Cartographers shape how we think about the public . The designer and Explorer who produce maps influence thing like whether we mean of North America asabove South Americaor below , how big wethink Greenland is . World maps help us create genial prototype of place we ’ve never been , from an ethereal view most people will never see .
The chick ’s eye view of the Earth that we associate with today ’s world maps is relatively recent , in the august range of human history . Before satellite made it easy to create precise picture of the Earth , explorer had to determine sail to diligently map out every corner and cranny of the Continent . What they imagined Earth looked like from above was often very dissimilar from what we would conceive of today . A new playscript calledMap : explore the World(Phaidon 2015 ) is a jubilation of mapmaking , especially rarefied , centuries - one-time function from explorer and cartographical pioneers .
Here are eight former maps that shaped how people imagined geography as ahead of time as 1000 years ago :
1. THE FIRST CLIMATE ZONE MAP
Image Credit : MS D’Orville 77 , fol .
Created by a papistic scholar in 1000 CE , this map was the first to divvy up the Earth into climactic zones . The map maker delineate , in detail , the frigid zone near the Earth ’s poles , the hot sun of the equatorial zones , and the temperate clime of the middle areas . It was also one of the first maps to put north at the top , set the common law for hundred of northerly preconception in mapping .
2. THE FIRST MAP OF THE “NEW WORLD”
Image Credit : Bibliografía : Berwick y Alba , 1892 , Documentos Colombinos
Though it has n’t been authenticate , this crudely drag study of the northern seashore of Hispaniola is say to have been take up by Christopher Columbus himself during his first voyage to the Americas in 1492 . If it was sketched by Columbus , it ’s the earliest surviving mathematical function of what Europeans shout out the New World .
3. THE FIRST MAP OF NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA
icon mention : Museo Naval , Madrid , Spain / Bridgeman Images
Drawn by map maker and navigator Juan de la Cosa , this map from the year 1500 was the first to show the West Indies , Venezuela , Brazil , and Newfoundland .
4. THE FIRST PRINTED STAR CHART
look-alike Credit : Daniel Crouch Rare Books
German creative person Albrecht Dürer is behind this wood engraving of the northerly cerebral hemisphere in 1515 . With its southern counterpart , it ’s one of the first star charts ever printed . The work contains 48 constellation , along with the figures they represent . The figures are face away , because they ’re plan to look as they would if you were look down upon them from infinite .
5. THE FIRST MODERN ATLAS
Image Credit : Library of Congress Geography and Map DivisionWashington , DC
In 1570 , Abraham Ortelius debuted the first modern atlas he called " Theater of the World . " It was the first book of maps create at a common scale with textbook explanations . In this map , he added four mythological islands that caption say existed around the North Pole .
6. THE FIRST MERCATOR PROJECTION
Image mention : White Images / Scala , Florence
Gerard Mercator invented a type of mapping expulsion that translates the curving aerofoil of the Earth into a mat , 2D image , allowing 16th century explorers to chart their courses more accurately without using a earth . This humanity single-valued function , drawn in 1569 , has been a model for maps for centuries , though the forcing out does distort the size of the northern landmasses .
7. THE FIRST MAP OF THE U.S.
Image credit rating : Library of Congress , Rare Book and Special Collections Division / Science Photo Library
This English map , created in 1589 , celebrates Sir Francis Drake ’s winning foray over the Spanish at St. Augustine , Spain ’s main outpost along the East Coast . It ’s the first known map of any part of the United States .
8. THE FIRST CHINESE MAP OF THE WEST
Image Credit : Daniel Crouch Rare Books
In 1602 , Italian priest Matteo Ricci teamed up with engraver Li Zhizaoto to combine Eastern and Western mapmaking in one function of the earth , the first Taiwanese single-valued function depicting the westerly hemisphere . Ricci was the first Westerner allowed in China ’s Forbidden City . The two combined as much Taiwanese and Jesuit cartography knowledge as possible . Because the Chinese view their land as the Middle Kingdom , China was set at the center of the figure .
All images fromMap : Exploring the World , courtesy Phaidon
