History of Cartography - Early Maps Flashcards
To understand the present and think about the future we must….
Have knowledge of the past
Purpose and usage of maps have changed through time. What are some recurring themes in maps
- Representation/communication of land related information
- Navigation
- Taxation
- Military
- Planning
- Inventory
- Empowerment and influence
- Education
How has the purpose/usage of maps changed through time?
- Went from showing whats there, to military, to education
- Hand-drawn to printed
- Colourless to colourful
What was the role of ‘old’ maps?
- Decorative objects of antiquarian interest
- Repositories of information
- Sources for the reconstruction of past events or landscapes
- Important artefacts reflecting the development of science and technology
- History and development of geographic thought
Early record of maps
- Little evidence
- Early maps easily destroyed
- Drawn in sand or mud
- Made of decomposing material
- Deliberately destroyed on conquest (strategic, Library of Alexandria)
What is the importance of a craved map?
- Petroglyphs carved for permanency, signifies importance
- Took much effort and tools to create
How long ago were people making pictorial representations of our world?
~50,000
- Cave art, pictographs, petroglyphs
When was the Seradina Petroglyph made?
~2500BC
“Map of Bedolina”
When did pictorial representations begin to show spatial relationships and what are the examples?
- 3500BCE Maiskop Vase
- 600BCE Babylonian tablet
What is the Babylonian World Map (600BC)?
- Oldest surviving world map
- Carved on a clay tablet
- Very symbolic, religious, world view
- Missing Persians and Egyptians even though they were known to the Babylonians
What does it mean that the Persians and Egyptians were left off the Babylonian World Map from 600BC?
- Indicates silences and that silences have been around for as long as maps have
What is the Relief map of the Crown Prince Islands, Disco Bay Greenland?
- Map made on sealskin
- Carved rocks for relief
- Used for navigation
- Disposable, but important
What is the Marshall Islands ‘Stick Chart’
- Arrangement of sticks indicated patterns of swells or wave masses caused by winds
- Islands marked by shells or corals
- Polynesian navigation
- Only the maker could fully interpret
What is the benefit of using a wooden map?
- If it falls overboard, it’ll float!
Why were there no graticules or grids in the first maps? Why did early mapping assume a flat earth?
- Only familiar with small area, not entire globe
- Mapped what they knew well and what was important
- Didn’t need projections
- Gave idea that world was flat
What determined older maps creation?
- Local necessity, needs, and materials
Hecataeus c. 500BCE
- Map of mediterranean and surroundings
- Circumference of map is labelled as ocean because the rest was unknown
- Well done for technology of the time
Who were the people to change view of world from flat to round?
- Greeks (Thinkers, scientists)
-
Erathostenes
- 250 BCE
- Measured circumference of earth with a stick, a well, and a shadow
- Only off by 1.5%
Aristotle
- 350 BCE
- Ship and horizon argument
- Hinted Earth was not flat
- Position of Polaris walking from N to S
Ptolemy’s Geographica
- 90-160 CE
- Series of books and maps
- Writings on all geography, including cartography
- Potentially 1st GIS linking spatial attribute tables to places
- Lost for 1000 years
Ptolemy’s world map
- Map of Mediterranean and surrounding areas
- Accurate, not precise
- used projections and degrees
Ptolemy
- Writings on all geography, including cartography
- Started to build projections
- Developed gazetteers
What happened to Ptolemy’s Geographica?
- Mostly destroyed by church, no actual maps survived
- Lost for 1000 years during Dark Ages
- Some preserved by Arab scholars and scientists that fled from Europe
- Resurfaced in Renaissance and was still ahead of its time
- Maps redrawn by monks from Ptolemy’s works
Who and what were Ptolemy’s Geographica influential to?
- Columbus
- Colonial Expansion
- Led to reconstructions of the maps that profoundly influenced the cartography in Europe during the Renaissance
What was the Romans influence on Cartography?
- Drive was conquest and administration
- Surveyors more than cartographers
- Had survey equipment for perfect lines and 90 degree angles
- Techniques is same today, only technology has changed
What is a Groma?
- Roman Surveying instrument
- Vertical staff with horizontal cross pieces mounted on a bracket
- Each cross piece has a plumb line and plumb bob
- Purpose was to survey straight lines, squares, and rectangles
Tabula Peutingeriana
- Roman road map on a scroll
- Can be unrolled at any point
- Relative location is best characteristic
- 7.5m long, 30cm wide
- Scale of building size relates to settlement size
- Roads as straight as possible
- Demonstrates Roman power and control
What is a benefit to the Tabula Peutingeriana model of road map?
- Unrolling is more efficient than flipping pages around like modern road map booklet
Why did the Roman empire fall?
- Empire became to big to administer in 5th century
- Contained too many non-roman conquered people within
Mappae Mundi
Roman circular maps of the known world
Why did the Babylonians use a base 60 model?
- 60 is easily divisible and multipliable
- Good/easy for trade
- Used for degrees of circle, long and lat, etc.
What changed in the Dark Ages?
- Became Holy Roman Empire and church took control
- Church made science to fit doctrine
- World was flat in doctrine, not actually thought of as flat
- People didn’t move as much, travel difficult
- Era of threat, horizons closed in, poor communications
- Maps became more local
Mahmud al-Kashgari map
- 1074 world map as viewed y Turkish mapmaker Kashgari
- East on top, Mountains red, Sand yellow, Rivers grey-blue
- Mountains in centre represent heart of Asia
Who kept scientific cartography growing in the Dark Ages?
- Arabic scholars who retained Ptolemaic principles
- Idrisi is a famous example
Tabula Rogeriana
- Drawn for Roger II of Sicily
- World map 12th century by Idrisi
- Masterpiece of late Islamic cartography
- Abundance of detail and clarity surpasses all of its medieval predecessors (Christian and Muslim)
- Climatic zones outlined
- South at top of map
Why was north not at the top of early maps?
- Maps were more localized and didn’t need a global scale or orientation
- North simply wasn’t important, maps were oriented by what was important
Hereford Mappa Mundi
- Biggest extant medieval map
- 158cm by 133cm
- T in O map
- East on top, centered on Jerusalem
- Biblical events, Mythical events, in geographic locations
What is the translation of Mappa Mundae
Cloth World
- Map = Cloth
What was the purpose of many maps in the 12th-ish century and who commissioned them?
- Purpose was interest and administration, not navigation
- Commissioned by royals and novels who had their own cartographers
- Power and control theme again
T in O map
- Mediterranean is vertical part of T
- Don and Nile rivers are the T crosspiece
- T centered on Jerusalem
- T represents crucifix
- Whole is inside circular ocean O
- East is on top, where Heaven/paradise is
What was happening to cartography in Europe during the Dark Ages?
- A slow regression from the Roman and Greek attempts at accuracy to abstraction
- Back to Flat Earth, but only in doctrine
- Went from scholarly contemplation of projections and measurement to representing Earth as a graphic, not a map with Heaven at the top (the East)
- T in O maps, interpreted through Scriptures
What results from hand copying of maps over and over again?
- Mistakes that become thought of as truth because eventually the same mistake ends up on everything
- Some mistakes were purposeful in order to enforce doctrine
Map by Isidore of Seville
- T in O map
- 12th century
- East at top
- 3 continents are identified by Noah’s 3 sons (Europe with Japheth, Africa with Ham, Asia with Sem)
Ebstorf Mappa Mundi
- Simple circular world map
- Destroyed in WWII air raid
- Measured 3.5 square meters
- Biblical stories placed in geographic locations
- Religious Doctrine
- Oriented to east
- Center design depicts Resurrection in Jerusalem
- Head of Christ at top, feet at bottom, hands at the sides
Bunting Clover Leaf Map
- 1500’s
- World in a 3 leaf clover
- Jerusalem at centre surrounded by Europe, Asia, Africa
- Bit of America in corner of map
- ‘Here be mermaids and seamonsters’ design
- Modern clover design puts modern images into clover leaves
