Our fascination and curiosity about the world we inhabit is inherent in our human nature; it is why we have always endeavored to depict Earth and illustrate its features. Cartography is, hence, the art and science of graphically representing geographical areas, usually on a flat surface such as a map or chart; the difference being that maps apply to land and charts are for marine areas. It is a complex, ever-changing field; the process includes everything from the gathering, evaluation, and processing of source data, through the intellectual and graphical design of the map, to the drawing and reproduction of the final document. Thus, it is a unique mixture of science, art, and technology; it calls for a variety of in-depth knowledge and skills on the part of cartographers.
Maps perform a fundamental and indispensable role as one of the keystones of civilization; few activities relating to the Earth’s surface would be practicable without maps. Cartography has, thus, been inextricably tied to geography for most of its history; however, since the 20th century, it has diversified thanks to an increasingly digital modern world. Nevertheless, despite the advent of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the two disciplines do not compete with each other, but rather complement each other through a cross-disciplinary approach.
Cartography is an ancient discipline that dates back to prehistoric depictions of hunting and fishing territories. Mapping in early civilizations, such as Mesopotamia and Egypt, were linked to astronomy and what we then knew about the stars, geometry, and surveying. Surveying permitted the building of huge monuments, to plot how much land people owned and charge them taxes.
The discipline seemed to change little until the era of Greek civilization, which helped develop enormously the understanding of cartography as an important science for the society in general. They performed deep study of the size and shape of the Earth and its habitable areas, climatic zones, and country positions. Anaximander, for instance, was the first to draw a map of the known world; while Pythagoras of Samos speculated about the notion of a spherical Earth with a central fire at its core. Eratosthenes, already in the 3rd century BCE, contributed greatly to the history of geographic knowledge and the world map; unfortunately, we only have indirect references to this work through other authors such as Strabo from Elea, whose work is far better known in our time.
During Roman times, cartographers focused on practical uses; military and administrative needs to control the Empire economically and politically. Roman maps were more or less restricted to the area comprised by what they called Mare Nostrum, which was the core of the Roman Empire and around which all the administrative regions were distributed. The pinnacle of cartography during the Roman Empire was the map of the Roman world produced by Claudius Ptolemaeus, also known as Ptolemy.
The Babylonians mapped the world in a flattened, disk-shaped form, but Ptolemy established the basis for subsequent efforts in the 2nd century with his eight-volume Geōgraphikē hyphēgēsis (Guide to Geography), which showed a spherical Earth. Ptolemy’s Guide to Geography would remain the primary authority in Europe for the following 1400 years. Great strides were made in China and the Islamic world; the reasons for compiling maps often the same as in Europe. That is, for political purposes, to show the country or people in relation to the rest of the world, or predominance in relation to religious centers.
Muslim scholars continued and advanced on the traditional map-making of earlier cultures; they also started using the knowledge, notes, and writings of explorers and merchants from their travels across the Muslim world. There were advances in a more accurate definition of the measure units, in addition great efforts in attempting to describe and define the calculations of the circumference of the Earth. There were also numerous studies and methodologies to draw a system of meridians and parallels that helped greatly in the evolution of the science of cartography, as those created by Ibn Battuta or Al-Idrisi.
Tabula Rogeriana by Al-Idrisi is not just a map of the world, it is an extensively researched geographical text that covers natural features, ethnic and cultural groups, socioeconomic structures, and other characteristics of every area he mapped. This work was created for King Roger II of Sicily; Al-Idrisi drew upon his own extensive travels, interviews with explorers, and draftsmen paid to travel and map their routes. These maps describe the world as a sphere, and break it up into seventy different rectangular sections, each of which is discussed in exacting detail in the remainder of the Tabula.
Maps produced during the Middle Ages followed Ptolemy’s guide, but they used Jerusalem as the central feature and placed East at the top. Those representations are often named T-maps, because they show only three continents—Europe, Asia, and Africa—separated by the “T” formed by the Mediterranean Sea and the Nile River.
The Hereford Mappa Mundi is notable for being the largest Medieval map still in existence, as well as one of the most elaborately drawn and colored. One odd feature of the Hereford Map is that Europe is mislabeled as Africa, and vice versa. Though the Map is circular, experts do not think it is evidence that the cartographer believed in a flat Earth. Instead, the Hereford Mappa Mundi is widely regarded as being a type of projection, with the uninhabitable regions to the North and South omitted from the Map.
In 1579, China was the first country to develop a grid system to plot maps, and these were highly accurate compared to their contemporaries in Europe and the Islamic world. On the other hand, the discovery of the New World was a fierce battleground for the powers looking to claim as much of the land for themselves as they could; growing imperialism was as much about documenting claims to new lands as it was about making the physical claim on the ground.
A big advance in cartographic science came in 1569, with the publication of Mercator’s first maps. His mapping techniques were improved later in 1570, when Abraham Ortelius published his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, which for the first time, included maps based on the best available, purely contemporary information.
Gerardus Mercator’s Mercator Map is notable for being the first attempt to make a spherical Earth look “correct” on a flat surface. The problem inherent in representing a spherical shape on a flat plane is that things tend to be distorted. Lines of latitude and longitude, useful for navigating a globe, become warped and useless on a flat map. Mercator sought to account for this by keeping the lines straight, and distorting the size of objects closest to the Poles; the result was the Mercator projection, an invaluable tool for navigation at sea. As the Mercator projection allowed for straight lines, named loxodromes, it was much easier for ship navigators to use to chart a course, despite the trade-off of distortion.
The printing press made the process of publishing maps easier than it had been before when every map had to be produced and reproduced by hand. During the 17th and 18th centuries, there was a vast outpouring of printed maps of ever-increasing accuracy and sophistication. Systematic surveys were undertaken involving triangulation that greatly improved map reliability and precision. Noteworthy among the scientific methods introduced later was the use of the telescope for determining the length of a degree of longitude.
Modern cartography as we would understand it today began in the late 18th century. Interestingly, the development of cartography as a science is less to do with study for study’s sake, and more to do with warfare; topography has long been understood as an important aspect of infantry attacks and defense. Today, national organizations produce a variety of maps for different reasons and there is a much greater focus on accuracy and the transmittal of relevant information, depending on the type of map produced and the type of map needed.
At the beginning of the 20th century, aerial photography, and increasingly, satellite photographs changed the face of mapping once more. The procedures for translating photographic data into maps are governed by the principles of photogrammetry and yield a degree of accuracy previously unattainable. The remarkable improvements in satellite photography and the general availability on the Internet of satellite images have made possible the creation of Google Earth and other databases that are widely available online. Moreover, the use of GIS has been indispensable in expanding the scope of cartographic subjects.
Once seen as the products of a relatively straightforward practical exercise, maps are now viewed as complex intellectual images offering a rich potential for scientific investigation. Whether the thrust of the research is cognitive, mathematical, historical, perceptual, or technological, cartographers are exploiting this potential to the fullest.
References
britannica.com
cca-acc.org
environmentalscience.org
gislounge.com
theatlantic.com
The original article was published in SCIplanet, Earth Sciences (Spring 2017) Issue.
Cover image: Wikipedia Claudius Ptolemy- The World.jpg