History of cartography

The history of cartography refers to the development and consequences of cartography, or mapmaking technology, throughout human history. Maps have been one of the most important human inventions for millennia, allowing humans to explain and navigate their way through the world.

When and how the earliest maps were made is unclear, but maps of local terrain are believed to have been independently invented by many cultures. The earliest surviving maps include cave paintings and etchings on tusk and stone. Maps were produced extensively by ancient Babylon, Greece, Rome, China, and India.

The earliest maps ignored the curvature of Earth's surface, both because the shape of the Earth was uncertain and because the curvature is not important across the small areas being mapped. However, since the age of Classical Greece, maps of large regions, and especially of the world, have used projection from a model globe to control how the inevitable distortion gets apportioned on the map.

Modern methods of transportation, the use of surveillance aircraft, and more recently the availability of satellite imagery have made documentation of many areas possible that were previously inaccessible. Free online services such as Google Earth have made accurate maps of the world more accessible than ever before.

Etymology

The English term

Middle Latin

carta "map".

Pre-modern era

Earliest known maps

Possibly the oldest surviving map has been engraved on this mammoth tusk, dated to 25,000 BC, found from Pavlov in the Czech Republic.

It is not always clear whether an ancient artifact had been wrought as a map or as something else. The definition of "map" is also not precise. Thus, no single artifact is generally accepted to be the earliest surviving map. Candidates include:

A map-like representation of a mountain, river, valleys and routes around Pavlov in the Czech Republic, carved on a mammoth tusk, that has been dated to 25,000 BC.^[1]

An
Aboriginal Australian cylcon that may be as much as 20,000 years old that is thought to depict the Darling River.^[2]

A map etched on a mammoth bone at Mezhyrich that is about 15,000 years old.

Dots dating to 14,500 BC found on the walls of the
Cuevas de El Castillo in Spain that contains a dot map of the Corona Borealis constellation dating from 12,000 BC.^[3]^[4]^[5]

A polished chunk of sandstone from a cave in Spanish Navarre, dated to 14,000 BC, that may be symbols for landscape features, such as hills or dwellings,^[6] superimposed on animal etchings. Alternatively, it may also represent a spiritual landscape, or simple incisings.^[7]^[8]

Another ancient picture that resembles a map that was created in the late 7th millennium BC in Çatalhöyük, Anatolia, modern Turkey. This wall painting may represent a plan of this Neolithic village;^[9] however, recent scholarship has questioned the identification of this painting as a map.^[10]

The "Saint-Bélec slab" (2200–1600 BC), whose lines and symbols have been argued to represent a cadastral plan of a part of western Brittany.^[11]

Ancient Near East

Clay tablet with map of the Babylonian city of Nippur (c. 1400 BC)

Maps in Ancient
cardinal directions.^[13] An engraved map from the Kassite period (14th–12th centuries BC) of Babylonian history shows walls and buildings in the holy city of Nippur.^[14]

The
Persians and Egyptians
, who were well known to the Babylonians. The area shown is depicted as a circular shape surrounded by water, which fits the religious image of the world in which the Babylonians believed.
Phoenician sailors made major advances in seafaring and exploration. It is recorded that the first circumnavigation of Africa was possibly undertaken by Phoenician explorers employed by Egyptian pharaoh Necho II c. 610–595 BC.^[15]^[16] In The Histories, written 431–425 BC, Herodotus cast doubt on a report of the Sun observed shining from the north. He stated that the phenomenon was observed by Phoenician explorers during their circumnavigation of Africa (The Histories, 4.42) who claimed to have had the Sun on their right when circumnavigating in a clockwise direction. To modern historians, these details confirm the truth of the Phoenicians' report, and even suggest the possibility that the Phoenicians knew about the spherical Earth model. However, nothing certain about their knowledge of geography and navigation has survived.^[15] The historian Dmitri Panchenko theorizes that it was the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa that inspired the theory of a spherical Earth by the 5th century BC.^[16]

Ancient Greece

Many scholars throughout history, such as
barbarians
and strange animals and monsters: Homer's Odyssey mentions a great many of these.
Additional statements about ancient geography are found in
Euxine (Black Sea), the coast of Gaul, the island of Sicily, and a few other regions and rivers.^[20] His advanced geographical knowledge not only had predated Greek colonial expansions, but also was used in the earliest Greek world maps, produced by Greek mapmakers such as Anaximander and Hecataeus of Miletus, and Ptolemy
using both observations by explorers and a mathematical approach.
Early steps in the development of intellectual thought in
Thales. He believed that the Earth was a cylindrical form, a stone pillar suspended in space.^[21] The inhabited part of his world was circular, disk-shaped, and presumably located on the upper surface of the cylinder.^[17]
^: 24
For constructing his world map, Anaximander is considered by many to be the first mapmaker.[22]^: 23 Little is known about the map, which has not survived. Hecataeus of Miletus (550–475 BC) produced another map fifty years later that he claimed was an improved version of the map of his illustrious predecessor.

The world according to Hekatæus, 500 BC

Hecatæus's map describes the Earth as disk with an encircling Ocean, and with Greece placed in the center. This was a very popular contemporary Greek worldview, derived originally from the Homeric poems. Also, similar to many other early maps in antiquity, his map has no scale. As units of measurements, this map used "days of sailing" on the sea and "days of marching" on dry land.^[23] The purpose of this map was to accompany Hecatæus's geographical work that was called Periodos Ges, or Journey Round the World.^[22]^: 24 Periodos Ges was divided into two books, "Europe" and "Asia", with the latter including Libya, the name of which was an ancient term for all of known Africa.
The work divides the world into two continents, Asia and Europe. Hecatæus depicts the line between the Pillars of Hercules through the Bosporus, and the Don River as a boundary between the two. He was the first writer known to have thought that the Caspian flows into the encircling ocean—an idea that persisted long into the Hellenic period. He was particularly instructive about the Black Sea, adding many geographic places that already were known to Greeks through the colonization process. To the north of the Danube, according to Hecatæus, were the
Persian
rule from 499 to 494 BC.

The world according to Anaximenes, c. 500 BC

Anaximenes of Miletus (6th century BC), who studied under Anaximander, rejected the views of his teacher regarding the shape of the Earth and instead, he visualized the Earth as a rectangular form supported by compressed air.
Pythagoras of Samos (c. 560–480 BC) speculated about the notion of a spherical Earth with a central fire at its core. He is sometimes incorrectly credited with the introduction of a model that divides a spherical Earth into five zones: one hot, two temperate, and two cold—northern and southern. This idea, known as the zonal theory of climate, is more likely to have originated at the time of Aristotle.^[25]

periploi, or sailing instructions, which became the basis for many future mapmakers, especially in the medieval period.^[26]

The way in which the geographical knowledge of the Greeks advanced from the previous assumptions of the Earth's shape was through Herodotus and his conceptual view of the world. This map also did not survive and many have speculated that it was never produced. A possible reconstruction of his map is displayed below.

The world according to Herodotus, 440 BC

Herodotus traveled extensively, collecting information and documenting his findings in his books on Europe, Asia, and Libya. He also combined his knowledge with what he learned from the people he met. Herodotus wrote his Histories in the mid-5th century BC. Although his work was dedicated to the story of long struggle of the Greeks with the Persian Empire, Herodotus also included everything he knew about the geography, history, and peoples of the world. Thus, his work provides a detailed picture of the known world of the 5th century BC.
Herodotus rejected the prevailing view of most 5th-century BC maps that the Earth is a disk surrounded by ocean. In his work he describes the Earth as an irregular shape with oceans surrounding only Asia and Africa. He introduces names such as the Atlantic Sea, and the
Bosphorus and the area between the Caspian Sea and the Indus River. He regarded the Nile
as the boundary between Asia and Africa. He speculated that the extent of Europe was much greater than was assumed at the time and left Europe's shape to be determined by future research.
In the case of Africa, he believed that, except for the small stretch of land in the vicinity of Suez, the continent was in fact surrounded by water. However, he definitely disagreed with his predecessors and contemporaries about its presumed circular shape. He based his theory on the story of Pharaoh
Phoenicians to circumnavigate Africa. Apparently, it took them three years, but they certainly did prove his idea. He speculated that the Nile River started as far west as the Ister River
(Danube) in Europe and cut Africa through the middle. He was the first writer to assume that the Caspian Sea was separated from other seas and he recognised northern Scythia as one of the coldest inhabited lands in the world.
Similar to his predecessors, Herodotus also made mistakes. He accepted a clear distinction between the civilized Greeks in the center of the Earth and the barbarians on the world's edges. In his Histories it is clear that he believed that the world became stranger and stranger when one traveled away from Greece, until one reached the ends of the Earth, where humans behaved as savages.
While various previous Greek philosophers presumed the Earth to be spherical, Aristotle (384–322 BC) is credited with proving the Earth's sphericity. His arguments may be summarized as follows:

The lunar eclipse is always circular

Ships seem to sink as they move away from view and pass the horizon

Some stars can be seen only from certain parts of the Earth.

Hellenistic Mediterranean

A vital contribution to mapping the reality of the world came with a scientific estimate of the circumference of the earth. This event has been described as the first scientific attempt to give geographical studies a mathematical basis. The man credited for this achievement was
Hellenistic North Africa. As described by George Sarton, historian of science, "there was among them [Eratosthenes's contemporaries] a man of genius but as he was working in a new field they were too stupid to recognize him".^[27] His work, including On the Measurement of the Earth and Geographica, has only survived in the writings of later philosophers such as Cleomedes and Strabo. He was a devoted geographer who set out to reform and perfect the map of the world. Eratosthenes argued that accurate mapping, even if in two dimensions only, depends upon the establishment of accurate linear measurements. He was the first to calculate the Earth's circumference (within 0.5 percent accuracy).^[28] His great achievement in the field of cartography was the use of a new technique of charting with meridians, his imaginary north–south lines, and parallels, his imaginary west–east lines.^[29] These axis lines were placed over the map of the Earth with their origin in the city of Rhodes and divided the world into sectors. Then, Eratosthenes used these earth partitions to reference places on the map. He also divided Earth into five climatic regions which was proposed at least as early as the late sixth or early fifth century BC by Parmenides: a torrid zone across the middle, two frigid zones at extreme north and south, and two temperate bands in between.^[30] He was likely also the first person to use the word "geography".^[31]

Roman Empire

Pomponius Mela

Reconstruction of Pomponius Mela's world map.

Pomponius Mela is unique among ancient geographers in that, after dividing the earth into five zones, of which two only were habitable, he asserts the existence of antichthones, inhabiting the southern temperate zone inaccessible to the folk of the northern temperate regions from the unbearable heat of the intervening torrid belt. On the divisions and boundaries of Europe, Asia and Africa, he repeats Eratosthenes; like all classical geographers from Alexander the Great (except Ptolemy) he regards the Caspian Sea as an inlet of the Northern Ocean, corresponding to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea on the south.

Marinus of Tyre

Main article: Marinus of Tyre

Geographia
.

Marinus's geographical treatise is lost and known only from Ptolemy's remarks. He introduced improvements to the construction of maps and developed a system of nautical charts. His chief legacy is that he first assigned to each place a proper

Cape Verde Islands. He used the parallel of Rhodes for measurements of latitude. Ptolemy mentions several revisions of Marinus's geographical work, which is often dated to AD 114 although this is uncertain. Marinus estimated a length of 180,000 stadia for the equator, roughly corresponding^[a]

to a circumference of the Earth of 33,300 km, about 17% less than the actual value.

He also carefully studied the works of his predecessors and the diaries of travelers. His maps were the first in the

Isles of the Blessed (around the Canaries) to Shera (China). Marinus also coined the term Antarctic, referring to the opposite of the Arctic Circle

.

Ptolemy

perspective projection, and suggested precise methods for fixing the position of geographic features on its surface using a coordinate system with parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude.^[6]^[36]

Ptolemy's eight-volume atlas

GIS

. It included an index of place-names, with the latitude and longitude of each place to guide the search, scale, conventional signs with legends, and the practice of orienting maps so that north is at the top and east to the right of the map—an almost universal custom today.
Yet with all his important innovations, however, Ptolemy was not infallible. His most important error was a miscalculation of the circumference of the Earth. He believed that Eurasia covered 180° of the globe, which convinced Christopher Columbus to sail across the Atlantic to look for a simpler and faster way to travel to India. Had Columbus known that the true figure was much greater, it is conceivable that he would never have set out on his momentous voyage.

Tabula Peutingeriana

Modern version of the Roman Tabula Peutingeriana (5th century).

In 2007, the Tabula Peutingeriana, a 12th-century replica of a 5th-century road map, was placed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register and displayed to the public for the first time. Although the scroll is well preserved and believed to be an accurate copy of an authentic original, it is on media that is now so delicate that it must be protected at all times from exposure to daylight.^[37]

China

Main articles:
Chinese geography and Cartography of China

The earliest known maps to have survived in China date to the 4th century BC.[38]^: 90 In 1986, seven ancient Chinese maps were found in an archeological excavation of a Qin State tomb in what is now Fangmatan, in the vicinity of Tianshui City, Gansu.^[38]^: 90 Before this find, the earliest extant maps that were known came from the Mawangdui Han tomb excavation in 1973, which found three maps on silk dated to the 2nd century BC in the early Han dynasty.^[38]^: 90, 93 The 4th-century BC maps from the State of Qin were drawn with black ink on wooden blocks.^[38]^: 91 These blocks fortunately survived in soaking conditions due to underground water that had seeped into the tomb; the quality of the wood had much to do with their survival.^[38]^: 91 After two years of slow-drying techniques, the maps were fully restored.^[38]^: 91
The territory shown in the seven Qin maps overlap each other.^[38]^: 92 The maps display tributary river systems of the Jialing River in Sichuan, in a total measured area of 107 by 68 km.^[38]^: 92 The maps featured rectangular symbols encasing character names for the locations of administrative counties.^[38]^: 92 Rivers and roads are displayed with similar line symbols; this makes interpreting the map somewhat difficult, although the labels of rivers placed in order of stream flow are helpful to modern day cartographers.^[38]^: 92–93 These maps also feature locations where different types of timber can be gathered, while two of the maps state the distances in mileage to the timber sites.^[38]^: 93 In light of this, these maps are perhaps the oldest economic maps in the world since they predate Strabo's economic maps.^[38]^: 93
In addition to the seven maps on wooden blocks found at Tomb 1 of Fangmatan, a fragment of a paper map was found on the chest of the occupant of Tomb 5 of Fangmatan in 1986. This tomb is dated to the early
Western Han, so the map dates to the early 2nd century BC. The map shows topographic features such as mountains, waterways and roads, and is thought to cover the area of the preceding Qin Kingdom.^[39]^[40]

Earliest geographical writing

In China, the earliest known geographical Chinese writing dates back to the 5th century BC, during the beginning of the
Han River were known (along with the southern parts of modern-day Shanxi).^[41]
^: 500

Earliest known reference to a map (圖 tú)

The oldest reference to a map in China comes from the 3rd century BC.
Crown Prince Dan of Yan had his assassin Jing Ke visit the court of the ruler of the State of Qin, who would become the first leader to unify China, Qin Shi Huang (r. 221–210 BC). Jing Ke was to present the ruler of Qin with a district map painted on a silk scroll, rolled up and held in a case where he hid his assassin's dagger.^[41]^: 534 Handing to him the map of the designated territory was the first diplomatic act of submitting that district to Qin rule.^[41]^: 534 Jing then tried and failed to kill him. From then on, maps were frequently mentioned in Chinese sources.^[41]
^: 535

Han dynasty

An early Western Han dynasty (202 BC – 9 AD) silk map found in tomb 3 of Mawangdui Han tombs site, depicting the Kingdom of Changsha and Kingdom of Nanyue in southern China (note: the south direction is oriented at the top, north at the bottom).

The three Han dynasty maps found at
graduated scale and rectangular grid system for maps would not be used—or at least described in full—until the 3rd century (see Pei Xiu below).^[38]^: 93–94 Among the three maps found at Mawangdui was a small map representing the tomb area where it was found, a larger topographical map showing the Han's borders along the subordinate Kingdom of Changsha and the Nanyue kingdom (of northern Vietnam and parts of modern Guangdong and Guangxi), and a map which marks the positions of Han military garrisons that were employed in an attack against Nanyue in 181 BC.^[42]

An early text that mentioned maps was the Rites of Zhou.^[41]^: 534 Although attributed to the era of the Zhou dynasty, its first recorded appearance was in the libraries of Prince Liu De (c. 130 BC), and was compiled and commented on by Liu Xin in the 1st century AD. It outlined the use of maps that were made for governmental provinces and districts, principalities, frontier boundaries, and even pinpointed locations of ores and minerals for mining facilities.^[41]^: 534 Upon the investiture of three of his sons as feudal princes in 117 BC, Emperor Wu of Han had maps of the entire empire submitted to him.^[41]^: 536
From the 1st century AD onwards, official Chinese historical texts contained a geographical section (地理纪; Diliji), which was often an enormous compilation of changes in place-names and local administrative divisions controlled by the ruling dynasty, descriptions of mountain ranges, river systems, taxable products, etc.

Shu Jing forward, Chinese geographical writing provided more concrete information and less legendary element. This example can be seen in the 4th chapter of the Huainanzi (Book of the Master of Huainan), compiled under the editorship of Prince Liu An in 139 BC during the Han dynasty (202 BC–202 AD). The chapter gave general descriptions of topography in a systematic fashion, given visual aids by the use of maps (di tu) due to the efforts of Liu An and his associate Zuo Wu.^[41]^{: 507–508} In Chang Chu's Hua Yang Guo Chi ("Historical Geography of Sichuan") of 347, not only rivers, trade routes, and various tribes were described, but it also wrote of a 'Ba June Tu Jing' ("Map of Sichuan"), which had been made much earlier in 150.^[41]

^: 517

Local mapmaking such as the one of

Southern and Northern Dynasties that the Liang dynasty (502–557) cartographers also began carving maps into stone steles (alongside the maps already drawn and painted on paper and silk).^[41]

^: 543

Pei Xiu, the 'Ptolemy of China'

In the year 267,

plotted geometrical grid and graduated scale displayed on the surface of maps to gain greater accuracy in the estimated distance between different locations.^[41]^{: 538–540} Pei outlined six principles that should be observed when creating maps, two of which included the rectangular grid and the graduated scale for measuring distance.^[41]^{: 539–540} Western historians compare him to the Greek Ptolemy for his contributions in cartography.^[41]^: 540 However, Howard Nelson states that, although the accounts of earlier cartographic works by the inventor and official Zhang Heng (78–139) are somewhat vague and sketchy, there is ample written evidence that Pei Xiu derived the use of the rectangular grid reference from the maps of Zhang Heng.^[43]

^: 359

Later Chinese ideas about the quality of maps made during the Han dynasty and before stem from the assessment given by Pei Xiu.[38]^: 96 Pei Xiu noted that the extant Han maps at his disposal were of little use since they featured too many inaccuracies and exaggerations in measured distance between locations.^[38]^: 96 However, the Qin State maps and Mawangdui maps of the Han era were far superior in quality than those examined by Pei Xiu.^[38]^: 96 It was not until the 20th century that Pei Xiu's 3rd-century assessment of earlier maps' dismal quality would be overturned and disproven. The Qin and Han maps did have a degree of accuracy in scale and pinpointed location, but the major improvement in Pei Xiu's work and that of his contemporaries was expressing topographical elevation on maps.^[38]^: 97

Sui dynasty

In the year 605, during the Sui dynasty (581–618), the Commercial Commissioner Pei Ju (547–627) created a famous geometrically gridded map.^[41]^: 543 In 610 Emperor Yang of Sui ordered government officials from throughout the empire to document in gazetteers the customs, products, and geographical features of their local areas and provinces, providing descriptive writing and drawing them all onto separate maps, which would be sent to the imperial secretariat in the capital city.^[41]^: 518^[44]^: 409–10

Tang dynasty

The

Abbasid period (refer to article on Tang dynasty

for more).

Song dynasty

Classic of History

, dated 5th century BC.

During the

Wade-Giles

spelling):

Yuan Hsieh (d. +1220) was director-general of governmental grain stores. In pursuance of his schemes for the relief of famines he issued orders that each pao (village) should prepare a map which would show the fields and mountains, the rivers and the roads in fullest detail. The maps of all the pao were joined together to make a map of the tu (larger district), and these in turn were joined with others to make a map of the hsiang and the hsien (still larger districts). If there was any trouble about the collection of taxes or the distribution of grain, or if the question of chasing robbers and bandits arose, the provincial officials could readily carry out their duties by the aid of the maps.[41]^: 518

Like the earlier Liang dynasty stone-stele maps (mentioned above), there were large and intricately carved stone stele maps of the Song period. For example, the 3 ft (0.91 m) squared stone stele map of an anonymous artist in 1137, following the grid scale of 100 li squared for each grid square.^[41]^{: Plate LXXXI} What is truly remarkable about this map is the incredibly precise detail of coastal outlines and river systems in China (refer to Needham's Volume 3, Plate LXXXI for an image). The map shows 500 settlements and a dozen rivers in China, and extends as far as Korea and India. On the reverse, a copy of a more ancient map uses grid coordinates in a scale of 1:1,500,000 and shows the coastline of China with great accuracy.^[46]

The famous 11th-century scientist and polymath statesman Shen Kuo (1031–1095) was also a geographer and cartographer.^[41]^: 541 His largest atlas included twenty three maps of China and foreign regions that were drawn at a uniform scale of 1:900,000.^[47] Shen also created a three-dimensional raised-relief map using sawdust, wood, beeswax, and wheat paste, while representing the topography and specific locations of a frontier region to the imperial court.^[47] Shen Kuo's contemporary, Su Song (1020–1101), was a cartographer who created detailed maps to resolve a territorial border dispute between the Song dynasty and the Liao dynasty.^[48]

Yuan dynasty (Mongol Empire)

In the

Khubilai's ambassador and minister, Bolad, had helped Rashid's works in relation to the Mongols and Mongolia.^[50] Thanks to Pax Mongolica, the easterners and the westerners in Mongol dominions were able to gain access to one another's geographical materials.^[51] The Mongols required the nations they conquered to send geographical maps to the Mongol headquarters.^[52]^[53]

One of medieval Persian work written in northwest Iran can clarify the historical geography of Mongolia where Genghis Khan was born and united the Mongol and Turkic nomads as recorded in native sources, especially the Secret History of the Mongols.^[54]

Map of relay stations, called "yam", and strategic points existed in the Yuan dynasty.^[51] The Mongol cartography was enriched by traditions of ancient China and Iran which were now under the Mongols.

Because the Yuan court often requested the western Mongol khanates to send their maps, the Yuan dynasty was able to publish a map describing the whole Mongol world in c.1330. This is called "Hsi-pei pi ti-li tu". The map includes the Mongol dominions including 30 cities in Iran such as

Ispahan and the Ilkhanid capital Soltaniyeh, and Russia (as "Orash") as well as their neighbors, e.g. Egypt and Syria.^[55]

Ming dynasty

The Da Ming Hun Yi Tu map, dating c. 1390, exists in multicolour format.

The multicolour map,

strip map dated to the voyages of Zheng He.^[62]

In 1579, Luo Hongxian published the Guang Yutu atlas, including more than 40 maps, a grid system, and a systematic way of representing major landmarks such as mountains, rivers, roads and borders. The Guang Yutu incorporates the discoveries of the naval explorer Zheng He's 15th-century voyages along the coasts of China, Southeast Asia, India and Africa.^[46]

Qing dynasty

From the 16th and 17th centuries, several examples survive of maps focused on cultural information. Gridlines are not used on either

contour lines.^[41]^: 546 Although topographic features were part of maps in China for centuries, a Fujian county official Ye Chunji (1532–1595) was the first to base county maps using on-site topographical surveying and observations.^[63]

Japan and Korea

In 1402, Yi Hoe and Kwan Yun created a world map largely based from Chinese cartographers called the Gangnido map. It is currently one of the oldest surviving world maps from East Asia.^[64] Another notable pre-modern map is the Cheonhado map developed in Korea in the 17th century.^[65]

Sekisui Nagakubo produced a world map in 1785 called the Comprehensive Map and Description of the Geography of the Myriad Countries of the Globe (地球萬國山海輿地全圖說), mainly deriving it from an earlier map made by Matteo Ricci. The production was made by woodblock print and folded into paper boards, he made corrections and additions on top of Matteo's production. This was one of the earliest maps with longitude and latitude information in Japan and was written in Katakana.^[66]

Another well-known cartographer of the late-Edo period was Ino Tadataka, he is known for completing the first map of Japan using modern surveying techniques.^[67] His most famous work, the Dai Nihon Enkai Yochi Zenzu (大日本沿海輿地全図) consisted of three large map pages at a scale of 1:432,000 and it showed the entire country on eight pages at 1:216,000. Some of his maps are accurate to 1/1000 of a degree, which allowed it to become the definitive maps used in Japan for nearly a century. Maps based on his work were in use as late as 1924.

India

Nain Singh Rawat (19th century) received a Royal Geographical Society

gold medal in 1876.

Ancient India

Indian cartographic traditions covered the locations of the Pole star and other constellations of use.^[68]^: 330 These charts may have been in use by the beginning of the Common Era for purposes of navigation.^[68]^: 330

Detailed maps of considerable length describing the locations of settlements, sea shores, rivers, and mountains were also made.^[68]^: 327 The 8th-century scholar Bhavabhuti conceived paintings which indicated geographical regions.^[68]^: 328

Italian scholar Francesco Lorenzo Pullè reproduced a number of ancient Indian maps in his magnum opus La Cartografia Antica dell'India.

Dravidian people of India.^[68]

^: 330

Mughal era

Maps from the

Mughal document detailing India's history and traditions, contain references to locations indicated in earlier Indian cartographic traditions.^[68]^: 327 Another map describing the kingdom of Nepal, four feet in length and about two and a half feet in breadth, was presented to Warren Hastings.^[68]^: 328 In this map the mountains were elevated above the surface, and several geographical elements were indicated in different colors.^[68]

^: 328

The scholar Sadiq Isfahani of Jaunpur compiled an atlas of the parts of the world which he held to be 'suitable for human life'.^[69] The 32 sheet atlas—with maps oriented towards the south as was the case with Islamic works of the era—is part of a larger scholarly work compiled by Isfahani during 1647 CE.^[69] According to Joseph E. Schwartzberg (2008): 'The largest known Indian map, depicting the former Rajput capital at Amber in remarkable house-by-house detail, measures 661 × 645 cm.^[70] (260 × 254 in., or approximately 22 × 21 ft).'^[70]

Islamic cartographic schools

Arab and Persian cartography

In the Middle Ages, Muslim scholars continued and advanced on the mapmaking traditions of earlier cultures. Most used Ptolemy's methods; but they also took advantage of what explorers and merchants learned in their travels across the Muslim world, from Spain to India to Africa, and beyond in trade relationships with China, and Russia.^[26]

An important influence in the development of

caliph, al-Ma'mun, who reigned from 813 to 833. He commissioned several geographers to remeasure the distance on earth that corresponds to one degree of celestial meridian. Thus his patronage resulted in the refinement of the definition of the mile used by Arabs (mīl in Arabic) in comparison to the stadion used by Greeks. These efforts also enabled Muslims to calculate the circumference of the earth. Al-Mamun also commanded the production of a large map of the world, which has not survived,^[71]^: 61–63 though it is known that its map projection type was based on Marinus of Tyre rather than Ptolemy.^[72]

^: 193

Also in the 9th century, the

Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī (973–1048) later developed ideas which are seen as an anticipation of the polar coordinate system.^[74] Around 1025, he describes a polar equi-azimuthal equidistant projection of the celestial sphere.^[75]^: 153 However, this type of projection had been used in ancient Egyptian star-maps and was not to be fully developed until the 15 and 16th centuries.^[76]

In the early 10th century,

al-Muqaddasi and Ibn Hawqal, produced world atlases, each one featuring a world map and twenty regional maps.^[72]

^: 194

Suhrāb, a late 10th-century Muslim geographer, accompanied a book of geographical

Qazwini, who based it on the work of Suhrāb. The orthogonal parallel lines were separated by one degree intervals, and the map was limited to Southwest Asia and Central Asia. The earliest surviving world maps based on a rectangular coordinate grid are attributed to al-Mustawfi in the 14th or 15th century (who used invervals of ten degrees for the lines), and to Hafiz-i Abru (died 1430).^[72]

^: 200–01

Ibn Battuta (1304–1368?) wrote "Rihlah" (Travels) based on three decades of journeys, covering more than 120,000 km through northern Africa, southern Europe, and much of Asia.

Islamic regional cartography

Islamic regional cartography is usually categorized into three groups: that produced by the "

Balkhī school", the type devised by Muhammad al-Idrisi, and the type that are uniquely found in the Book of curiosities.^[71]

The maps by the Balkhī schools were defined by political, not longitudinal boundaries and covered only the Muslim world. In these maps the distances between various "stops" (cities or rivers) were equalized. The only shapes used in designs were verticals, horizontals, 90-degree angles, and arcs of circles; unnecessary geographical details were eliminated. This approach is similar to that used in

Harry Beck.^[71]

^: 85–87

Al-Idrīsī defined his maps differently. He considered the extent of the known world to be 160° in longitude, and divided the region into ten parts, each 16° wide. In terms of latitude, he portioned the known world into seven 'climes', determined by the length of the longest day. In his maps, many dominant geographical features can be found.[71]

Book on the appearance of the Earth

Geography, consisting of a list of 2402 coordinates of cities and other geographical features following a general introduction.^[77]

Al-Khwārizmī,

Abū Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdānī and Habash al-Hasib al-Marwazi at Ujjain, a centre of Indian astronomy, and by another anonymous writer at Basra.^[72]

^: 189

Al-Biruni

trigonometric calculations based on the angle between a plain and mountain top which yielded more accurate measurements of the Earth's circumference and made it possible for it to be measured by a single person from a single location.^[79]^[80]^[81] Al-Biruni's method's motivation was to avoid "walking across hot, dusty deserts" and the idea came to him when he was on top of a tall mountain in India (present day Pind Dadan Khan, Pakistan).^[81] From the top of the mountain, he sighted the dip angle which, along with the mountain's height (which he calculated beforehand), he applied to the law of sines formula. This was the earliest known use of dip angle and the earliest practical use of the law of sines.^[80]^[81]

Around 1025, Al-Biruni was the first to describe a polar equi-azimuthal equidistant projection of the celestial sphere.^[82]

In his Codex Masudicus (1037), Al-Biruni theorized the existence of a landmass along the vast ocean between Asia and Europe, or what is today known as the Americas. He deduced its existence on the basis of his accurate estimations of the

specific gravity, from which he deduced that the geological processes that gave rise to Eurasia must've also given rise to lands in the vast ocean between Asia and Europe. He also theorized that the landmass must be inhabited by human beings, which he deduced from his knowledge of humans inhabiting the broad north–south band stretching from Russia to South India and Sub-Saharan Africa, theorizing that the landmass would most likely lie along the same band.^[83]^[84] He was the first to predict "the existence of land to the east and west of Eurasia, which later on was discovered to be America and Japan".^[84]

Tabula Rogeriana

The

Arab merchants and explorers with the information inherited from the classical geographers to create the most accurate map of the world in pre-modern times.^[85] With funding from Roger II of Sicily (1097–1154), al-Idrisi drew on the knowledge collected at the university of Cordoba and paid draftsmen to make journeys and map their routes. The book describes the earth as a sphere with a circumference of 22,900 miles (36,900 km) but maps it in 70 rectangular sections. Notable features include the correct dual sources of the Nile, the coast of Ghana and mentions of Norway. Climate zones were a chief organizational principle. A second and shortened copy from 1192 called Garden of Joys is known by scholars as the Little Idrisi.^[26]

On the work of al-Idrisi, S. P. Scott commented:[85]

The compilation of Edrisi marks an era in the history of science. Not only is its historical information most interesting and valuable, but its descriptions of many parts of the earth are still authoritative. For three centuries geographers copied his maps without alteration. The relative position of the lakes which form the Nile, as delineated in his work, does not differ greatly from that established by Baker and Stanley more than seven hundred years afterwards, and their number is the same. The mechanical genius of the author was not inferior to his erudition. The celestial and terrestrial planisphere of silver which he constructed for his royal patron was nearly six feet in diameter, and weighed four hundred and fifty pounds; upon the one side the zodiac and the constellations, upon the other—divided for convenience into segments—the bodies of land and water, with the respective situations of the various countries, were engraved.
— S. P. Scott, History of the Moorish Empire in Europe

Al-Idrisi's atlas, originally called the Nuzhat in Arabic, served as a major tool for Italian, Dutch and French mapmakers from the 16th century to the 18th century.^[86]

Piri Reis map of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman cartographer Piri Reis published navigational maps in his Kitab-ı Bahriye. The work includes an atlas of charts for small segments of the mediterranean, accompanied by sailing instructions covering the sea. In the second version of the work, he included a map of the Americas.^[71]^: 106 The Piri Reis map drawn by the Ottoman cartographer Piri Reis in 1513, is one of the oldest surviving maps to show the Americas.^[87]^{: 268–272}^[88]^[89]^[90]

Medieval Europe

Medieval maps and the Mappa Mundi

Medieval maps of the world in Europe were mainly symbolic in form along the lines of the much earlier

Mappa Mundi (cloths or charts of the world) these maps were circular or symmetrical cosmological diagrams representing the Earth's single land mass as disk-shaped and surrounded by ocean.^[6]

Italian cartography and the birth of portolan charts

References

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External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Historical maps.

Imago Mundi journal of History of Cartography

The History of Cartography journal published by the University of Chicago Press

Euratlas Historical Maps History maps from year zero AD

The History of Cartography Project at the University of Wisconsin, a comprehensive research project in the history of maps and mapping

Three volumes of The History of Cartography are available free in PDF format

The history of cartography at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St. Andrews, Scotland

Mapping History – a learning resource from the British Library

Modern Medieval Map Myths: The Flat World, Ancient Sea-Kings, and Dragons

Concise Bibliography of the History of Cartography Archived 26 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Newberry Library

Newberry Library Cartographic Catalog : map catalog and bibliography of the history of cartography

American Geographical Society Library Digital Map Collection

David Rumsey Historical map collection licensed under a Creative Commons License

See
Maps
for more links to historical maps; however, most of the largest sites are listed at the sites linked below.

Eratosthenes Map of the Earth, and Measuring of its Circumference at Convergence

Ancient World Maps

A listing of over 5000 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar

Historical Atlas in Persuasive Cartography, The PJ Mode Collection, Cornell University Library

Old Maps Online

[33] For a value of a 185 m or 607 ft per stadion.

[106] See the discussion in Gerardus Mercator#Duisburg 1552–1594

[1] ISSN 1790-3769
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[3] "Ice Age star map discovered". BBC News. 9 August 2000.

[4] "Astronomical Artefacts and Cuneiform Tablets, etc". Web Site For Gary D. Thompson, West Melton, Australia. Archived from the original on 30 January 2007. Retrieved 15 May 2008.

[5] "Published scientific papers – MR". Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies. Archived from the original on 28 August 2008. Retrieved 15 May 2008.

[autogenerated4-6] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Frenz, Thomas. "Tutorials in the History of Cartography – Overview". Archived from the original on 6 July 2006.

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[8] PMID 19625071
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[9] "henrydavis.com – Ancient Images". Henry Davis Consulting.

[10] Meece, Stephanie (2006). "A bird's eye view – of a leopard's spots. The Çatalhöyük 'map' and the development of cartographic representation in prehistory". DSpace @ Cambridge.

[11] Clement Nicolas, Yvan Pailler, Pierre Stéphan, Julie Pierson, Laurent Aubry, et al.. La carte et le territoire : la dalle gravée du Bronze ancien de Saint-Bélec (Leuhan, Finistère). Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française, Société préhistorique française, 2021, 118 (1), pp.99–146. Online at https://www.prehistoire.org/shop_515-47906-5446-800/04-2021-tome-118-1-p.-99-146-c.-nicolas-y.-pailler-p.-stephan-j.-pierson-l.-aubry-b.-le-gall-b.-le-gall-v.-lacombe-j.-rolet-la-carte-et-le-territoire-la-dalle-gravee-du-bronze-ancien-de-saint-belec-leuhan-finistere.html

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[14] "Ancient map of Nippur, Kassite period". The Nippur Expedition. Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. Archived from the original on 5 September 2008. Retrieved 20 June 2006.

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Etymology

Pre-modern era

Earliest known maps

Ancient Near East

Ancient Greece

Hellenistic Mediterranean

Roman Empire

Pomponius Mela

Marinus of Tyre

Ptolemy

Tabula Peutingeriana

China

Earliest geographical writing

Earliest known reference to a map (圖 tú)

Han dynasty

Pei Xiu, the 'Ptolemy of China'

Sui dynasty

Tang dynasty

Song dynasty

Yuan dynasty (Mongol Empire)

Ming dynasty

Qing dynasty

Japan and Korea

India

Ancient India

Mughal era

Islamic cartographic schools

Arab and Persian cartography

Islamic regional cartography

Book on the appearance of the Earth

Al-Biruni

Tabula Rogeriana

Piri Reis map of the Ottoman Empire

Medieval Europe

Medieval maps and the Mappa Mundi

Italian cartography and the birth of portolan charts

Majorcan cartographic school and the "normal" portolan chart

Polynesian stick charts

Modern era

Iberian cartography in the Age of Exploration

First maps of the Americas

Padrón Real of the Spanish Empire

German cartography

Dutch and Flemish cartography

French cartography

Paris as the center of cartography

Dieppe school of cartographers

18th-century developments

19th-century developments

20th-century developments

Contemporary developments

Software development

Historical map collections

Self-publishing tools and collaborative mapping

Organizations

History of cartography's technological changes

See also

Related histories

Notes

Citations

References

External links