Maps have been one of the most important human inventions, allowing humans to explain and navigate their way. When and how the earliest maps were made is unclear, but maps of local terrain are believed to have been independently invented by many cultures. The earliest putative maps include cave paintings and etchings on tusk and stone. Maps were produced extensively by ancient Babylon, Greece, Rome, China, and India. The earliest maps ignored the curvature of Earth's surface, both because the shape of the Earth was unknown and because the curvature is not important across the small areas being mapped. However, since the age of Classical Greece, maps of large regions, and especially of the world, have used projection from a model globe to control how the inevitable distortion gets apportioned on the map.Modern methods of transportation, the use of surveillance aircraft, and more recently the availability of satellite imagery have made documentation of many areas possible that were previously inaccessible. Free online services such as Google Earth have made accurate maps of the world more accessible than ever before.
Etymology The English term cartography is modern, borrowed from the French cartographie in the 1840s, itself based on Middle Latin carta "map".
Pre-modern era
Earliest known maps
It is not always clear whether an ancient artifact had been wrought as a map or as something else. The definition of "map" is also not precise. Thus, no single artifact is generally accepted to be the earliest surviving map. Candidates include:
A map-like representation of a mountain, river, valleys and routes around Pavlov in the Czech Republic, carved on a mammoth tusk, that has been dated to 25,000 BC. An Aboriginal Australian cylcon that may be as much as 20,000 years old that is thought to depict the Darling River. A map etched on a mammoth bone at Mezhyrich that is about 15,000 years old. Dots dating to 14,500 BC found on the walls of the Lascaux caves map of part of the night sky, including the three bright stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair (the Summer Triangle asterism), as well as the Pleiades star cluster. The Cuevas de El Castillo in Spain that contains a dot map of the Corona Borealis constellation dating from 12,000 BC. A polished chunk of sandstone from a cave in Spanish Navarre, dated to 14,000 BC, that may be symbols for landscape features, such as hills or dwellings, superimposed on animal etchings. Alternatively, it may also represent a spiritual landscape, or simple incisings. The Ségognole 3 rock shelter in the Paris Basin of France contains what is speculated to be a miniature representation of the surrounding landscape, modelled to reflect natural water flows and geomorphological features of the region. It may be the oldest three-dimensional map, and dates back 13,000 years ago, around 12,000 to 11,000 BC. Another ancient picture that resembles a map that was created in the late 7th millennium BC in Çatalhöyük, Anatolia, modern Turkey. This wall painting may represent a plan of this Neolithic village; however, recent scholarship has questioned the identification of this painting as a map. The "Saint-Bélec slab" (2200–1600 BC), whose lines and symbols have been argued to represent a cadastral plan of a part of western Brittany.
Ancient Near East
Maps in Ancient Babylonia were made by using accurate surveying techniques. For example, a 7.6 × 6.8 cm clay tablet found in 1930 at Ga-Sur, near contemporary Kirkuk, shows a map of a river valley between two hills. Cuneiform inscriptions label the features on the map, including a plot of land described as 354 iku (12 hectares) that was owned by a person called Azala. Most scholars date the tablet to the 25th to 24th century BC. Hills are shown by overlapping semicircles, rivers by lines, and cities by circles. The map also is marked to show the cardinal directions. An engraved map from the Kassite period (14th–12th centuries BC) of Babylonian history shows walls and buildings in the holy city of Nippur. The Babylonian World Map, the earliest surviving map of the world (c. 600 BC), is a symbolic, not a literal representation. It deliberately omits peoples such as the Persians and Egyptians, who were well known to the Babylonians. The area shown is depicted as a circular shape surrounded by water, which fits the religious image of the world in which the Babylonians believed. Phoenician sailors made major advances in seafaring and exploration. It is recorded that the first circumnavigation of Africa was possibly undertaken by Phoenician explorers employed by Egyptian pharaoh Necho II c. 610–595 BC. In The Histories, written 431–425 BC, Herodotus cast doubt on a report of the Sun observed shining from the north. He stated that the phenomenon was observed by Phoenician explorers during their circumnavigation of Africa (The Histories, 4.42) who claimed to have had the Sun on their right when circumnavigating in a clockwise direction. To modern historians, these details confirm the truth of the Phoenicians' report, and even suggest the possibility that the Phoenicians knew about the spherical Earth model. However, nothing certain about their knowledge of geography and navigation has survived. The historian Dmitri Panchenko theorizes that it was the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa that inspired the theory of a spherical Earth by the 5th century BC.
Ancient Greece Many scholars throughout history, such as Strabo, Kish, and Dilke, consider Homer to be the founder of the early Greek conception of Earth, and therefore of geography. Homer conceived Earth to be a disk surrounded by a constantly moving stream of Ocean, an idea which would be suggested by the appearance of the horizon as it is seen from a mountaintop or from a seacoast. This model was accepted by the early Greeks. Homer and his Greek contemporaries knew very little of the Earth beyond the Libyan desert of Egypt, the southwest coast of Asia Minor, and the northern boundary of the Greek homeland. Furthermore, the coast of the Black Sea was only known through myths and legends that circulated during his time. In his poems there is no mention of Europe and Asia as geographical concepts. That is why the big part of Homer's world that is portrayed on this interpretive map represents lands that border on the Aegean Sea. The Greeks believed that they occupied the central region of Earth and its edges were inhabited by savage, monstrous barbarians and strange animals and monsters: Homer's Odyssey mentions a great many of these. Additional statements about ancient geography are found in Hesiod's poems, probably written during the 8th century BC. Through the lyrics of Works and Days and Theogony, he shows to his contemporaries some definite geographical knowledge. He introduces the names of such rivers as Nile, Ister (Danube), the shores of the Bosporus and the Euxine (Black Sea), the coast of Gaul, the island of Sicily, and a few other regions and rivers. His advanced geographical knowledge not only had predated Greek colonial expansions, but also was used in the earliest Greek world maps, produced by Greek mapmakers such as Anaximander and Hecataeus of Miletus, and Ptolemy using both observations by explorers and a mathematical approach. Early steps in the development of intellectual thought in ancient Greece belonged to Ionians from their well-known city of Miletus in Asia Minor. Miletus was placed favourably to absorb aspects of Babylonian knowledge and to profit from the expanding commerce of the Mediterranean. The earliest ancient Greek who is said to have constructed a map of the world is Anaximander of Miletus (c. 611–546 BC), pupil of Thales. He believed that the Earth was a cylindrical form, a stone pillar suspended in space. The inhabited part of his world was circular, disk-shaped, and presumably located on the upper surface of the cylinder. For constructing his world map, Anaximander is considered by many to be the first mapmaker. Little is known about the map, which has not survived. Hekatæus of Miletus (550–475 BC) produced another map fifty years later that he claimed was an improved version of the map of his illustrious predecessor.
Hecatæus's map describes the Earth as disk with an encircling Ocean, and with Greece placed in the center. This was a very popular contemporary Greek worldview, derived originally from the Homeric poems. Also, similar to many other early maps in antiquity, his map has no scale. As units of measurements, this map used "days of sailing" on the sea and "days of marching" on dry land. The purpose of this map was to accompany Hecatæus's geographical work that was called Periodos Ges, or Journey Round the World. Periodos Ges was divided into two books, "Europe" and "Asia", with the latter including Libya, the name of which was an ancient term for all of known Africa. The work divides the world into two continents, Asia and Europe. Hecatæus depicts the line between the Pillars of Hercules through the Bosporus, and the Don River as a boundary between the two. He was the first writer known to have thought that the Caspian flows into the encircling ocean—an idea that persisted long into the Hellenic period. He was particularly instructive about the Black Sea, adding many geographic places that already were known to Greeks through the colonization process. To the north of the Danube, according to Hecatæus, were the Rhipæan (gusty) Mountains, beyond which lived the Hyperboreans—peoples of the far north. Hecatæus depicted the origin of the Nile River at the southern encircling ocean. This assumption helped Hecatæus propose a solution to the mystery of the annual flooding of the Nile. He believed that the waves of the ocean were a primary cause of this occurrence. A map based on Hecataeus's was intended to aid political decision-making. According to Herodotus, that map was engraved into a bronze tablet and was carried to Sparta by Aristagoras during the revolt of the Ionian cities against Persian rule from 499 to 494 BC. Anaximenes of Miletus (6th century BC), who studied under Anaximander, rejected the views of his teacher regarding the shape of the Earth and instead, he visualized the Earth as a rectangular form supported by compressed air. Pythagoras of Samos (c. 560–480 BC) speculated about the notion of a spherical Earth with a central fire at its core. He is sometimes incorrectly credited with the introduction of a model that divides a spherical Earth into five zones: one hot, two temperate, and two cold—northern and southern. This idea, known as the zonal theory of climate, is more likely to have originated at the time of Aristotle. Scylax, a sailor, made a record of his Mediterranean voyages in c. 515 BC. This is the earliest known set of Greek periploi, or sailing instructions, which became the basis for many future mapmakers, especially in the medieval period. The way in which the geographical knowledge of the Greeks advanced from the previous assumptions of the Earth's shape was through Herodotus and his conceptual view of the world. This map also did not survive and many have speculated that it was never produced. A possible reconstruction of his map is displayed adjacent.
Herodotus traveled extensively, collecting information and documenting his findings in his books on Europe, Asia, and Libya. He also combined his knowledge with what he learned from the people he met. Herodotus wrote his Histories in the mid-5th century BC. Although his work was dedicated to the story of long struggle of the Greeks with the Persian Empire, Herodotus also included everything he knew about the geography, history, and peoples of the world. Thus, his work provides a detailed picture of the known world of the 5th century BC. Herodotus rejected the prevailing view of most 5th-century BC maps that the Earth is a disk surrounded by ocean. In his work he describes the Earth as an irregular shape with oceans surrounding only Asia and Africa. He introduces names such as the Atlantic Sea, and the Erythrean Sea, which translates as the "Red Sea". He also divided the world into three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. He depicted the boundary of Europe as the line from the Pillars of Hercules through the Bosphorus and the area between the Caspian Sea and the Indus River. He regarded the Nile as the boundary between Asia and Africa. He speculated that the extent of Europe was much greater than was assumed at the time and left Europe's shape to be determined by future research. In the case of Africa, he believed that, except for the small stretch of land in the vicinity of Suez, the continent was in fact surrounded by water. However, he definitely disagreed with his predecessors and contemporaries about its presumed circular shape. He based his theory on the story of Pharaoh Necho II, the ruler of Egypt between 609 and 594 BC, who had sent Phoenicians to circumnavigate Africa. Apparently, it took them three years, but they certainly did prove his idea. He speculated that the Nile River started as far west as the Ister River (Danube) in Europe and cut Africa through the middle. He was the first writer to assume that the Caspian Sea was separated from other seas and he recognised northern Scythia as one of the coldest inhabited lands in the world. Similar to his predecessors, Herodotus also made mistakes. He accepted a clear distinction between the civilized Greeks in the center of the Earth and the barbarians on the world's edges. In his Histories it is clear that he believed that the world became stranger and stranger when one traveled away from Greece, until one reached the ends of the Earth, where humans behaved as savages. While various previous Greek philosophers presumed the Earth to be spherical, Aristotle (384–322 BC) is credited with proving the Earth's sphericity. His arguments may be summarized as follows:
The lunar eclipse is always circular Ships seem to sink as they move away from view and pass the horizon Some stars can be seen only from certain parts of the Earth.
Hellenistic Mediterranean A vital contribution to mapping the reality of the world came with a scientific estimate of the circumference of the earth. This event has been described as the first scientific attempt to give geographical studies a mathematical basis. The man credited for this achievement was Eratosthenes (275–195 BC), a Greek scholar who lived in Hellenistic North Africa. As described by George Sarton, historian of science, "there was among them [Eratosthenes's contemporaries] a man of genius but as he was working in a new field they were too stupid to recognize him". His work, including On the Measurement of the Earth and Geographica, has only survived in the writings of later philosophers such as Cleomedes and Strabo. He was a devoted geographer who set out to reform and perfect the map of the world. Eratosthenes argued that accurate mapping, even if in two dimensions only, depends upon the establishment of accurate linear measurements. He was the first to calculate the Earth's circumference (within 0.5 percent accuracy). His great achievement in the field of cartography was the use of a new technique of charting with meridians, his imaginary north–south lines, and parallels, his imaginary west–east lines. These axis lines were placed over the map of the Earth with their origin in the city of Rhodes and divided the world into sectors. Then, Eratosthenes used these earth partitions to reference places on the map. He also divided Earth into five climatic regions, which was proposed at least as early as the late sixth or early fifth century BC by Parmenides: a torrid zone across the middle, two frigid zones at extreme north and south, and two temperate bands in between. He was likely also the first person to use the word "geography".
Roman Empire
Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela (1st century B.C.) is unique among ancient geographers in that, after dividing the earth into five zones, of which two only were habitable, he asserts the existence of antichthones inhabiting the southern temperate zone, inaccessible to the folk of the northern temperate regions due to the unbearable heat of the intervening torrid belt. On the divisions and boundaries of Europe, Asia and Africa, he repeats Eratosthenes; like all classical geographers from Alexander the Great (except Ptolemy) he regards the Caspian Sea as an inlet of the Northern Ocean, corresponding to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea on the south.
Marinus of Tyre Marinus of Tyre (c. A.D. 70–130) was a Hellenized Phoenician geographer and cartographer. He founded mathematical geography and provided the underpinnings of Ptolemy's influential Geographia. Marinus's geographical treatise is lost and known only from Ptolemy's remarks. He introduced improvements to the construction of maps and developed a system of nautical charts. His chief legacy is that he first assigned to each place a proper latitude and longitude. His zero meridian ran through the westernmost land known to him, the Isles of the Blessed around the location of the Canary or Cape Verde Islands. He used the parallel of Rhodes for measurements of latitude. Ptolemy mentions several revisions of Marinus's geographical work, which is often dated to AD 114 although this is uncertain. Marinus estimated a length of 180,000 stadia for the equator, roughly corresponding to a circumference of the Earth of 33,300 km, about 17% less than the actual value. He also carefully studied the works of his predecessors and the diaries of travelers. His maps were the first in the Roman Empire to show China. He also invented equirectangular projection, which is still used in map creation today. A few of Marinus's opinions are reported by Ptolemy. Marinus was of the opinion that the World Ocean was separated into an eastern and a western part by the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa. He thought that the inhabited world stretched in latitude from Thule (Norway) to Agisymba (around the Tropic of Capricorn) and in longitude from the Isles of the Blessed (around the Canaries) to Shera (China). Marinus also coined the term Antarctic, referring to the opposite of the Arctic Circle.
Ptolemy
Ptolemy (90–168), a Hellenized Egyptian, thought that, with the aid of astronomy and mathematics, the Earth could be mapped very accurately. Ptolemy revolutionized the depiction of the spherical Earth on a map by using perspective projection, and suggested precise methods for fixing the position of geographic features on its surface using a coordinate system with parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude. Ptolemy's eight-volume atlas Geographia is a prototype of modern mapping and GIS. It included an index of place-names, with the latitude and longitude of each place to guide the search, scale, conventional signs with legends, and the practice of orienting maps so that north is at the top and east to the right of the map—an almost universal custom today. Yet with all his important innovations, however, Ptolemy was not infallible. His most important error was a miscalculation of the circumference of the Earth. He believed that Eurasia covered 180° of the globe, which convinced Christopher Columbus to sail across the Atlantic to look for a simpler and faster way to travel to India. Had Columbus known that the true figure was much greater, it is conceivable that he would never have set out on his momentous voyage.
Tabula Peutingeriana
In 2007, the Tabula Peutingeriana, a 12th-century replica of a 5th-century Roman imperial road map, was placed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register and displayed to the public for the first time. Although the scroll is well preserved and believed to be an accurate copy of an authentic original, it is on a medium that is now so delicate that it must be protected at all times from exposure to daylight.
China
The earliest known maps to have survived in China date to the 4th century BC. In 1986, seven ancient Chinese maps were found in an archeological excavation of a Qin State tomb in what is now Fangmatan, in the vicinity of Tianshui City, Gansu. Before this find, the earliest extant maps that were known came from the Mawangdui Han tomb excavation in 1973, which found three maps on silk dated to the 2nd century BC in the early Han dynasty. The 4th-century BC maps from the State of Qin were drawn with black ink on wooden blocks. These blocks fortunately survived in soaking conditions due to underground water that had seeped into the tomb; the quality of the wood had much to do with their survival. After two years of slow-drying techniques, the maps were fully restored. The territory shown in the seven Qin maps overlap each other. The maps display tributary river systems of the Jialing River in Sichuan, in a total measured area of 107 by 68 km. The maps featured rectangular symbols encasing character names for the locations of administrative counties. Rivers and roads are displayed with similar line symbols; this makes interpreting the map somewhat difficult, although the labels of rivers placed in order of stream flow are helpful to modern day cartographers. These maps also feature locations where different types of timber can be gathered, while two of the maps state the distances in mileage to the timber sites. In light of this, these maps are perhaps the oldest economic maps in the world since they predate Strabo's economic maps. In addition to the seven maps on wooden blocks found at Tomb 1 of Fangmatan, a fragment of a paper map was found on the chest of the occupant of Tomb 5 of Fangmatan in 1986. This tomb is dated to the early Western Han, so the map dates to the early 2nd century BC. The map shows topographic features such as mountains, waterways and roads, and is thought to cover the area of the preceding Qin Kingdom.
Earliest geographical writing In China, the earliest known geographical Chinese writing dates back to the 5th century BC, during the beginning of the Warring States (481–221 BC). This was the Yu Gong or Tribute of Yu chapter of the Shu Jing or Book of Documents. The book describes the traditional nine provinces, their kinds of soil, their characteristic products and economic goods, their tributary goods, their trades and vocations, their state revenues and agricultural systems, and the various rivers and lakes listed and placed accordingly. The nine provinces in the time of this geographical work were very small in size compared to their modern Chinese counterparts. The Yu Gong's descriptions pertain to areas of the Yellow River, the lower valleys of the Yangzi, with the plain between them and the Shandong Peninsula, and to the west the most northern parts of the Wei River and the Han River were known (along with the southern parts of modern-day Shanxi).
Earliest known reference to a map (圖 tú) The oldest reference to a map in China comes from the 3rd century BC. This was the event of 227 BC where Crown Prince Dan of Yan had his assassin Jing Ke visit the court of the ruler of the State of Qin, who would become the first leader to unify China, Qin Shi Huang (r. 221–210 BC). Jing Ke was to present the ruler of Qin with a district map painted on a silk scroll, rolled up and held in a case where he hid his assassin's dagger. Handing to him the map of the designated territory was the first diplomatic act of submitting that district to Qin rule. Jing then tried and failed to kill him. From then on, maps were frequently mentioned in Chinese sources.
Han dynasty
The three Han dynasty maps found at Mawangdui differ from the earlier Qin State maps. While the Qin maps place the cardinal direction of north at the top of the map, the Han maps are orientated with the southern direction at the top. The Han maps are also more complex, since they cover a much larger area, employ a large number of well-designed map symbols, and include additional information on local military sites and the local population. The Han maps also note measured distances between certain places, but a formal graduated scale and rectangular grid system for maps would not be used—or at least described in full—until the 3rd century (see Pei Xiu below). Among the three maps found at Mawangdui was a small map representing the tomb area where it was found, a larger topographical map showing the Han's borders along the subordinate Kingdom of Changsha and the Nanyue kingdom (of northern Vietnam and parts of modern Guangdong and Guangxi), and a map which marks the positions of Han military garrisons that were employed in an attack against Nanyue in 181 BC. An early text that mentioned maps was the Rites of Zhou. Although attributed to the era of the Zhou dynasty, its first recorded appearance was in the libraries of Prince Liu De (c. 130 BC), and was compiled and commented on by Liu Xin in the 1st century AD. It outlined the use of maps that were made for governmental provinces and districts, principalities, frontier boundaries, and even pinpointed locations of ores and minerals for mining facilities. Upon the investiture of three of his sons as feudal princes in 117 BC, Emperor Wu of Han had maps of the entire empire submitted to him. From the 1st century AD onwards, official Chinese historical texts contained a geographical section (地理纪; Diliji), which was often an enormous compilation of changes in place-names and local administrative divisions controlled by the ruling dynasty, descriptions of mountain ranges, river systems, taxable products, etc. From the 5th century BC Shu Jing forward, Chinese geographical writing provided more concrete information and less legendary element. This example can be seen in the 4th chapter of the Huainanzi (Book of the Master of Huainan), compiled under the editorship of Prince Liu An in 139 BC during the Han dynasty (202 BC–202 AD). The chapter gave general descriptions of topography in a systematic fashion, given visual aids by the use of maps (di tu) due to the efforts of Liu An and his associate Zuo Wu. In Chang Chu's Hua Yang Guo Chi ("Historical Geography of Sichuan") of 347, not only rivers, trade routes, and various tribes were described, but it also wrote of a 'Ba June Tu Jing' ("Map of Sichuan"), which had been made much earlier in 150. Local mapmaking such as the one of Sichuan mentioned above, became a widespread tradition of Chinese geographical works by the 6th century, as noted in the bibliography of the Sui Shu. It is during this time of the Southern and Northern Dynasties that the Liang dynasty (502–557) cartographers also began carving maps into stone steles (alongside the maps already drawn and painted on paper and silk).
Pei Xiu, the 'Ptolemy of China' In the year 267, Pei Xiu (224–271) was appointed as the Minister of Works by Emperor Wu of Jin, the first emperor of the Jin dynasty. Pei is best known for his work in cartography. Although map making and use of the grid existed in China before him, he was the first to mention a plotted geometrical grid and graduated scale displayed on the surface of maps to gain greater accuracy in the estimated distance between different locations. Pei outlined six principles that should be observed when creating maps, two of which included the rectangular grid and the graduated scale for measuring distance. Western historians compare him to the Greek Ptolemy for his contributions in cartography. However, Howard Nelson states that, although the accounts of earlier cartographic works by the inventor and official Zhang Heng (78–139) are somewhat vague and sketchy, there is ample written evidence that Pei Xiu derived the use of the rectangular grid reference from the maps of Zhang Heng. Later Chinese ideas about the quality of maps made during the Han dynasty and before stem from the assessment given by Pei Xiu. Pei Xiu noted that the extant Han maps at his disposal were of little use since they featured too many inaccuracies and exaggerations in measured distance between locations. However, the Qin State maps and Mawangdui maps of the Han era were far superior in quality than those examined by Pei Xiu. It was not until the 20th century that Pei Xiu's 3rd-century assessment of earlier maps' dismal quality would be overturned and disproven. The Qin and Han maps did have a degree of accuracy in scale and pinpointed location, but the major improvement in Pei Xiu's work and that of his contemporaries was expressing topographical elevation on maps.
Sui dynasty In the year 605, during the Sui dynasty (581–618), the Commercial Commissioner Pei Ju (547–627) created a famous geometrically gridded map. In 610 Emperor Yang of Sui ordered government officials from throughout the empire to document in gazetteers the customs, products, and geographical features of their local areas and provinces, providing descriptive writing and drawing them all onto separate maps, which would be sent to the imperial secretariat in the capital city.
Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (618–907) also had its fair share of cartographers, including the works of Xu Jingzong in 658, Wang Mingyuan in 661, and Wang Zhongsi in 747. Arguably the greatest geographer and cartographer of the Tang period was Jia Dan (730–805), whom Emperor Dezong of Tang entrusted in 785 to complete a map of China with her recently former inland colonies of Central Asia, the massive and detailed work completed in 801, called the Hai Nei Hua Yi Tu (Map of both Chinese and Barbarian Peoples within the (Four) Seas). The map was 30 ft (9.1 m) long and 33 ft (10 m) high in dimension, mapped out on a grid scale of 1-inch (25 mm) equaling 100 li (unit) (the Chinese equivalent of the mile/kilometer). Jia Dan is also known for having described the Persian Gulf region with great detail, along with lighthouses that were erected at the mouth of the Persian Gulf by the medieval Iranians in the Abbasid period (refer to article on Tang dynasty for more).
Song dynasty
During the Song dynasty (960–1279) Emperor Taizu of Song ordered Lu Duosun in 971 to update and 're-write all the Tu Jing in the world', which would seem to be a daunting task for one individual, who was sent out throughout the provinces to collect texts and as much data as possible. With the aid of Song Zhun, the massive work was completed in 1010, with some 1566 chapters. The later Song Shi historical text stated (Wade-Giles spelling):
Yuan Hsieh (d. +1220) was director-general of governmental grain stores. In pursuance of his schemes for the relief of famines he issued orders that each pao (village) should prepare a map which would show the fields and mountains, the rivers and the roads in fullest detail. The maps of all the pao were joined together to make a map of the tu (larger district), and these in turn were joined with others to make a map of the hsiang and the hsien (still larger districts). If there was any trouble about the collection of taxes or the distribution of grain, or if the question of chasing robbers and bandits arose, the provincial officials could readily carry out their duties by the aid of the maps. Like the earlier Liang dynasty stone-stele maps (mentioned above), there were large and intricately carved stone stele maps of the Song period. For example, the 3 ft (0.91 m) squared stone stele map of an anonymous artist in 1137, following the grid scale of 100 li squared for each grid square. What is truly remarkable about this map is the incredibly precise detail of coastal outlines and river systems in China (refer to Needham's Volume 3, Plate LXXXI for an image). The map shows 500 settlements and a dozen rivers in China, and extends as far as Korea and India. On the reverse, a copy of a more ancient map uses grid coordinates in a scale of 1:1,500,000 and shows the coastline of China with great accuracy. The famous 11th-century scientist and polymath statesman Shen Kuo (1031–1095) was also a geographer and cartographer. His largest atlas included twenty three maps of China and foreign regions that were drawn at a uniform scale of 1:900,000. Shen also created a three-dimensional raised-relief map using sawdust, wood, beeswax, and wheat paste, while representing the topography and specific locations of a frontier region to the imperial court. Shen Kuo's contemporary, Su Song (1020–1101), was a cartographer who created detailed maps to resolve a territorial border dispute between the Song dynasty and the Liao dynasty.
Yuan dynasty (Mongol Empire) In the Mongol Empire, the Mongol scholars with the Persian and Chinese cartographers or their foreign colleagues created maps, geographical compendium as well as travel accounts. Rashid-al-Din Hamadani described his geographical compendium, "Suvar al-aqalim", constituted volume four of the Collected chronicles of the Ilkhanate in Persia. His works says about the borders of the seven climes (old world), rivers, major cities, places, climate, and Mongol yams (relay stations). The Great Khan Khubilai's ambassador and minister, Bolad, had helped Rashid's works in relation to the Mongols and Mongolia. Thanks to Pax Mongolica, the easterners and the westerners in Mongol dominions were able to gain access to one another's geographical materials. The Mongols required the nations they conquered to send geographical maps to the Mongol headquarters. One of medieval Persian work written in northwest Iran can clarify the historical geography of Mongolia where Genghis Khan was born and united the Mongol and Turkic nomads as recorded in native sources, especially the Secret History of the Mongols. Map of relay stations, called "yam", and strategic points existed in the Yuan dynasty. The Mongol cartography was enriched by traditions of ancient China and Iran which were now under the Mongols. Because the Yuan court often requested the western Mongol khanates to send their maps, the Yuan dynasty was able to publish a map describing the whole Mongol world in c.1330. This is called "Hsi-pei pi ti-li tu". The map includes the Mongol dominions including 30 cities in Iran such as Ispahan and the Ilkhanid capital Soltaniyeh, and Russia (as "Orash") as well as their neighbors, e.g. Egypt and Syria.
Ming dynasty
The multicolour map, Da Ming Hunyi Tu dates to the early Ming dynasty from about 1390, is in multicolour. The horizontal scale is 1:820,000 and the vertical scale is 1:1,060,000. Many of the oldest surviving maps from China dates between the 16th to 17th centuries, these include the Sihai Huayi Zongtu (1532) and the Shanhai Yudi Quantu (1609). Similar to these, the earliest European style map from China, the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (1602) influenced and was exported to Japan and Korea. By this time, Jesuit missionaries contributed to similar maps such as the Wanguo Quantu (1620s) and the Kunyu Quantu (1674). While the Selden Map (c. 17th century) employs a system of navigational routes emanating from ports in China. The Mao Kun map published in 1628 is thought to be based on a strip map dated to the voyages of Zheng He. In 1579, Luo Hongxian published the Guang Yutu atlas, including more than 40 maps, a grid system, and a systematic way of representing major landmarks such as mountains, rivers, roads and borders. The Guang Yutu incorporates the discoveries of the naval explorer Zheng He's 15th-century voyages along the coasts of China, Southeast Asia, India and Africa.
Qing dynasty From the 16th and 17th centuries, several examples survive of maps focused on cultural information. Gridlines are not used on either Yu Shi's Gujin xingsheng zhi tu (1555) or Zhang Huang's Tushu bian (1613); instead, illustrations and annotations show mythical places, exotic foreign peoples, administrative changes and the deeds of historic and legendary heroes. Also in the 17th century, an edition of a possible Tang dynasty map shows clear topographical contour lines. Although topographic features were part of maps in China for centuries, a Fujian county official Ye Chunji (1532–1595) was the first to base county maps using on-site topographical surveying and observations.
Japan and Korea
In 1402, Yi Hoe and Kwan Yun created a world map largely based from Chinese cartographers called the Gangnido map. It is currently one of the oldest surviving world maps from East Asia. Another notable pre-modern map is the Cheonhado map developed in Korea in the 17th century. Sekisui Nagakubo produced a world map in 1785 called the Comprehensive Map and Description of the Geography of the Myriad Countries of the Globe (地球萬國山海輿地全圖說), mainly deriving it from an earlier map made by Matteo Ricci. The production was made by woodblock print and folded into paper boards, he made corrections and additions on top of Matteo's production. This was one of the earliest maps with longitude and latitude information in Japan and was written in Katakana. Another well-known cartographer of the late-Edo period was Ino Tadataka, he is known for completing the first map of Japan using modern surveying techniques. His most famous work, the Dai Nihon Enkai Yochi Zenzu (大日本沿海輿地全図) consisted of three large map pages at a scale of 1:432,000 and it showed the entire country on eight pages at 1:216,000. Some of his maps are accurate to 1/1000 of a degree, which allowed it to become the definitive maps used in Japan for nearly a century. Maps based on his work were in use as late as 1924.
India
Ancient India Indian cartographic traditions covered the locations of the Pole star and other constellations of use. These charts may have been in use by the beginning of the Common Era for purposes of navigation. Detailed maps of considerable length describing the locations of settlements, sea shores, rivers, and mountains were also made. The 8th-century scholar Bhavabhuti conceived paintings which indicated geographical regions. Italian scholar Francesco Lorenzo Pullè reproduced a number of ancient Indian maps in his magnum opus La Cartografia Antica dell'India. Out of these maps, two have been reproduced using a manuscript of Lokaprakasa, originally compiled by the polymath Ksemendra (Kashmir, 11th century), as a source. The other manuscript, used as a source by Pullè, is titled Samgrahani. The early volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica also described cartographic charts made by the Dravidian people of India.
Mughal era Maps from the Ain-e-Akbari, a Mughal document detailing India's history and traditions, contain references to locations indicated in earlier Indian cartographic traditions. Another map describing the kingdom of Nepal, four feet in length and about two and a half feet in breadth, was presented to Warren Hastings. In this map the mountains were elevated above the surface, and several geographical elements were indicated in different colors. The scholar Sadiq Isfahani of Jaunpur compiled an atlas of the parts of the world which he held to be 'suitable for human life'. The 32 sheet atlas—with maps oriented towards the south as was the case with Islamic works of the era—is part of a larger scholarly work compiled by Isfahani during 1647 CE. According to Joseph E. Schwartzberg (2008): 'The largest known Indian map, depicting the former Rajput capital at Amber in remarkable house-by-house detail, measures 661 × 645 cm. (260 × 254 in., or approximately 22 × 21 ft).'
Islamic cartographic schools
Arab and Persian cartography
In the Middle Ages, Muslim scholars continued and advanced on the mapmaking traditions of earlier cultures. Most used Ptolemy's methods; but they also took advantage of what explorers and merchants learned in their travels across the Muslim world, from Spain to India to Africa, and beyond in trade relationships with China, and Russia. An important influence in the development of cartography was the patronage of the Abbasid caliph, al-Ma'mun, who reigned from 813 to 833. He commissioned several geographers to remeasure the distance on earth that corresponds to one degree of celestial meridian. Thus his patronage resulte