Remapping the present Flashcards
What was the journey to mapping japan
In 1801, Ino Tadataka presented his progress to Shogunal Leaders, who were impressed with his work. They sent him to northern Honshu, to map out the Pacific Coastline of the island. This put him over 100 km mapped mark, and achieved his initial goal of mapping 1 degree latitude, which calculated to 110.75 km.
Over the next 2 years, Ino mapped out all of Eastern Coast of Japan, and started to move inwards. He showed his findings to shogun Tokugawa Ienari, who shocked by the insane progress, hired Ino as a worker.
Ino was sent to map out all of Western Japan Coastline, fully funded by the central Japanese government. While initially, this was predicted to take 5 years, due to rugged terrain and intricate shorelines, the project took over a decade to complete.
Over a total of 17 years, tens of thousands of kilometers, Ino Tadataka and his team managed to create the first fairly accurate map of Japan, and possibly the world.
Who was Ino Tadataka
Ino Tadataka was an eccentric wealthy Japanese who, upon retiring, aimed to map out Japan. He began this insane journey in 1800s, and while initially working with a small team, began growing his operation.
Oldest maps - Strabo’s Map
Year Created: Unknown – believed to be no earlier than 20 BCE
Country of Origin: Anatolia during the transitional period of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire (modern-day Turkey)
Creator: Greek geographer, historian, and philosopher Strabo
Materials Used: Ink and parchment
Area Depicted: The known world at the time to the ancient Greeks and Romans
Oldest maps - Eratosthenes’ Map
Year Created: c.276 – c.195/194 BCE
Country of Origin: Ancient Greece
Creator: Greek mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist Eratosthenes
Materials Used: Ink and parchment
Area Depicted: An improved map of the known world at the time to the ancient Greeks
Oldest Maps - Hecataeus’ Map
Year Created: c.550 – 476 BCE
Country of Origin: Ancient Greek city of Miletus (area in modern-day Turkey)
Creator: Greek historian and geographer Hecataeus
Materials Used: Unknown
Area Depicted: The known world at the time to ancient Greeks
Oldest Maps - Anaximander’s Map
Year Created: c.610 – 546 BCE
Country of Origin: Ancient Greek city of Miletus (area in modern-day Turkey)
Creator: Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Anaximander
Materials Used: Unknown for sure but possibly an etched rounded metal surface.
Area Depicted: The known world at the time to ancient Greeks
Oldest Maps - Babylonion’s Map of the World
Year Created: c.6th century BCE
Country of Origin: Babylon, Iraq
Creator: Unknown
Materials Used: Engraved clay tablet
Area Depicted: The known world at the time to Ancient Babylonians
Oldest maps - Turin Papyrus Map
Year Created: c.1160 BCE
Country of Origin: Egypt
Creator: Egyptian scribe Amennakhte
Materials Used: Drawings on papyrus
Area Depicted: Topographical map of Wadi Hammamat
Oldest Maps - Abauntuz Lamizulo Rock Map
Year Created: c.14,000 BCE
Country of Origin: Navarre, Spain
Creator: Unknown – possibly Magdalenian hunter-gatherers
Materials Used: Engraved rock
Area Depicted: Area around Abauntz Lamizulo cave and animals such as red deer and ibex
Oldest maps - Lascaux Cave Star Map
Year Created: c.17,000 BCE
Country of Origin: near Montignac, France
Creator: Unknown
Area Depicted: Area around Abauntz Lamizulo cave and animals such as red deer and ibex
Oldest maps - Mammoth Tusk Map
Year Created: c.25,000 BCE
Country of Origin: Pavlov, Czech Republic
Creator: Unknown
Materials Used: Engraved mammoth tusk
Area Depicted: Mountains, rivers, valleys, and routes around ancient Pavlov
Google maps business loss
The business of google maps is getting eaten up by social media apps like tiktok and instagram. Instead of young people going to the well curated and research databases of Google, they flock to the visually appealing world of social media, where large influencers hold the most control over which restaurants are popular and which get no attention.
Benifits of using a globe over regular surface maps
Using a globe over a map can have numerous benefits, such as accurate representation, better visualization of Earth’s geometry, improved perspective, etc. Despite these advantages, globes have some limitations, such as being impractical for large-scale mapping, difficult to measure, challenging to see the entire world at once, and less portable compared to folding maps.
Area-preserving projection
Also called equal area or equivalent projection, these projections maintain the relative size of different regions on the map.
Shape-preserving projection
Often referred to as conformal or orthomorphic, these projections maintain accurate shapes of regions and local angles.
Direction-preserving projection
This category includes conformal, orthomorphic, and azimuthal projections, which preserve directions, but only from the central point for azimuthal projections.
Distance-preserving projection
Known as equidistant projections, they display the true distance between one or two points and all other points on the map.
Cylindrical Projections:
These projections involve wrapping a cylinder around the Earth and projecting its features onto the cylindrical surface. Examples are the Mercator, Transverse Mercator, and Miller Cylindrical projections.
Conic Projections
For these projections, a cone is placed over the Earth, and its features are projected onto the conical surface. Common examples are the Lambert Conformal Conic and Albers Equal-Area Conic projections.
Azimuthal Projections:
Also referred to as planar or zenithal projections, these use a flat plane that touches the Earth at a single point, projecting the Earth’s features onto the plane. Azimuthal Equidistant, Stereographic, and Orthographic projections are examples.
Pseudocylindrical Projections
These projections resemble cylindrical projections but employ curved lines instead of straight lines for meridians and parallels. The Sinusoidal, Mollweide, and Goode Homolosine projections are popular examples.
Blue Marble Earth photos
December 7, 1972 was the first time a photo encompassing all of Earth was taken. This photo was named the Blue Marble. It was taken from the Apollo 17 mission, on the way to the Moon. This image showed Earth as a vulnerable planet, with no borders or divisions. Taken by a Hasselblad camera, it was extremely high quality and accurate.
This image served as a representation of many environmental movements, pushing humans to work to protect this planet, rather than fight for it. This was during the time of the cold war, and by showing our one planet, humbled people into working together.
Pale Blue Dot Earth photo
February 14, 1990. A photo of Earth, as a pale blue dot was taken. The photo was taken 6 billion kilometers away from us, and showed Earth as what it was, a tiny spec of mass floating in infinite space.
This photo was taken from Voyager 1, an unmanned mission traveling as far away from Earth as possible. Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, and traveled over 13 years before taking the famous pale blue dot photo.
This photo was another humbling experience for humanity. Everyone we know, everything we have, every human being is on that tiny, microscopic dot. All of our lives are lived on that dot, every good, bad, happy, sad moment was on that dot.
Importance of photos of earth from afar
Photos like this do not show things that humans consider to be very important- such as national boundaries. However, they can highlight which regions are less economically developed than the others. This can be done by seeing which parts of the world go dark at night. These images do this by repeatedly scanning the same scene a lot of times and identifying pixels by different light levels using technology known as VIIRS . It is shown that continents- South America and Africa are the least lit up continents, which can reflect their economic status as well.
The above photo was taken by a NASA satellite, NOAA.
