History of cartography

The history of cartography traces how societies have made and used maps, from early spatial representations to digital mapping, and how techniques and purposes have changed.

Babylonian World Map: A clay tablet from the sixth century BCE depicting Babylon at the center of a circular world. It is among the oldest surviving maps that depicts the world as a whole.
Triangulation: A surveying method that determines positions by measuring angles from known points. It enabled systematic land surveys and more geometrically controlled maps.
T and O map: A medieval European diagram dividing the inhabited world into three continents around the Mediterranean. Its arrangement made Christian sacred history part of the map's structure.
Navigation: The methods used to determine and follow a route from one place to another. Seafaring and overland travel generated persistent demand for usable maps.
Ptolemy's Geography: A second-century CE Greek work that organized geographic knowledge using coordinates and described map projections. Its coordinate-based methods shaped mapmaking in Europe and the Islamic world for centuries.
Mercator projection: A cylindrical map projection that preserves local angles but greatly enlarges areas near the poles. Its navigational usefulness made projection choice central to map history.
Mappa mundi: A medieval map representing the world, often combining geography with religious and historical meaning. It shows why many historical maps cannot be judged by navigational accuracy alone.
Military cartography: The creation and use of maps for military planning, operations, and intelligence. Warfare drove investment in surveying, terrain representation, and map secrecy.
Peutinger Map: A medieval copy of a Roman road map showing routes and settlements across the empire. It shows how Roman mapping prioritized travel networks over geographic scale.
Printing press: A technology for producing repeated text and images from prepared surfaces or movable type. Printed maps could circulate widely and standardize geographic information.

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