of their border shapes down to like, mile-wide bumps in official documentation, and how people possibly drew these before computers
The Live Ua Map is so dumb about Syria, I was part of the wikipedia debate that got it dropped at the primary source for the civil war map. It's based on ISW-CTP now (Institute for the Study of War).
In one part towards the eastern side of the border there is a structure which according to OSM is a military installation with a radio tower that is in Jordan on OSM and in Syria on google. It appears to be connected to Jordanian territory by dirt roads. In the main squiggly section there are more dirt roads that appear to cross the border several times in google while staying in one country or the other on OSM. It's possible then that the squiggly border is legitimately showing the de facto control of the territory.
Guessing that someone on OSM or HOTOSM was checking some stuff and saw a border control road and thought that was the border. Anybody can change it. Usually you have mods who verify it (I was once called out that when detailing a trail you dont need it to be 1m precise as people using a map can figure out the 4 or 5 meters between points) but could be they missed it (I also once mapped out an island in its entirety, adding foot paths which had not been included (but sources provided) in previous maps and nobody said a thing. I do love that island.)
As a Jordanian i’m more confused than you are! All maps here have the border straight this includes maps used in the official curriculum and many other official government issued documents and such
Usually, almost always, borders are defined by geographical obstacles. I don't know that exact area but from what i see on the g-map there is a dried out river on that area of the border.
I'm afraid you're actually wrong. The border fence is in fact as wiggly as shown, as there is terrain to overcome and Wadis in this region. I suspect it is a fence set up by Lebanon to reduce infiltration of ISIS/smugglers into Jordan.
The border between the Golan Heights and Jordan runs within the Yarmouk River, and it is possible that it continues within the river further between Syria and Jordan. Of course, a border that runs within a river cannot be straight.
This reeks of an interpolation error of splines which are used to draw such graphics. You encounter similar problems when plotting graphs with huge data. There are 2 reasons I believe this: 1) There are many points in the data, like you visualized it and small numerical errors could accumulate. 2) It changed when you zoomed in, meaning this has to do with the algorithm rendering the graphic.
if you look at the Suwaida area around that border you can see how black the ground is. Very little goes on along that line. So I think there isn't a single town or village affected by these differences. I know that Syria itself, or the old government that, thank God, is no more, used the straight line version in school books and maps. I had to draw one myself (but I never managed to lol)
Yes, the scale you are using to display the map is likely to show more details including any zigzaging that wouldn't show when a large scale is used. This might be a reason.
Gis does not work that way. A shape file is essentially a series of coordinates. If the border is own source, then perhaps it does follow a road but more likely a river. I'll look into it.
Looks like a river. That makes sense, people won't be putting a town on the other side of a river- that makes any time they use a road necessitating a passport. Relax this is just a practical demarcation
You should check in the Philips Grand World Atlas. The only thing with this is, you have to buy the atlas. Philips don't allow any of their maps on internet. They're like the best dictionaries Robert for French and Collins for English, they're the official dictionaries but you have to buy those too.
I'm a resident of Israel and as part of army conscription I have done a lot of border patrols all around Israeli borders. I can say for sure that two things are common in the area: borders fences following a road of some sort - usually that is an actual "border road" i.e. a road that was constructed - often as part of the border marking process - to follow the fence and allow for better patrolling (it also often includes a loose gravel part that allows patrols to more easily identify border crossings). These types of setups often cause the border fence to be moved away from the agreed upon border for easier construction/vehicle travel. The second thing - possibly as a result of that last thing - the border fence zigzagging across the international border line is very much a common occurrence.
Might it not be that the issue is that its hard to determine where the borders are withought any landmarks around? Borders are easy to determine when they follow things like rivers for example, or when there is plenty around that is owned by somebody who knows where his land begins and ends. But when its dessert and has dunes that move i can understand that confusion arrises, couple that with earths curvature making straith lines on a flat map not straith at all. Thing is i did notice that there is a Jordanian road that kinda passes trough Syria for a part, and a Syrian road that kinda passes trough Jorden for a part. It's like whoever build it didnt know they were building in another country, and that nobody around there kinda gives a damn because its all just dessert anyway.
Surprised you haven't got a Maxar subscription (or equivalent) to get recent satellite images. Would likely be really useful for many of your vids! I have no idea how expensive those kinda things are but I assume not horrifically nowadays given the competition.
In old maps of the middle east they barely even drew the borders out in the desert. I have one from the 90s it just shows the lines between Yemen and Oman that just go straight in towards Saudi Arabia but then no border between the two and Saudi Arabia. Nothing really out there so it seems at the time no one care to designate exactly where the straight line ran. Although kinda weird the map maker didn't just fill it in
Happy 2025! Hope everyone had a good New Year!
Please marry me mr tigerstar
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Now that Assad is gone, We can focus on the real issues in Syria like this border error
...what about retaking the Golan Heights?
Truly, we have our priorities in order once again.
@@andresacosta4832 The new Syrian regime would need to deal with Israel for the Golan Heights, since they seized the territory after Assad's regime fell
@@andresacosta4832 Since i can't see this rag-tag band of islamists overwhelming the IDF i'd say the Golan could only be returned in a peace treaty with mutual recognition.
Good thing to be concerned about ngl (when it’s this small)
The easiest way to tell is go there and see which country you get arrested by
not always works
Given the way OpenStreetMap validates things, you're not very far off. Even if official documents in Jordan and Syria agree that the border is a straight line, OpenStreetMap prefers to follow the functional line of control of there is one. And because of that natural landscape in that area, even if you're technically at coordinates controlled by Syria, if you're on the wrong side of a large river valley separating the two countries, you'd more likely get arrested by Jordanians.
@@myowncomputerstuff That's why those colonial straight borders are insanely lazy and don't often make sense.
@@PUARockstar LOL, Nexxarians' comment reminds me of how we just presumed
Mexico never checked you coming in, but man, on your way out! lol...right okay
Okay. I've been picked up by a group of bearded gentlemen; and shoved into the boot of a truck.
Will comment again when I figure out where they're taking me. 👍
As a Syrian I can confirm the border is straight there. All official education books and maps show the border to be straight.
Edit:Stop fighting in the replys or assuming things and thinking it could be propaganda. Even in Jordan they have the same map with the same border.
I understand you, but all maps in Venezuela show that half of Guyana belongs to them. And all maps in Guyana show the opposite. Now some government has to be wrong.
How sure can you be that official maps in Syria aren't also wrong?
The De Jure border is straight but seems that the de facto border is much more jagged. That’s what happens when your border runs for hundreds of miles through desert with no landmarks.
@@ozAqVvhhNue In Jordan it is the same I have Jordanian friends in their maps it is the same, btw it is a worthless desert with nothing of value, not to mention that the map with the curved border gives Syria extra land without losing any so if anyone would benefit by showing the altered map it would be Syria not Jordan.
@@ozAqVvhhNue Video says that Jordan and Syria ended their border disputes so they have no reason to lie
@@NY_Mapper Yup, That is what the Brits and the french wanted after all and they have a great history of making borders that doesn't make sense or recognize local borders you can read more about the actual Syria region(natural Syria) which was occupied by the short lived Arab Kingdom of Syria.
I am Jordanian and almost all the maps I saw at school, university and government signs include a straight border line with Syria. The zigzag map started to appear recently and discussions took place on the Jordanian internet. We did not reach a clear reason, but it may be just widespread errors by map enthusiasts which were also adopted by some websites.
It would be funny if it was just like one troll who spread this around
its the defacto border so mappers started to use it, its mostly desert so its not as contested as Golan Heights or Kashmir
it seems like it follows the de facto border with fences and checkpoints that can be seen by satellite
@@jordanplays-transitandgame1690 Golan also isn't very contested anymore, sure Syria can protest, but it ain't going to change hands
@@teaser6089 true, and the government contesting it straight up collapsed so, yea...
I think I’ve found the reason for this. It seems the irregular border only appeared 5 months ago, and was created by a user called ‘ASMapper’, who cites Esri World Imagery as the source. Lo and behold, there is a border strip on the imagery that follows the OSM outline, with the website dating the satellite images to 2019.
Thanks for the good answer!
if you look on google maps, the border checkpoints are actually the same as the live ua map, probably the same as the us and Canada borders and the same and Gabon and equatorial Guinea.
Interesting. Although that border has definitely been there longer than 5 months as I've seen things with it from the beginning of 2024.
@@EmperorTigerstar maybe other maps have used the on-the-ground borders then. Since some sections were completely new ways. (In OSM there are points, ways (lines & areas), and relations)
@@EmperorTigerstar Yeah, that would make sense. I checked the Wayback Machine and (if correct) it seems this issue goes back to at least 2011.
Don’t start an international incident like between Costa Rica and Nicaragua when they checked Google maps. Lol
that's what I thought, it would be the stupidest reason for a war, just some messy maps
@@alextiga8166 There is a 0% chance of a war happening between Syria and Jordan for any reason, especially not something as trivial as this.
The new Syrian government is exhausted and tired of war. The Jordanian government is thrilled over the moon to have a new friendly neighbor to its north. Both countries are excited for peace.
So the debate becomes : how drunk were Sykes and Picot when drawing on the map ?
I bet Wine from Bordouex expired like that?
Why let a little bit of Alcohol get in the way of a good Crusade?
As an Iraqi, I could tell you they atleast drank 90 Liters of Expired Wine while making the map.
Blazing
To the Maximum. What they drew were just "YOU GET A STRAIGHT LINE, AND YOU GET A STRAIGHT LINE! EVERY MANDATE GETS A STRAIGHT LINE!" And thus, ruined Northern Arabia.
Zooming in on the satellite imagery of the OSM border, you can see that it follows something that seems to be a berm with patrol roads on both sides of it. Therefore it looks like OSM is showing the de facto border, not the de jure one.
This must be similar to the way that OSM shows the Moroccan berm, but does NOT show the sections the berm crosses into mauritania. It has the border hugging the de-jure lines in that case until the berm (the de-facto line of control) juts back out from mauritania and curves back into WS proper
The patrol roads didn't exist before ISIS and for much of the border there had historically been no sand berm or fence. In many places these barriers are actually in the most defensible position nothing to do with the border. They are also heavily defended.
Here’s my best guess on what’s happening here. It seems that the de jure border is the straight line. The jagged line is the de facto border, and only came about in the last decade or so. The wiggly border is most likely a byproduct of the Syrian Civil War. Both the Syrian Army and Jordanian government were establishing military checkpoints and fortifications for security. Because they are in the middle of a completely desolate area where there is nothing but desert, they may have accidentally crossed into each other’s territory by a few miles/km.
If this isn’t the case, my second guess is this simply being the result of both countries trying to establish a straight-line boundary in a total desert with no landmarks. Modern satellite imagery may have only recently discovered this inconsistency.
Yeah if you look on google maps saftelite view you can see a line being in the same jagged way as the live ua map. I assume it could either be a road or s border control line that was drawn poorly in the same way as the us-canadian border and the gabon-equatorial guinea borders.
EDIT: i checked on google earth history, and the lines appeared around 1992, so it wasnt because of the syrian civil war.
This is probably true. OSM (the basemap for liveuamap) is primarily concerned with de facto reality. So if the borders are wiggly in the real world, OSM will show them wiggly. It's not wrong, it's just the on-the-ground truth.
Another task for the new syrian government to noodle with
Funny enough its nether both countries agree that the border is straight as in jordan all official government docs show it as such( education books , encyclopedias etc) and from talking to some syrians as well they also see it as straight . My best guess is a few online sources drew it wrong no one confirmand as it's isn't an important border with a natural small country and no one noticed or cared to fix it as the information that they want to show is still accurate.
@@anglaismoyen I've never edited OSM, though I am a contributor to Wikipedia, so I understand if there's some difference in philosophy that I'm not understanding here. But while I understand a desire to make the lines match reality, without any evidence showing that this is really some de facto new border are we not just blindly drawing international borders based on blurry roads on a satellite image? Even if we take the existence of this wall for granted, does it really mean the border is there now, even if both countries seem to agree it isn't? I can understand allowing original content for most things OSM is usually involved with, since you don't need many qualifications to look around a place and map a couple of roads that even government maps don't bother correcting, but we're talking political boundaries between entire nations here, and we only have satellite imagery to go off of. Is it OSM's place to correct border lines and potentially cause diplomatic incidents based on the guesses of random internet contributors?
I am exaggerating a little here, and this might indeed be the "real" (or close enough to real) de facto border, but I don't think such a judgement should be made without any sources - because much like Wikipedia, OSM *is* a source, at least for the most of the world who aren't familiar with cartographic minutiae, and the only thing that these exercises accomplish is pollute other tertiary sources with dubious information.
The US Department of State also hosts world border shape files which are pretty accurate.
The files also include metadata for which sections of borders are contested vs 'normal'
One caveat is that the files are made in the context of what the US government officially recognizes, so the accuracy of Lines of Control is a secondary priority (but it will still show which sections those are)
What are the odds Syrian and Jordanian leadership made an agreement but only told Google maps about it?
the border fence of Jordan does in fact zig-zig across the official border several times. it's not on any actual map but very visible on satellite photos of Google Earth or whatever
Why? Wouldn’t it cost more money and building materials to build a zig zag fence than a straight one?
@@goldenfiberwheat238 it's not just a flat and empty desert, it has big ass hills, sand dunes, dry riverbeds and fields of boulders. it's probably easier to move around than across them
@@goldenfiberwheat238 my very Italian guess is that someone important had a company producing fences
@ you don’t even have to be Italian for that. Corruption happens everywhere
@ I see
Anybody email the University of Jordan about this yet? The geography department there ought to at least know who to talk to to get the facts straight on this.
semi-relevant I guess:
I was in the Jordan-Syrian border town of al-Himmah last year and got to stand right down by the Yarmouk river.
the locals told me that while the border fence is actually about 100m back from the Syrian side of the river, as soon as you'd cross over the border into the zone between the river and the fence you were "labelled a spy" by the government
I regularly use OSM and I was wondering about this for so long, thanks for the explanation. I suggest doing a similar border on the India-China border, as some sources show it to be quite straight wheras OSM and Google Maps have shown it as a bunch of squiggly lines.
I mean India-China is different since the majority of the border between those two countries is heavily disputed
Brother if the white man says its jagged then we must be quite and listen. Because as we know to grow a tree you must stand on the seeds.
As an OSM user, the "glitch" you're seeing is the way the map renders. It's in layers (by zoom) of png tiles which are updated with a render of OSM's data every so often, less often for lower-zoom layers. When you zoomed in, it swapped layers from one where the tile was unupdated ("dirty") and one where it had been updated.
There's a way to comment on that user's changeset. I'd do that, if possible, to see why their source is (now) incorrect. I did a quick double-check to make sure that source wasn't just left over from an old border, I don't believe so.
Though looking through the map, while the legal border might be different it does appear that that line follows a de facto lign of control, it's very obvious (hit "Edit") to see open-source satellite imagery layers people use to map). Interesting!
Also, people, I can see you already tagging the border as incorrect with notes inspired by this video. Thank you for not brazenly editing the border yourself. That would just be making a Wikipedia-level edit war and that helps nobody!
In Google map's satellite view, you can see a road or fence that zigzags the straight border. So that must be a defacto yet unrecognised border.
As a Jordanian, all of our education books show the straight line border and I didn’t know it was a thing until I came across this video
Wow. Last time I was this early Assad was still in power.
Who must go?
@@NoName-oz3gjMy brother it's over the meme is dead, you must go.
@@NoName-oz3gj Oh he's gone.
Man that was quick. @@gavinsmith9871
Does the citation on OpenStreetMap have a date associated with it? Perhaps the border is based on an old version of the CIA dataset
Granted I'm not as savy with the website as others might be, but I could only find that the border was most recently edited a few months ago. But the part in question has definitely been there for at least a year.
@@EmperorTigerstar I checked the edit history on OSM and apparently the way (technical term for the boundary) was only "created" 5 months ago- meaning most likely there was some other "way" representing the border before that, but for some reason it was deleted and re-created. As for why the original way representing it was deleted, I have no clue. It seems this happened for a large part of the border - the only part of the border thats significantly different from what it should be that goes back more than 5 months was the easternmost segment near the iraq-jordan-syria tripoint. If I had to guess, the person who made the edit wanted to trace the de-facto border but figured it was easier to just delete and start over than modify the existing way (which, tbf, it can be at times). The changeset comments dont seem to be useful either - according to google translate, the changesets just translate to "The borders of Syria and Jordan". This video has been brought up in the OSM discord though and I imagine there will be some discussion there
I’ve ran into this inconsistency so many time when trying to create my most recent video. It was driving me nuts because I did not remember the squiggly border existing a few years ago.
Omg it's NY Mapper :0
"Simple is what simple does".
This is what "Tigerstar", has been progressive in opening for you to remember.
Apologize, butt
I've been researching this, out of curiosity. This seems to have originated in 2015 with the refugee crisis. Apparently theres a de-facto no mans land, so to speak, called "The Berm"? However, I've found very little information on 'the berm' outside of, as I said, stuff about refugees from 2015-17. The most recent source mentioning The Berm is from Amnesty International in 2021. Google maps also shows the de-jure boundary as going straight through what apparently is an IDP camp called "Hadalat", that may or may not still exist as other satellite imagery doesent show it at all (such as Bing or Esri), and is completely absent from any maps as far as im aware. I've found no sources actually demarcating the berm though, so I have no clue what its boundaries are or if thats what the OSM borders are based on. Out of curiosity, I overlayed the State department's Large Scale International Boundaries dataset over OSM in QGIS and the only part where they seem to match are the westernmost areas where the border follows a river. Even then theres some discrepancies. What I can say, is that the de-jure boundary seems to be different from the de-facto boundary, and there seems to be little attention to that.
TL;DR I have no clue whats happening here
Looking at the border via google earth, there are several points in which a sand berm like structure crosses from Jordan into to Syria and there are just as many points in which the berm either ceases to exit or moves into Jordan. My guess is that whoever started the mistake online interpreted the berm as a de-facto border between syria and jordan.
Alsp 33°16'40"N 38°37'04"E on google earth street view is what looks to be a UNHCR center (maybe for refugees from Syria?).
So, it’s a stupid AI
As a Jordanian, this is the most action we've gotten in years
There's another UA-camr who literally proved every major source had Yemen's size wrong, and BOTH numbers circulating were wrong for different reasons.
(The larger one was based on an extreme maximillist idea that accidentally got based along putting the northern border too north in the desert. The slightly smaller one was done by combining the old North and South Yemen numbers....the North Yemen numbers having just copied the old Ottoman Vialyet with a utterly different shape and a typo leading to South Yemen counting a province twice for it's size. )
Who did this work?
Your comment would be MUCH more useful if only you provided the name of the youtuber in question...
This error has been annoying me for weeks
I'm from Jordan and yes since I have been following the recent events on the website I noticed the weird border right away and I can't think of any reason for this
As a jordanian, I can confirm that it's straight. All our geographic books have it as a straight line
Zooming in on google earth to right when the scale changes from 5km to 2km I can totally see something which zigzags across the streight line border.
There are several variables here. 1. The 1930's borders in the region were done by geographers who followed the water catchment lines. I.e. where the water flows to one river system on one side and a different river system on the other. This prevents conflicts over water in the desert. A stream does not cross the border. It confuses lots of people who think the borders were drawn by drunks or something. But there is a catch: Road building, farming and fencing can change the catchment boundary. It can no longer match the border as drawn. Drawing borders down the middle of rivers produces an equivalent problem because floods change rivers. Borders on mountains change with changing glaciation.
2. Roads are built along borders to facilitate border patrols but some times you can't drive there, its too steep, too unstable or driving down the valley creates a blind spot, So the road deviates from the line on the map. The guards being lazy, bored and often friends with the border guard on the other side agree locally on the line that is easiest to patrol. Military maps also take this defensible line. There are places in the USA where the border wall is a mile inside the USA and there are US farms between the wall and the actual border. In some places the border guards from two nations use the same road and if you ask them where the real border is they need to get a hand held GPS and stumble through bushes to find it (meanwhile everyone else has a beer or soft drink and laughs at him). In other places the border runs through houses and no one cares.
3. Negotiation is slow and some of the changes you see may be pending at the diplomatic level but the map maker is up dated because the diplomats themselves are using the map app in the process. However, because the decision is not finalized the map update source is still classified.
I'm no expert, just someone that encountered the problem. I had a friend who created a border crisis in Australia, by draining water flooding an airstrip over the Queensland/ New South Wales border. He used diatomite to fix the flooding. The red tape permission to fix it will catch up to him in about ten years and he did it in the 1990's.
I am Syrian and when I was at school, all the textbooks that included a map of the levant or at lest syria in some way, used the straight line border. Even government buildings back then did as well.
3:08 ST. LOUIS! Our city is the kind where you yell in triumph if it’s mentioned.
FYI, OpenStreetMap have since updated the source info.
A change made yesterday is described as follows:
"Adding details to Joran-Syria border refining its origin. The source tag was leftover from 13 years ago and 12 years ago the border was remapped to following the on-the-ground border but the source tag wasn't removed."
The source note now reads:
"This border follows the group [sic!] truth of the the border between Syria and Joran [sic!], following roads and embankments that establish the border. [...]"
The word "group" in there is probably a typo (autocarrot maybe?) and supposed to read "ground truth". "Joran" is obviously a typo and supposed to read "Jordan".
Autocarrot
I do a lot of editing in OpenStreetMap, and after looking into this, I noticed a few things:
1. The source tag you saw was from a previous edit, and when the border was changed, the old source was never removed. Someone has since fixed this and replaced it with the following note: "This border follows the groud truth of the the border between Syria and Joran, following roads and embankments that establish the border."
2. The person who made the edits changing the border, ASMapper, seems pretty suspicious. In particular, they don't use sources on any of their edits and their profile has no information.
3. According to the OSM Wiki, the border mapping best practice is to map what is "on the ground," meaning that theoretical borders don't matter and the only thing that actually matters is who has control over the land.
4. I find it highly unlikely that an edit like this would go unnoticed. I'm sure other OSM editors noticed it, they just decided not to do anything about it or thought it was justified.
That might be a "best practice" in some situations but clearly not others. This border isn't disputed, the Syrian maps and the Jordanian maps agree on it. If there are Jordanians a few feet over the line in Syrian territory there, you can bet the explanation is that the border isn't too apparent on the ground and no one has asked them to leave yet. Not that they've seized land from Syria and created a de facto border.
hi jordanian here
as some of the other commenters mentioned the map is straight on official sources
i checked a lebanese atlas from 1993 (i think) and an official 2011 jordanian atlas from the royal geography centre and they both have straight borders at this part
as a side note i dont recall ever hearing about this, not even the landswap in the mid-2000s, so its probably just a mapping error
the wobbly border seems to follow a dirt road or possibly a dried up stream bed if that area ever gets any rainfall; that part of the border probably isnt fenced cuz its out in the middle of the dessert and its likely theres frequent border patrols in the surrounding areas making fencing this one bit somewhat pointless
I also noticed that detail years ago
Excellent video as always.
OSM's de facto borders are part of its "on the ground" policy whereby data is mapped based on what can be seen on the ground, not what is official or what is local knowledge. E.g. if a street has an official name or a local name but a street sign says something different, the street sign name should be used. OSM also uses ESRI World Imagery for aerial imagery used for accurate mapping. This updates every couple of months or so and the border is adjusted to match the aerial imagery
1:17 Apple Maps also shows the wobbly border
Apple maps uses openstreetmap data
Your devotion to cartography and your attention to detail are amazing. I hope this dispute was resolved without bloodshed.
Fascinating video!! Thanks for making it
OSM has basically the same situation as Wikipedia, I mean:
-advantages: everyone can edit
-disadvantages: everyone can edit
Reminds me of Colorados border, they wanted to make it strait lines but thanks to lack of time and lacking technology they put the border markations all over the place so the border by the markations looks very off from the real border
Yep. The "rectangle" with 697 sides.
Someone should've told the surveyors the greeting goes "hi, how are you?" and not "how high are you?"
@@E4439Qv5 lol
@E4439Qv5 well again it's not the surveyers fault it's whoever wanted the state to be strait lines. The surveyers didn't have time or the tech to do so
this video will be in the history books: the youtube video that started the jordan - syrian war
Probably worth looking at a topological map of the area.
In my opinion, It's just some OpenStreetMap user that tried to make the straight border look less boring using natural/man-made features as the border
Nice research. Liked and Subbed!
It’s because of “ground truth” as it’s known as in the OSM Community, u can see if u zoom in onto OSM maps that it has a lot of Syrian military directly on their side of the border and roads also on their side, so on ground the border is “wiggly”
It is worrying what is happening with Uamaps, it has become the "paradigm" of the Syrian war, and others only imitate its letters without questioning them, like Wikipedia.
I hadn't really looked at that map until now, but then I immediately saw it
Maybe question the countries itself? Contacting the embassy or consulate of each country would give you some information about it?
Looked at google maps and seen that both the Syrians and the Jordanians maintain their own border and both seem to use dirt mounds as border defense not fences. Wich I know for a fact is the same thing that is used on Syria-Iraq border because I saw a vid where is is crossed it they had a bulldozer to get through a dirt wall.
They sometimes cross into each others territory but a no man's land is always betwen them wich can be quite large.
The incorrect maps seem to show the on the ground borders and not the agreed upon ones.
Thank you to the citizens of Syria and Jordan for weighing in, both sides saying the border is straight at that spot.
I was wondering if the official websites for each would show the border and comparing would give a perfect idea of which sources have the wrong border and/or if the border is disputed.
There is some sort of a barrier visible in satellite images following the OpenStreetMap line. It definitely can't be explained by the road since both the line and the barrier follow a different route from the road in some places.
Apple Maps uses OSM as well, but also many other data sources. It has the squiggly line but the satellite view doesn't show it following anything most of the time, just empty desert.
My theory is that while the formal border is straight, it might be due to Jordan's border fences zigzagging across the border.
This was likely a precaution or local trolling of some sort taken during the hot phases of the civil war. I can't decide on which, though.
Dayfacto 😂 Great video! Surprisingly interesting
I live in that area and the main reason behind these twists and turns is the drug trade.
Dunno what kind of borders should have (straight or zig-zag) and Idc, your videomaps are beautiful as it is.
Great video 👍🏼
Hey, I noticed. Like other people, I was using liveuamap to see the situation in Syria and after the dust had (mostly) settled, I noticed the Syrian-Jordan border looked weird so I looked at google maps and it was different. But hey I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw this
I'd be actually really interested in a video on the specifics of how countries actually define the minutae of their border shapes down to like, mile-wide bumps in official documentation, and how people possibly drew these before computers
I mentioned this map/source in that last video without any specific context. It was deleted within minutes.
as a syrian i always wondered why some maps have the border messed up like that, the one i knew throughout my life is the straight one
The borders in this area are often fortified by earth berms, usually a couple meters high, which could be mistaken for a road from satellite images.
Really excellent detective work
Pixel distortion going from PNG to GIF, obviously 😂
The Live Ua Map is so dumb about Syria, I was part of the wikipedia debate that got it dropped at the primary source for the civil war map. It's based on ISW-CTP now (Institute for the Study of War).
In one part towards the eastern side of the border there is a structure which according to OSM is a military installation with a radio tower that is in Jordan on OSM and in Syria on google. It appears to be connected to Jordanian territory by dirt roads. In the main squiggly section there are more dirt roads that appear to cross the border several times in google while staying in one country or the other on OSM. It's possible then that the squiggly border is legitimately showing the de facto control of the territory.
Guessing that someone on OSM or HOTOSM was checking some stuff and saw a border control road and thought that was the border. Anybody can change it. Usually you have mods who verify it (I was once called out that when detailing a trail you dont need it to be 1m precise as people using a map can figure out the 4 or 5 meters between points) but could be they missed it (I also once mapped out an island in its entirety, adding foot paths which had not been included (but sources provided) in previous maps and nobody said a thing. I do love that island.)
As a Jordanian i’m more confused than you are!
All maps here have the border straight this includes maps used in the official curriculum and many other official government issued documents and such
As a Syria we use a straight line no wiggle
Usually, almost always, borders are defined by geographical obstacles. I don't know that exact area but from what i see on the g-map there is a dried out river on that area of the border.
I'm afraid you're actually wrong. The border fence is in fact as wiggly as shown, as there is terrain to overcome and Wadis in this region. I suspect it is a fence set up by Lebanon to reduce infiltration of ISIS/smugglers into Jordan.
Sure, sure, and what about Eswatini?
4:43 you can do the same on google when creating a custom map
The border just needed to get its wiggles out!
I never noticed.
im jordanian and i'm extremely happy someone finally pointed this out
Try pulling up a terrain or satellite map to see if there are any topogrqphical features that the curvy line is following.
I actually noticed this when I was making my edit of this war
The border between the Golan Heights and Jordan runs within the Yarmouk River, and it is possible that it continues within the river further between Syria and Jordan. Of course, a border that runs within a river cannot be straight.
This reeks of an interpolation error of splines which are used to draw such graphics. You encounter similar problems when plotting graphs with huge data. There are 2 reasons I believe this: 1) There are many points in the data, like you visualized it and small numerical errors could accumulate. 2) It changed when you zoomed in, meaning this has to do with the algorithm rendering the graphic.
It looks like it was drawn to follow some natural river boundary on OpenStreetMap. We'll fix this.
Welcome to the latest episode of Emperor Tigerstar Notices An Error In A Collaborative Encyclopedia!
I am literally in Syria and never heard of the wiggly border.
I've actually never seen this error, somehow.
if you look at the Suwaida area around that border you can see how black the ground is. Very little goes on along that line. So I think there isn't a single town or village affected by these differences.
I know that Syria itself, or the old government that, thank God, is no more, used the straight line version in school books and maps. I had to draw one myself (but I never managed to lol)
Yes, the scale you are using to display the map is likely to show more details including any zigzaging that wouldn't show when a large scale is used. This might be a reason.
Gis does not work that way. A shape file is essentially a series of coordinates. If the border is own source, then perhaps it does follow a road but more likely a river. I'll look into it.
Looks like a river. That makes sense, people won't be putting a town on the other side of a river- that makes any time they use a road necessitating a passport. Relax this is just a practical demarcation
You should check in the Philips Grand World Atlas. The only thing with this is, you have to buy the atlas. Philips don't allow any of their maps on internet.
They're like the best dictionaries Robert for French and Collins for English, they're the official dictionaries but you have to buy those too.
I love how you went to Kashmir and Crimea to use an example for a "border dispute"
I'm a resident of Israel and as part of army conscription I have done a lot of border patrols all around Israeli borders. I can say for sure that two things are common in the area: borders fences following a road of some sort - usually that is an actual "border road" i.e. a road that was constructed - often as part of the border marking process - to follow the fence and allow for better patrolling (it also often includes a loose gravel part that allows patrols to more easily identify border crossings). These types of setups often cause the border fence to be moved away from the agreed upon border for easier construction/vehicle travel. The second thing - possibly as a result of that last thing - the border fence zigzagging across the international border line is very much a common occurrence.
Might it not be that the issue is that its hard to determine where the borders are withought any landmarks around? Borders are easy to determine when they follow things like rivers for example, or when there is plenty around that is owned by somebody who knows where his land begins and ends. But when its dessert and has dunes that move i can understand that confusion arrises, couple that with earths curvature making straith lines on a flat map not straith at all. Thing is i did notice that there is a Jordanian road that kinda passes trough Syria for a part, and a Syrian road that kinda passes trough Jorden for a part. It's like whoever build it didnt know they were building in another country, and that nobody around there kinda gives a damn because its all just dessert anyway.
the states are a bit off as well, when you compare the google maps and syria states, it might not align.
Desert borders being desert borders as usual
I've noticed that Syria's border with Lebanon is really weird in the Open Street map version.
if I was the guy who did the reddit thread I'd be irked this video insists "no one" else noticed
Surprised you haven't got a Maxar subscription (or equivalent) to get recent satellite images. Would likely be really useful for many of your vids! I have no idea how expensive those kinda things are but I assume not horrifically nowadays given the competition.
In old maps of the middle east they barely even drew the borders out in the desert. I have one from the 90s it just shows the lines between Yemen and Oman that just go straight in towards Saudi Arabia but then no border between the two and Saudi Arabia. Nothing really out there so it seems at the time no one care to designate exactly where the straight line ran. Although kinda weird the map maker didn't just fill it in
If you look at a 1980s or earlier map literally all of Saudi Arabia's borders are dotted lines labeled "approximately" or "roughly."
It's simple, these curves are from when Sykes' pencil bumped into Picot's knuckles and he held down the ruler.
As a Syrian, I cannot give you a clear answer, cause I don't know.