2000 Years of Map Making

Summary

The first attempts at map making were made long before the Christian era. Now it is an advanced form of technology with an immense annual output of maps of many different kinds and for many different markets. This article provides an overview of the major changes in the actual processes or technology of map making, worldwide, through two millennia, with particular attention to new ideas, inventions or discoveries. The legacy of early civilisations and classical Greek science are taken as the starting point, and the state of progress up to the fall of Rome is briefly assessed. The origins of the revival after the Dark Ages are considered with reference to the respective contributions of the rediscovery of classical manuscripts, independent inventions in China, and the transmission of ideas about these early developments via the Middle East, Egypt, southern and central Europe to England in the fifteenth century. AD 1500-2000 is considered as a period of accelerating technological progress, triggered off by the rediscovery of Ptolemy, exploration and the advent of commercial printing, and ending with the impact of computerisation in the last few decades of the twentieth century.