Origins
History of Maps and Cartography 🏆
Course 1 · Chapter 1 · Why Maps? Scope & Sources
A map looks like a picture of the world, but it is better described as an argument about it. Every map leaves things out, chooses a scale, picks a viewpoint and decides what counts as worth showing. This first chapter asks what a map is, looks at the earliest surviving examples and at non-European traditions, and sets out how the course will treat the many "firsts" and myths that surround the history of mapping. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".
What Is a Map?
A model, not a copy
A map is a simplified model of a place, made for a purpose. A road map, a geological map and a tourist sketch of the same city differ because they answer different questions (check the examples you meet).
Four choices
Every map involves a scale (how much is shown), symbols (what marks stand for), an orientation (which way is up) and a projection if it shows a curved Earth on a flat sheet (Chapter 5).
North is a convention
Placing north at the top is a habit that became standard in Europe, not a law. Medieval European maps often put east at the top, and many maps from other traditions use other orientations (check examples; see Chapter 3).
The Earliest Maps
| Object (check each) | Note |
|---|---|
| Çatalhöyük wall painting, about 6000 BC | A painting from a Neolithic town in Anatolia has been called the oldest map, as a plan of the town with a volcano behind. Many scholars doubt that it is a map at all (check the debate). |
| Mammoth-tusk carving from Mezhyrich, Ukraine | Ice Age carvings have been interpreted as plans of settlements or rivers. These readings are possible but unproven (check). |
| Turin Papyrus, about 1150 BC | An Egyptian drawing of a gold-mining area in the eastern desert, often called the oldest surviving map with a clear practical purpose (check the date). |
| The Babylonian "world map", about 600 BC | A clay tablet in the British Museum shows a circular world with Babylon at the centre, surrounded by water, with accompanying cuneiform text (check). It is often called the oldest known world map. |
| Chinese maps from Fangmatan, third century BC | Maps drawn on wooden boards found in a tomb in Gansu, among the oldest known Chinese maps (check). |
Other Ways of Mapping
- Marshall Islands stick charts. Navigators made charts from sticks and shells showing the pattern of ocean swells around islands, used to teach rather than carried at sea (check how they were used).
- Inuit coastal carvings. Wooden carvings from East Greenland show coastlines that can be read by touch, even in the dark or on a boat (check the history of the collection).
- Songlines and oral maps. Some Aboriginal Australian traditions record routes and landmarks in songs and stories (check; this is a cultural practice, and sources should come from the communities and scholars who work with them).
- The lesson. Maps need not be drawn on paper. A map is any tool that records spatial knowledge for others to use.
Scope of the Course
| Part (check) | Chapters | Topics |
|---|---|---|
| Ancient and medieval maps | 2, 3 | Greek geographers, Ptolemy, Roman roads, mappae mundi, portolan charts, Islamic mapmakers |
| Print, discovery and projection | 4, 5 | Waldseemüller, Mercator, Ortelius, how to flatten a sphere |
| Surveying and the sea | 6, 7 | National surveys, the Ordnance Survey, charts and longitude |
| Maps as argument and the digital age | 8, 9 | Thematic maps, the London Underground map, propaganda, satellites, GPS, web maps |
| Capstone | 10 | The map is not the territory |
The course is global in outline and keeps to Europe, the Islamic world and the British Isles for most of its detail. It covers key maps and the arguments about them, not every atlas.
Myths to Test
| Common claim | The question a careful reader asks (check each) |
|---|---|
| Medieval people thought the Earth was flat. | What did educated medieval writers actually say about the shape of the Earth? (Chapter 3) |
| Columbus proved the Earth was round. | What was known before 1492, and what was disputed? (Chapter 4) |
| The Mercator map is "wrong". | For what purpose was it designed, and what does it distort? (Chapter 5) |
| Old maps showed sea monsters because people believed in them. | What were monsters used for on maps? (Chapters 3 and 4) |
| John Snow's map ended cholera. | What did the map show, and what did it not do? (Chapter 8) |
| Satellites made maps neutral. | Who decides what a digital map shows? (Chapter 9) |
Sources to Use
- Libraries and museums, such as the British Library, the National Library of Scotland map collection with its online map viewer, and the Library of Congress (check names and what is online).
- Scholarly histories, notably the multivolume History of Cartography series, much of it available online (check).
- The maps themselves, read closely: who made them, for whom, when and with what source.
- Surveying and mapping agencies, whose histories explain how national maps were made (check which are available).
Exercises
Choose a map you know (a road map, a tube map, a school atlas page) and list what it shows, what it leaves out, its scale, its symbols and its orientation.
Choose one "oldest map" claim from the table and write a short plan for testing it: what evidence you would look for and where.
Explain why the Marshall Islands stick charts and an Ordnance Survey sheet are both maps, and what they have in common.
Quick Reference
- A map: a purposeful model with scale, symbols, orientation and projection
- Earliest: Egyptian mining map, Babylonian world map, early Chinese maps (check)
- Other forms: stick charts, carved coasts, songlines
- Method: mark what is documented, claimed or unknown
- The caution: "oldest" and "first" claims rest on definitions