The History of Mapping

 by Attish Das

As commonly known, maps are known to be useful for their users to navigate a certain area, or as a form of art, as they can be drawn to illustrate features of things like the circulatory system around the human body. These tools to understanding complex areas are useful for the cartographer to record places of large interest or learning about the geography of the mapped area.

The making of maps is generally known as cartography and has been traced to have started around five thousand years before present day Earth – e.g., a tablet conserved in the British Museum in London which shows cartography from approximately 600BC showing Babylon, the capital of the Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian Empires, in the centre of it with the Euphrates river, mountains and a surrounding ocean. Other examples of ancient maps include extensive unsuccessful and very successful attempts to document property boundaries of ancient Egypt (similar to country borders at the present day) and delicate maps recorded on materials of silk from the very late Neolithic age of China.

In the middle ages, Europe foresaw miniscule progress in improving cartography and Geography as a whole. In this timeline, many maps were produced within monasteries for religious causes. However, juxtaposing to this, an interesting version of a world map was produced having Jerusalem located within the centre of it and Asia above it, symbolising the city for being the most important in the world at that time. 

After the middle ages, many significant ways were seen as cartography largely evolved significantly:

·     The discovery of North America and South America expanded migration levels and interest in new places began, resulting in larger map production.

·       People of lower wealth could also now have access to maps; not just the wealthy elite due to publishing houses being made, producing more maps.

·       The invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg from Germany meant that monasteries no longer dominated map production.

·       There was a large growth in interest of public learning bringing in people ravenous for knowledge. An institution called The French Academy of science encouraged scientific research in 1666 which improved mapping and navigation.

In the present era, maps include the whole world with the Greenwich mean timeline (0 degrees longitude vertically down the centre of the map or parts of the world. These maps generally use the Mercator projection which takes the curvature of the Earth and brings it to one rectangular map. Maps are now available using modern satellite systems and surveying techniques making them more accurate as ever seen beforehand. Maps are also seen online in various formats for the whole world to see.