A Brief History of Maps

Maps Of The World: Their Evolution Through The Ages by Lucien Oliveira

Cartography, or map-making, is an ancient "art". Archeologists have found maps of the world dating from pre-Christian eras. The earliest world maps discovered were made by the Babylonians. They were symbolic maps instead of literal representation, but they had already shown cardinal directions. These maps show how map-making was always very important to the human kind. Although they were not as far accurate as our modern maps of the world, they were still very significant to the civilisations that created them.

On history of cartography, you can even find local and regional maps drawn by indigenous people. Ancient Egyptians also produced maps, emphasizing geometry and surveying techniques to draw them. But the first world scale maps were made by the ancient Greek. They made speculations on Earth's size and shape, though, at first, they represented our planet as a circular flat disc. Ptolemy, a famous Greek philosopher, introduced several cartographic innovations and influenced several centuries to come. His world maps, nonetheless, were distorted in orientation and shape. Also, he made use of two other sciences to help on map-making: astronomy and mathematics. Furthermore, it was the Greek philosophers who first assumed that the Earth was spherical. They also made scientific estimates on Earth's circumference. In addition, it was Eratosthenes, another Greek philosopher, who made great achievements on this field. He created the concept of meridian and parallel, and was also the first to divide the Earth in five climate areas correctly.

European maps came a long way before becoming what they are now. In early Middle Ages, people still insisted on the concept that the Earth was a flat disc. It was in these ages that the mappae mundi were drawn. They consisted of four types of world maps: zonal maps (divided in five climate zones), tripartite (the three known continents), quadripartite (the three known continents and an equatorial ocean), and complex maps (tripartite showing more details such as cities and topography elements). Until Renaissance, there wasn't much improvement. But in this period, though, the discovery of the Americas and the need of controlling and dividing those lands encouraged surveys again.

In 1884, Greenwich prime meridian was defined as international standard reference, and in the 20th century, maps became quite abundant due to improvements in fields like printing and photography. As technology advances were made, cartography became a more complex science. First, we had brushes and parchment, but nowadays we can produce far more accurate maps of the world using discoveries such as compass, telescope, sextant, quadrant, vernier, printing press, etc. We also have a huge range of map types and styles. Apart from topographic and political world maps, we can have thematic maps on specific subjects which are oriented to specific audiences. Colors, symbols, the compass rose, legends, among others are largely used to make details easy to comprehend.

In conclusion, the maps of the world have gone a long journey to become what they are now but, with all these modern achievements, we can virtually have world maps displaying the surface of the Earth in any map projection we need.


Lucien Oliveira is a freelance writer with strong interest nature, environment and earth. You can find more on map of the world . Read more about world maps and animal tracking.

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