Carte figurative des mouvements des langues anciennes avant l'ere moderne
The pattern
This still is filed under Data as proof.
Define
A chart, map, or count that is the argument, not an illustration next to the argument.
Mechanism
Sighted evidence. The reader is asked to believe their eyes: a bar, a share, a spread on a map.
Verdict
The claim is comparative or quantitative and the figure can be read without a caption doing the sell.
Why it works
Arrows carry direction, colour carries family, and the tinted ground carries territory, so three claims about language are readable in a single pass. The Note then does what almost no infographic does: it states the defect before the reader can find it, admitting the movements belong to different eras and that the sheet is only the picture of a fictitious state. That pre-emptive admission is what buys the rest of the map its credibility. Crediting Maury with the substance and keeping only the drawing separates the source's authority from the designer's, so a philological dispute cannot discredit the graphic.
Steal this when
When you compress events from different periods or different accounts into one picture and the compression is a genuine distortion, print the admission on the artwork itself. The picture then survives the obvious objection instead of being destroyed by it.