Image of the earth, seas or stars projected on a flat surface. Its contents represent the distribution of a variety of phenomena in space: continents and oceans, mountains and flatlands, rivers and lakes, countries and their subdivisions, cities and towns. Through much of history the central part of a map represented the known and faded outward into the unknown. This phenomenon of decreasing knowledge and accuracy was doubtless responsible for the cartographer's tendency to fill unknown spaces with imaginary creatures, monsters of sea and land, ships on the seas, rulers and cities on land. Jonathan Swift summed up this characteristic of maps in his On Poetry (177-80):So Geographers in Afric-Maps With Savage-Pictures fill their Gaps; And o'er unhabitable Downs Place Elephants for want of Towns. The earliest decorative-artistic elements on maps are anthropomorphic representations of the principal winds. On a 10th-century world map, in a manuscript of Isidore of Seville's Etymologia (Rome, Vatican, Bib. Apostolica, MS. Reg. Lat. 1260, fol. 39), the four principal winds are represented in the four corners of the map, each riding what appears to be a leather sack. This particular image can be plausibly traced back to the cave of winds of Aeolus in the Odyssey. Winds continued to be part of the artistic vocabulary of cartographers until well into the 16th century. Artistic details on maps may be defined as serving one or more of these purposes: to embellish an otherwise purely utilitarian, linear image of the earth; to provide representations of man and his works as well as creatures of man's imagination; and last, but not least, as Swift defined it, to fill in the blank spaces.
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For much of history commanders were impeded by lack of topographical information. ‘Bela IV of Hungary and Ottokar II of Bohemia were in arms in 1260, ’ wrote Sir Charles Oman, ‘and both were equally bent on fighting, but when they sighted each other it was only to find that the River March was between them.’ Before the battle of Kolin in 1757 Frederick ‘the Great’ told his generals: ‘Gentlemen, many of you must still remember this neighbourhood from the time we stood here in 1742. I am certain I have the plan somewhere, but Major von Griese cannot find it.’
Early maps were drawn on stone, wood-bark, and hide, and an example from about 500 bc, impressed on a clay tablet, shows the world with Babylon in its centre. Both Romans and Greeks saw the world as a flat disc with the Aegean in its centre and the east uppermost, surrounded by sea. The Romans had trained geometers (agrimensores) and surveyed their roads, many of which led to distant garrisons. Few maps of the period have survived, but among them is a Roman shield bearing a map of part of the Black Sea coast.
The maps of medieval Europe, influenced by the Church's view of a flat earth, reflected first Roman and Greek, and then Islamic and Byzantine cartography, including Ptolemy's Geographia. World maps remained inaccurate, but detailed work, based on observation and survey, was surprisingly good: by the 15th century coastal and harbour charts were available. The first printed maps were produced then, and the great discoveries of the next century improved the quality of world maps, with globes appearing in the 16th century and consideration being given to ways in which the detail of a round earth could be projected onto a flat map.
By the 17th century most governments regarded mapping as an essential component of the modern state. In 1683 England's Chief Engineer was expected ‘to be well-skilled in all the parts of the Mathematicks, more particularly in Stereometry, Altemetry, and Geodoesia. To take distances, Heights, Depths, Surveys of Land … to draw and design the situation of any place’. In Britain surveying was in the hands of the Board of Ordnance, which also controlled the artillery and the engineers: maps are still produced by the Ordnance Survey. The French ingénieurs-géographes, absorbed into the engineers proper in 1831, were responsible for mapping, and their products were housed in the Dépot de la Guerre, which combined the functions of an intelligence bureau with those of a map and statistical service. The USA had its Topographical Engineers, and its General Survey Act of 1824 further blurred the distinction between military and civilian engineering by encouraging the use of military engineers on a variety of projects, including the exploration and mapping of the West.
It was not until the mid-19th century that maps were available to armies in useful quantities. During the Napoleonic wars commanders procured maps from a variety of sources, and in the Hundred Days one British general used a historical map, stuck to linen to give it durability. Strategic blunders were reflected in map issue. In 1870 the French army had a sketch map of ‘routes leading to the Rhine’ but few maps of eastern France in which it actually fought.
The whole of Europe was accurately mapped by the end of the 19th century, and colonial powers had turned their attention to Africa, Asia, and India. In 1881 the British War Office began numbering its maps in sequence, and in 1909 nomenclature changed to include the annotation Geographical Section, General Staff, which survives as the abbreviation GSGS on modern British service maps. Standardization appeared only gradually. For example, British cartographers favoured showing height by means of contour lines while the French preferred hachures. Scales varied, and while maps like the 1: 250, 000 series of South Africa were valuable for planning, they were less useful for navigation. When operations during WW I became static, maps reflected this by becoming more detailed. The British army took 1: 80, 000 maps to France with it, but was soon using trench maps with a scale of 1: 10, 000.
During WW I armies improved cartographic techniques, using air photographs to supplement survey. They also became adept at producing maps for issue right down the chain of command: when the Canadian Corps (see Canadian Expeditionary Forces) took Arras/Vimy Ridge in 1917 it had on average one map for each of its soldiers. Britain alone issued about 34 million maps for use on the western front. Maps enabled artillery to produce accurate indirect fire, and the techniques developed by the then Brig Gen Tudor in 1917, which involved the accurate survey of the gun position, reduced the need for preliminary ‘registration’ of targets. Maps had long been gridded with lines of latitude and longitude, and the practice of gridding them in accordance with their scale and numbering these lines (northings and eastings) enabled users to give references to indicate locations on the map.
Subsequent developments have both increased the accuracy of maps and enabled armies to produce them more rapidly. Not least among the achievements of Patton's army, which swung north to counter-attack during the battle of the Bulge in 1944, was the manufacture and issue of thousands of maps of the new sector. Even at the end of the 20th century, when Global Positioning Systems make accurate navigation far easier than ever before and the partial automation of indirect fire has reduced dependence on maps, they still play a fundamental role in military affairs.
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A cartographic representation of specifically chosen spatial information. The information is transmitted through images constructed from symbols. We tend to restrict the term to visual maps, but spatial information may be represented on a computer screen, through braille, or verbally through spoken description, and these categories of spatial representation may also be described as maps.Map reading is the process whereby people interpret and analyse map images, and an understanding of the physical and psychological means used in map reading helps cartographers to improve the maps they produce. See also mental map.
A graphic, planar depiction of the earth’s surface, or a portion thereof, drawn to scale.
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In Homer's time (c. 800 BCE), the map of the world showed the continental mass formed by parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe surrounded by a vast body of water, Oceanus. Herodotus, however, felt that the Homeric world had too much water and not enough land. To balance things out, he replaced Oceanus with a great desert.
Symmetry was an overriding concern of the Greeks. For example, they noted that a line drawn between the Nile and the Danube would give a somewhat symmetrical version of the known world. But they obtained even more symmetry by carrying Pythagorean ideas over; that is, that Earth must be a sphere. Plato accepted this on purely geometrical grounds, but Aristotle offered a variety of proofs of sphericity from observation. Later Greek geographers accepted the spherical Earth as a matter of course and worked from there.
The Greek belief in symmetry resulted in the accidental insight that there must be a great continent in the Southern Hemisphere. Since the Greeks knew there was a great land mass in the Northern Hemisphere, they believed it must be balanced by one to the south. Pomponius Mela, writing about 43 CE, made Ceylon the northern tip of a very large Antichthones ("counterEarth"). This large continent was later known as terra australis nondum cognita ("the undiscovered southern continent"). By the 15th century, maps showed that Terra Australis had attached itself to southern Africa, effectively barring ships from reaching the East by sailing around Africa. When Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1487, however, Terra Australis began to shrink.
Some maps from early in the 16th century, notably a Turkish map from 1513 and the Orantes Pinnaeus world map of 1532, show Antarctica of about the right size and location. Even the bays and mountain ranges are close to where they are now known to be. Some people think that these were copied from truly ancient maps prepared by a seafaring people who had sailed the globe. It is more probable that among the many versions of Terra Australis, these came closest to the truth.
Another persistent tradition is that some maps before the time of Columbus and Magellan correctly located the Americas. The Portuguese who first reached Java are supposed to have seen a map there that showed South America. The Vinland map of the Northern Hemisphere, dated at about 1440 CE, shows North America. The question of whether it is a fake is still hotly debated, with one side finding the ink right for the 15th century and another finding the ink too modern.
The discovery of the north coast of Australia by Europeans (it may have been known to the Chinese as early as the 13th century) would seem to have justified the belief in a giant southern continent, but in the mid-17th century Abel Tasman circumnavigated Australia, shrinking the southern continent once again. Even in the 18th century, however, people continued to believe in the existence of the continent at the South Pole, arguing from the same premise of symmetry as had the Greeks. Alexander Dalrymple was the particular champion of the "Great Southern Continent," but he was passed over on the British government's expedition to find it. Instead, the expedition was put under the leadership of Captain James Cook. While the official purpose of Cook's voyage was to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti, Cook also had secret orders to find the Great Southern Continent.
Cook's first voyage (1768-71) located New Zealand, but circumnavigation showed that it was not the missing continent. In 1772 he started out again, this time with location of the continent as his major goal. Cook reached within 75 miles of Antarctica but failed to find land. He concluded that the Great Southern Continent was either a myth or so close to the pole as to be beyond navigation. Finally, in the 19th century, various explorers reached land and the true nature of Antarctica gradually became known. The world map was finally complete on the basis of exploration, not just theoretical ideas.
Symmetry was an overriding concern of the Greeks. For example, they noted that a line drawn between the Nile and the Danube would give a somewhat symmetrical version of the known world. But they obtained even more symmetry by carrying Pythagorean ideas over; that is, that Earth must be a sphere. Plato accepted this on purely geometrical grounds, but Aristotle offered a variety of proofs of sphericity from observation. Later Greek geographers accepted the spherical Earth as a matter of course and worked from there.
The Greek belief in symmetry resulted in the accidental insight that there must be a great continent in the Southern Hemisphere. Since the Greeks knew there was a great land mass in the Northern Hemisphere, they believed it must be balanced by one to the south. Pomponius Mela, writing about 43 CE, made Ceylon the northern tip of a very large Antichthones ("counterEarth"). This large continent was later known as terra australis nondum cognita ("the undiscovered southern continent"). By the 15th century, maps showed that Terra Australis had attached itself to southern Africa, effectively barring ships from reaching the East by sailing around Africa. When Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1487, however, Terra Australis began to shrink.
Some maps from early in the 16th century, notably a Turkish map from 1513 and the Orantes Pinnaeus world map of 1532, show Antarctica of about the right size and location. Even the bays and mountain ranges are close to where they are now known to be. Some people think that these were copied from truly ancient maps prepared by a seafaring people who had sailed the globe. It is more probable that among the many versions of Terra Australis, these came closest to the truth.
Another persistent tradition is that some maps before the time of Columbus and Magellan correctly located the Americas. The Portuguese who first reached Java are supposed to have seen a map there that showed South America. The Vinland map of the Northern Hemisphere, dated at about 1440 CE, shows North America. The question of whether it is a fake is still hotly debated, with one side finding the ink right for the 15th century and another finding the ink too modern.
The discovery of the north coast of Australia by Europeans (it may have been known to the Chinese as early as the 13th century) would seem to have justified the belief in a giant southern continent, but in the mid-17th century Abel Tasman circumnavigated Australia, shrinking the southern continent once again. Even in the 18th century, however, people continued to believe in the existence of the continent at the South Pole, arguing from the same premise of symmetry as had the Greeks. Alexander Dalrymple was the particular champion of the "Great Southern Continent," but he was passed over on the British government's expedition to find it. Instead, the expedition was put under the leadership of Captain James Cook. While the official purpose of Cook's voyage was to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti, Cook also had secret orders to find the Great Southern Continent.
Cook's first voyage (1768-71) located New Zealand, but circumnavigation showed that it was not the missing continent. In 1772 he started out again, this time with location of the continent as his major goal. Cook reached within 75 miles of Antarctica but failed to find land. He concluded that the Great Southern Continent was either a myth or so close to the pole as to be beyond navigation. Finally, in the 19th century, various explorers reached land and the true nature of Antarctica gradually became known. The world map was finally complete on the basis of exploration, not just theoretical ideas.
Early maps were drawn on stone, wood-bark, and hide, and an example from about 500 bc, impressed on a clay tablet, shows the world with Babylon in its centre. Both Romans and Greeks saw the world as a flat disc with the Aegean in its centre and the east uppermost, surrounded by sea. The Romans had trained geometers (agrimensores) and surveyed their roads, many of which led to distant garrisons. Few maps of the period have survived, but among them is a Roman shield bearing a map of part of the Black Sea coast.
The maps of medieval Europe, influenced by the Church's view of a flat earth, reflected first Roman and Greek, and then Islamic and Byzantine cartography, including Ptolemy's Geographia. World maps remained inaccurate, but detailed work, based on observation and survey, was surprisingly good: by the 15th century coastal and harbour charts were available. The first printed maps were produced then, and the great discoveries of the next century improved the quality of world maps, with globes appearing in the 16th century and consideration being given to ways in which the detail of a round earth could be projected onto a flat map.
By the 17th century most governments regarded mapping as an essential component of the modern state. In 1683 England's Chief Engineer was expected ‘to be well-skilled in all the parts of the Mathematicks, more particularly in Stereometry, Altemetry, and Geodoesia. To take distances, Heights, Depths, Surveys of Land … to draw and design the situation of any place’. In Britain surveying was in the hands of the Board of Ordnance, which also controlled the artillery and the engineers: maps are still produced by the Ordnance Survey. The French ingénieurs-géographes, absorbed into the engineers proper in 1831, were responsible for mapping, and their products were housed in the Dépot de la Guerre, which combined the functions of an intelligence bureau with those of a map and statistical service. The USA had its Topographical Engineers, and its General Survey Act of 1824 further blurred the distinction between military and civilian engineering by encouraging the use of military engineers on a variety of projects, including the exploration and mapping of the West.
It was not until the mid-19th century that maps were available to armies in useful quantities. During the Napoleonic wars commanders procured maps from a variety of sources, and in the Hundred Days one British general used a historical map, stuck to linen to give it durability. Strategic blunders were reflected in map issue. In 1870 the French army had a sketch map of ‘routes leading to the Rhine’ but few maps of eastern France in which it actually fought.
The whole of Europe was accurately mapped by the end of the 19th century, and colonial powers had turned their attention to Africa, Asia, and India. In 1881 the British War Office began numbering its maps in sequence, and in 1909 nomenclature changed to include the annotation Geographical Section, General Staff, which survives as the abbreviation GSGS on modern British service maps. Standardization appeared only gradually. For example, British cartographers favoured showing height by means of contour lines while the French preferred hachures. Scales varied, and while maps like the 1: 250, 000 series of South Africa were valuable for planning, they were less useful for navigation. When operations during WW I became static, maps reflected this by becoming more detailed. The British army took 1: 80, 000 maps to France with it, but was soon using trench maps with a scale of 1: 10, 000.
During WW I armies improved cartographic techniques, using air photographs to supplement survey. They also became adept at producing maps for issue right down the chain of command: when the Canadian Corps (see Canadian Expeditionary Forces) took Arras/Vimy Ridge in 1917 it had on average one map for each of its soldiers. Britain alone issued about 34 million maps for use on the western front. Maps enabled artillery to produce accurate indirect fire, and the techniques developed by the then Brig Gen Tudor in 1917, which involved the accurate survey of the gun position, reduced the need for preliminary ‘registration’ of targets. Maps had long been gridded with lines of latitude and longitude, and the practice of gridding them in accordance with their scale and numbering these lines (northings and eastings) enabled users to give references to indicate locations on the map.
Subsequent developments have both increased the accuracy of maps and enabled armies to produce them more rapidly. Not least among the achievements of Patton's army, which swung north to counter-attack during the battle of the Bulge in 1944, was the manufacture and issue of thousands of maps of the new sector. Even at the end of the 20th century, when Global Positioning Systems make accurate navigation far easier than ever before and the partial automation of indirect fire has reduced dependence on maps, they still play a fundamental role in military affairs.
Bibliography
- Oman, C. W. C., The Art of War in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1953)
— Richard Holmes
Oxford Dictionary of Geography:map |
Columbia Encyclopedia:map |
map, conventionalized representation of spatial phenomena on a plane surface. Unlike photographs, maps are selective and may be prepared to show various quantitative and qualitative facts, including boundaries, physical features, patterns, and distribution. Each point on such a map corresponds to a geographical position in accordance with a definite scale and projection (see map projection). Maps may also represent such comparative data as industrial power, population density, and birth and death rates. The earliest European printed maps (2d half of the 15th cent.) were made from woodcuts; maps are now reproduced by several processes, including photoengraving, wax engraving, and lithography. See also chart.Ancient Mapmaking
Cartography, or mapmaking, antedates even the art of writing. Diagrams of areas familiar to them were made by Marshall Islanders, Eskimo, Native Americans, and many other preliterate peoples. Maps drawn by ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, and Chinese have been found. The oldest known map, now on exhibition in the Semitic Museum of Harvard, is a Babylonian clay tablet dating from c.2500 B.C. Our present system of cartography was established by the Greeks, who remained unexcelled until the 16th cent. Scientific measurements of earth distances by means of meridians and parallels were first made by Eratosthenes (3d cent. B.C.). Of the ancient scholars, the mathematician and geographer Ptolemy (2d cent. A.D.), expounded on the principles of cartography; his system was followed for many centuries, although his basic error in underestimating the earth's size was not corrected until the age of Mercator. Only the Mediterranean world was represented with any accuracy in early maps. During the Middle Ages, while European cartographers produced artistic, idealized maps, Arabic mapmakers, notably Idrisi (12th cent.), carried on the work of Ptolemy, and the Chinese produced the first printed maps.
Cartography in the Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries
Three major events contributed to the spectacular renaissance of cartography in Europe around 1500-the rediscovery and translation into Latin of Ptolemy's Geographia, the invention of printing and engraving, and the great voyages of discovery. This renaissance was manifested by the work of Gerardus Mercator in the first modern world atlas, published in 1570 by Abraham Ortelius, and by the decorative, paintinglike maps of the French Sanson family (17th cent.). Improvements in the methods of surveying and increased emphasis on accuracy led to the noted work in the 18th cent. of the Frenchmen Guillaume Delisle and J. B. B. d'Anville, the founders of modern cartography. After 1750 many European governments undertook the systematic mapping of their countries. The first important national survey was made in France (published 1756), followed by the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain (published 1801) and the topographic survey of Switzerland (organized 1832). In the United States the U.S. Geological Survey (established 1879) has mapped much of the country on varying scales.
During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
During the 19th cent. the demand for national maps was fulfilled, and famous world atlases were published. But with the advent of the 20th cent. the need arose for an international map of the world on a uniform scale. Accordingly, at several meetings of the International Geographical Congress (1891, 1909, 1913), the German Albrecht Penck presented and perfected plans for a world map on a scale of 1:1,000,000, to consist of about 1,500 sheets, each covering four degrees of latitude and six degrees of longitude in a modified conic projection. Uniformity of lettering and the use of layer tints to indicate relief were agreed upon. However, only part of the work has been completed. The greatest single contribution to the map of the world was made by the American Geographical Society of New York, which completed (1945) its 107-sheet Map of Hispanic America.
During World Wars I and II the science and art of mapping were greatly advanced. Modern technology, using remote sensing by airborne and satellite radar, as well as devices called multispectral scanners, has made it possible to quickly collect and update information for mapmaking. Computerized geographic information systems, first developed in the 1960s, now are used to link information stored in databases to maps, increasing and varying the amount of information a map can display. Such systems are used to produce maps for business use, law enforcement, natural-disaster prediction, and many other purposes. In recent years the critical cartography movement, led by a group of British scholars, notably the late J. B. Harley, has studied maps as sociopolitical constructs that interpret reality and reflect the historical power structure as well as their makers' ideas about the world.
Cartography, or mapmaking, antedates even the art of writing. Diagrams of areas familiar to them were made by Marshall Islanders, Eskimo, Native Americans, and many other preliterate peoples. Maps drawn by ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, and Chinese have been found. The oldest known map, now on exhibition in the Semitic Museum of Harvard, is a Babylonian clay tablet dating from c.2500 B.C. Our present system of cartography was established by the Greeks, who remained unexcelled until the 16th cent. Scientific measurements of earth distances by means of meridians and parallels were first made by Eratosthenes (3d cent. B.C.). Of the ancient scholars, the mathematician and geographer Ptolemy (2d cent. A.D.), expounded on the principles of cartography; his system was followed for many centuries, although his basic error in underestimating the earth's size was not corrected until the age of Mercator. Only the Mediterranean world was represented with any accuracy in early maps. During the Middle Ages, while European cartographers produced artistic, idealized maps, Arabic mapmakers, notably Idrisi (12th cent.), carried on the work of Ptolemy, and the Chinese produced the first printed maps.
Cartography in the Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries
Three major events contributed to the spectacular renaissance of cartography in Europe around 1500-the rediscovery and translation into Latin of Ptolemy's Geographia, the invention of printing and engraving, and the great voyages of discovery. This renaissance was manifested by the work of Gerardus Mercator in the first modern world atlas, published in 1570 by Abraham Ortelius, and by the decorative, paintinglike maps of the French Sanson family (17th cent.). Improvements in the methods of surveying and increased emphasis on accuracy led to the noted work in the 18th cent. of the Frenchmen Guillaume Delisle and J. B. B. d'Anville, the founders of modern cartography. After 1750 many European governments undertook the systematic mapping of their countries. The first important national survey was made in France (published 1756), followed by the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain (published 1801) and the topographic survey of Switzerland (organized 1832). In the United States the U.S. Geological Survey (established 1879) has mapped much of the country on varying scales.
During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
During the 19th cent. the demand for national maps was fulfilled, and famous world atlases were published. But with the advent of the 20th cent. the need arose for an international map of the world on a uniform scale. Accordingly, at several meetings of the International Geographical Congress (1891, 1909, 1913), the German Albrecht Penck presented and perfected plans for a world map on a scale of 1:1,000,000, to consist of about 1,500 sheets, each covering four degrees of latitude and six degrees of longitude in a modified conic projection. Uniformity of lettering and the use of layer tints to indicate relief were agreed upon. However, only part of the work has been completed. The greatest single contribution to the map of the world was made by the American Geographical Society of New York, which completed (1945) its 107-sheet Map of Hispanic America.
During World Wars I and II the science and art of mapping were greatly advanced. Modern technology, using remote sensing by airborne and satellite radar, as well as devices called multispectral scanners, has made it possible to quickly collect and update information for mapmaking. Computerized geographic information systems, first developed in the 1960s, now are used to link information stored in databases to maps, increasing and varying the amount of information a map can display. Such systems are used to produce maps for business use, law enforcement, natural-disaster prediction, and many other purposes. In recent years the critical cartography movement, led by a group of British scholars, notably the late J. B. Harley, has studied maps as sociopolitical constructs that interpret reality and reflect the historical power structure as well as their makers' ideas about the world.
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