The history of cartography

You want an ice cream? It’s on me. Yeah, vanilla cone, please. Hey… Where is the ice cream shop? Okay.

I’ll draw a map. Here we are. Here’s the road. And the crossroads there, make a right, and then walk past the farm and continue past the pasture with the cows. Here is a gas station, but if you see it...

Maybe the very first maps people constructed were drawings made in the sand with a stick. Or maybe drawings in a cave on the wall. The oldest known map was painted on a wall in Turkey, 8000 years ago - a map of the town Catal Huyuk. And there are preserved maps from Egypt and Iraq that are more than 3000 years old. Often they are made with clay sheets.

Later on, they tried to make maps showing larger and larger areas to describe how to sail or walk to various marketplaces. But it was difficult to measure distances when they did not have the modern technology of today. Sometimes distances were estimated by how many days it took to march from one place to another, or how long it took to sail between two harbours. And the maps were drawn based on what people remembered from their journeys. Different travellers remembered different things, and sometimes they remembered wrong.

Of course, the maps became far from perfect. On some ancient maps, we can even see imaginary monsters, maybe after a travelling merchant spiced up his stories with a few extra fantasies. But the more stories they heard, the more accurate they could make the maps. And when they learned more about mathematics and astronomy, they could calculate the distance between cities and market places. The greek astronomist Ptolemy tried to draw a world map as early as around the year 100, with the help of mathematical calculations.

Parts of the map do not look at all familiar compared to a map of today, and the American continents were not even known to Ptolemy. But look at Europe and compare it to a modern map. The whole of the Mediterranean sea - with Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey - is very well described, as early as almost 2000 years ago. The Red Sea, here, is also accurately pictured. The map of Ptolemy was used for several hundred years by Arabic merchants when they travelled, both at sea and on land.

Later, Ptolemy’s map was used as a starting point when new improved maps were developed. Today, advanced technical devices are used when maps are made. Photos from airplanes and satellites mean we no longer need to trust someone’s memory when drawing a map. Instead, we can simply overlay the map on the satellite photo. And today, there are maps in most modern phones, which means we always bring detailed maps wherever we go.

And when you enter the marketplace - then you are there! Maps in the phone!? Why didn’t you tell me? Because it’s fun drawing in the sand.