Cartography

Lore & Background

Cartography is the study and practice of making and using maps, blending science, aesthetics, and technique to model reality or imagined realities for effective spatial communication. Traditional cartography pursues several fundamental objectives: setting the map’s agenda and selecting traits of the object to be mapped, known as map editing; representing terrain on flat media through map projections; eliminating irrelevant characteristics and reducing complexity, both aspects of generalization; and orchestrating map elements to best convey a message, termed map design. The history of cartography is ancient and diverse.

The earliest known maps are debated, but a wall painting possibly depicting the Anatolian city of Çatalhöyük dates to the late 7th millennium BCE. Prehistoric alpine rock carvings from the 4th millennium BCE show geometric patterns interpreted as cultivated plots. Ancient examples include a Minoan wall painting of a seaside community and an engraved map of the Babylonian city of Nippur.

The oldest surviving world maps, from 9th-century BCE Babylonia, show Babylon on the Euphrates surrounded by a “bitter river.” Ancient Greeks and Romans created maps from the 6th century BCE, with Ptolemy’s 2nd-century CE treatise Geographia containing a world map of the known Ecumene. Arab scholars translated Greek works from the 8th century. In ancient China, geographical literature dates to the 5th century BCE, with the oldest extant Chinese maps from the 4th-century BCE State of Qin. A star map on an equidistant cylindrical projection was published in 1092 by Su Song, representing the oldest printed star maps.

Medieval European mappa mundi survive in about 1,100 examples. The Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi produced the Tabula Rogeriana in 1154, combining classical and contemporary knowledge to create the most accurate world map for three centuries, divided into seven climatic zones. During the Age of Discovery, European cartographers copied earlier maps and created new ones based on explorers’ observations and improved surveying tools like the compass, telescope, and sextant.

Reader's Guide

In 1569, Gerardus Mercator first published a map based on his Mercator projection, which uses equally-spaced parallel vertical lines of longitude and parallel latitude lines spaced farther apart as they get farther away from the equator. Mercator is also credited as the first to use the word 'atlas' to describe a collection of maps. In the later years of his life, Mercator resolved to create his Atlas, a book filled with many maps of different regions of the world, as well as a chronological history of the world from the Earth's creation by God until 1568.

He was unable to complete it to his satisfaction before he died. Still, some additions were made to the Atlas after his death, and new editions were published after his death. In 1570, the Brabantian cartographer Abraham Ortelius, strongly encouraged by Gillis Hooftman, created the first true modern atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.