Many are hard to recognize as maps
-Rock art, pottery, carving, and etchings
-Movement, gestures, & oral traditions
-Paper and Textile maps appeared later
Must rely on more modern analogues.
Frequently depicted:
-Landscapes
-Hunting Grounds
-Villages
-Agricultural Plots
Oldest known graphic depiction of space. Hunting landscape around the Dyje River Czechia 26,000 B.P.
Stone engraving of Darling River basin with overland shortcuts. Australia 20,000 B.P.
Stone engraving of Snake River Valley Idaho 12,000 B.P.
Çatalhöyük a village Turkey, 8700 B.P.
Bedolina Petroglyph, Italy, 4000 B.P.
Maps on papyrus paper appeared in Egypt ~3,200 BP.
Paper and silk maps appeared in China ~2,200 BP.
Austronesian expansion from started ~5,000 BP.
Polynesian navigators spread across the pacific
-Reading stars, waves, weather, and wildlife
-Used charts, songs, and stories to record important details
The earliest survey methods were:
-Limited in scale
-Labor intensive
-Only applicable for small areas
Rope stretching developed in Egypt and Mesoamerica.
As agricultural societies coalesced and grew methods for the systematic collection of information were developed and the first surveys were conducted.
-Methods were needed to conduct agricultural surveys, construct buildings, and create plan settlements.
-Objects needed to be drawn to scale.
Systematic measuring and recording of angles and distances leads to development of geometry and trigonometry.
-Maps became more accurate buy they were limited to small areas.
Town plan of Nippur, Babylonia on a clay tablet. Possibly the earliest map drawn to scale 3500 B.P.
Maps could now "accurately" represent: bearings, distances, elevations, & sizes
Allowed for surveying over greater distances and mapping larger areas. Road networks could be constructed, distances between settlements could be approximated.
The Roman empire employed professional surveyors. They built a massive road network, created an Agricultural land registry and did "Urban” planning. The gorma is the precursor of the Theodolite
Han Dynasty "south-governor" ~2200 BP.
Olmec Lodestone ~3000 BP.
Lodestones are naturally occurring magnetic minerals. They were first used by the Olmec civilization to orient their pyramids and cities.
The compass was first used for navigation in China during the Song Dynasty ~ 1000 B.P. It made its way to Europe around 800 B.P. The invention of the compass spurred on the "Age of Exploration"