With the advent of writing, the world suddenly got a lot
smaller. People no longer depended on first-hand experience or word of mouth to
know about far away places. People depended on maps.
The earliest surviving map of the world is the Babylonian World Map (circa 600 BCE). It was made of clay and inscribed with cuneiform letters. This map deliberately omits the Persians and the Egyptians, which causes scholars to believe that it is symbolic and religious in nature.
The known world was also modeled by the Greeks who mapped out the known world and surrounded it with water, perhaps believing that there was nothing else out there.Over time, maps became more detailed and more realistic. Explorers made careful notes in order to tell map makers how to draw them more accurately. People began to realize just how useful these maps could be to future travelers.
Nowadays, we have satellite imaging to tell us exactly how the earth looks from above. We don't rely on an artist's rendition to tell us how to reach the nearest city, instead we see an actual photograph! I downloaded Google Maps to my phone the other day and I am disgusted by how detailed the images are! You can even get a "street view" at certain intersections! Map making has come a long way.
Through today's technology, I've explored the city of Dubai and I've walked the streets of Paris. The world is suddenly not quite so big and not so very far away.
Nice choice of topic Jake. I think it's important for us to remember the other effects writing had on ancient societies rather than just traditional works of literature, and maps are a great example of that.
ReplyDeleteI remember learning about Lewis and Clark in school (I'm from St. Louis..Gateway to the West so we learned quite a bit about them).
ReplyDeleteLewis and Clark were essentially the first to create maps of the West. Which is absolutely amazing since they do not have any birds eye view. They just looked around them as they traveled and created these maps.
Any maps that predate the time we were finally able to have a birds eye view of everything is a masterpiece.
Of course often times the map would omit or include certain things that wouldn't exactly be correct like the omission of Persians and Egyptians you talked about.
The birds eye view of places to me is only interesting if I am the person who is getting to view area from super high up. Looking a map of the world that is drawn from people observing the world is the way that I find things interesting. Something about the earth that I think is super cool is that there was a man who used obilesks in two different towns with the sun at the zeneth to figure out the circumferance of the earth. With math and the observations cartogophers were able to guess at what the world looked like. Some times it is nice to leave so things up to the imagination about how it looks because when you actually get to see the amazing thing that you have been imagining it is actually not that amazing.
ReplyDeleteIn my research I learned that maps were drawn from a bird's eye view in order to save space and more accurately portray the space around them. Back then, they didn't often get to actually experience this view, but they could sure imagine what it would look like. It's interesting to note that maps have always been drawn from above and not any other way.
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