Who made 1 real card. From the history of cards

The most ancient maps found date back to the times when mankind did not even have an idea about writing. If you think about it, there is an explanation for this - it was much more important for the ancients to navigate the terrain than to keep chronicles and write something down.

And it all started with images of the starry sky on the walls of the caves. It was in this amazing way that ancient people marked their location more than 18,000 years ago. This knowledge is used even now, leaving unfamiliar places, looking at star constellations.

Only after millennia did the first images of the area appear. on stones, wood and animal skins that could be carried around or shared with others. But such maps usually covered a relatively small area: usually within 100 square kilometers.

The first attempts to create a map of the whole world appeared around 5-3 millennia BC. But they rarely differed in any accuracy, since they did not take into account the fact that the Earth is round.

Who is considered to be the father of cartography?

The meridians and parallels, which are familiar and familiar even to a schoolboy, appeared only in the third century BC. They were created and mapped by the famous Greek scholar Eratosthenes. He is considered to be the "father" of modern cartography. Although many historians do not agree with this fact and consider as such a certain Anaximander and even Pythagoras.

The work of Eratosthenes was continued and improved already in the second century in Alexandria by the equally famous Ptolemy. It was he who came up with the idea to break the meridians and parallels into degrees. His maps were unparalleled for 12 centuries.

But the atlases familiar to us appeared only at the end of the 18th, at the beginning of the 19th centuries. This was facilitated by the development of the aviation industry, photography and the definition of the zero meridian.

Some interesting facts about maps

The history of the emergence and development of cartography around the world was not monotonous:

  1. The oldest map found in China was drawn on silk and created to mark the path for a hit man.
  2. In ancient times, most people could easily draw a diagram of the surrounding area.
  3. Most Tuareg tribes create relief maps from wet sand.
  4. Some Aboriginal tribes in Australia carve a map of their possessions on wooden weapons as a totem.
  5. Sea guides of ancient Polynesia were a complex weaving of threads, shells of mollusks, twigs and even stones. At the same time, they displayed all cardinal directions, the smallest atolls and even the direction of currents.

This is only a tiny part of the unusual facts from the history of the appearance of geographical atlases. But even from it it is clear that the author of the very first map will never be found.

Heading:

It is impossible to determine when they appeared. Among the archaeological finds on all continents, one can see primitive drawings on stones, on bone plates, on birch bark, on wood - these are maps of the immediate surroundings. The maps of the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians have come down to us. In the past and present centuries, travelers have constantly turned to the cartographic art of the native population. Their maps provided an invaluable service to those who discovered and mapped unexplored lands on the world map.

The French traveler Henri Duveyrier visited the central Sahara in 1859, in the areas where the Tuareg lived. He failed to explore the Ahaggar highlands, and he put it on his map according to the data reported to him by Sheikh Otkhan, who fashioned the entire relief of the highlands from wet sand. about the same relief maps Tuareg is spoken by other sources.

The southern neighbors of the Tuareg - the Fulbe, also perfectly mastered the art of cartography. The ruler of Sokoto, Sultan Belo, drew on the sand for the English major Hugh Clapperton the Quorra River along its entire course, with all the bends, turns, tributaries, and allowed him to redraw his map on paper. The French traveler Victor Larzho wrote in 1876 that a Fulban blacksmith drew a schematic map for him on the sand from Tripoli to Timbuktu (between these points the difference in geographical latitude is as much as 16 degrees).

Professor K. Weil at the beginning of our century, crossing from the village of Lindi to Massasi, received from the negro Pes Mbili a primitive map of his path. In the lower right corner was Lindy, in the upper left - Massasi. Individual huts were marked on the map, and even the home of the traveler himself with its interior location. Edward Robert Flegel showed the leader Abdulrahman a map of part of Africa - the land of the Fulbe people and neighboring tribes. The chief, along with one of his advisors, corrected this map by making a drawing in the sand.

When, in 1840-1843, the English geographer C.T. Beak studied the sources of the Nile, he received from a Muslim inhabitant of these places, Omar-ibn-Neji, a simple, small map of the basin of the Sobat River, a tributary of the White Nile.

Russian scientist Alexander Fedorovich Middendorf (1815-1894) argued that most of the Siberian Tungus were able to quickly draw a map of their surroundings on sand or snow.

Pyotr Alekseevich Kropotkin, a Russian revolutionary and geographer, in the 70s of the XIX century, traveling through Transbaikalia, was guided by a map that one Tungus carved for him on birch bark.

For the remarkable Russian geographer, ethnographer and anthropologist Dmitry Nikolayevich Anuchin, when he traveled in Siberia in 1906, a map of the region of the Yenisei River and its tributary, below the village of Lebedev, was drawn by the local resident Shigal.

He depicted the direction of the Yenisei with the help of the silhouette of a duck flying in the spring migration, and the south with the drawing of the sun as its symbol. At first, Shigal drew the sun not exactly in the south, but then he corrected his mistake. He marked the forest with two firs. Anuchin recognized the map as very good.

The testimonies of V. Yokhelson, who at the end of the 9th century carried out a geographical and ethnographic study of the Kolyma region, have been preserved. He received two small cards made on birch bark. The maps depicted the Kolyma with its tributaries Korkodon and Rassokha, and next to them - villages and hunting grounds.

When L. Strenberg traveled around Sakhalin, his guide was a Nivkh who made for him a map of the southern part of Sakhalin. He drew the path of the ship "Baikal" from the village of Korsakovskaya to Aleksandrovsk and those ledges of the mainland, past which they sailed.

The Australian Aborigines especially amazed travelers with their maps. There were tribes who lived, perhaps, at the lowest stage of social development, almost at the level of the Stone Age, and many of these people were able to draw on a stone or on a piece of tree bark an amazingly accurate plan of the surroundings.

In South Australia, drawings made on clubs are known. These drawings have the meaning of proprietary and tribal symbols, but, in fact, depict the area in which the tribe lives. Thus, for example, in the drawing which is given here, a native has depicted a branch of the Broken River and a swamp in New South Wales. This is a map of the territory that his tribe occupies - between the swamp and the river.

Quite different and highly original maps were created by the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands and Polynesia - maps from sticks The natives used them when sailing between the islands of the archipelago. The first news about these maps was brought to Europe by the German consul F. Gernsheim. There are now about 50 such cards in European collections. They are made of thin sticks located in different directions to each other - straight, at an angle, and shells or pebbles are attached to them. All this is connected by threads of palm fibers. The sticks show the direction sea ​​currents and the most convenient ways in navigation. Pebbles or shells represent islands.

Augustine Kramer, traveling in the South Pacific in 1897-1899, saw one of the native leaders draw a map of the Marshall Islands in a notebook - in shape and outline it resembled stick maps.

One of the first reports about the maps of the Polynesians was brought by James Cook (1728-1779). His guide on the voyage of 1776 was the Polynesian chief Tupaya. Naturally quick-witted, Tupaya knew Polynesia well. According to his information, a map of the area was drawn up, located between 130 ° -170 ° west longitude and 7 ° -27 ° south latitude. The map depicted an area equal to 9,200 km2, and 80 islands were marked on it. The map has not survived to our time, but there are two copies of it.

Very interesting information was left by travelers about the cartographic abilities of the Eskimos - both from the north of Canada and Alaska, and from Greenland. The English explorer of the Arctic, William Edward Parry, studied the area of ​​Hudson Bay in 1821-1823. In July 1822, Parry, an Eskimo, Igligluk, made a sketch for him, with the help of which Parry opened the strait between the Melville Peninsula and Baffin Island. Eskimos helped Frederick William Beechey in his journey through the Bering Strait to Kotzebue Bay: they drew a map for him on the ground, indicating mountains, islands with stones, and fishing villages with sticks stuck in the ground.

In 1848-1859, the English captain Francis Leopold McClintock took part in the expedition to rescue the polar explorer John Franklin. Valuable information was provided to McClintock by the Eskimos: they drew maps of the coast of Elio Bay and other places on the coast, they even indicated the position of the skeletons of both lost ships of Franklin. McClintock especially appreciated the maps drawn for him by the Eskimos A-Wah-Lah and Ov-Vang-Noot.

Beginning in 1883, research in the Hudson Bay area was carried out by F. Boa. Many Eskimos and Eskimos made various sketch maps for him. The most interesting of them is the one that depicts the Behler Islands in Hudson Bay. The islands are drawn with amazing accuracy, the image almost completely coincides with the then map of the British navy.

Many travelers noted that the Eskimos, who for the first time in their lives picked up a pencil, could very accurately and in detail depict the outlines of their coast. The American geographer Boiset also described the extraordinary abilities of the Eskimos for orientation. In 1898, the Eskimo Nuktan, a resident of Northern Greenland, drew him a map of Smith's Bay, indicating on it areas with and without eternal glaciers. Later data showed that this is a very accurate drawing.

The Danish ethnologist Kai Birketsmit talks about maps of a very special kind. These are relief maps that the East Greenland Eskimos carved from wood. One of these maps is kept in the National Museum of Copenhagen. The map consists of two parts that are not connected with each other: the eastern coast of Greenland is shown on the left side, and the chain of islands located in front of the coast is on the right, narrower.

Canadian polar explorer Viljalmur Stefanson noted such an interesting feature in the maps of the Eskimos: they depict everything that they consider important for themselves, for example, boat moorings. And the mountains stretching along the coast are unimportant for them, they do not depict them.

Incredible facts about the Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is one of the most visited attractions in the world and was once called the big mistake of Paris. April 8, 2007 American Erika Labri married the Eiffel Tower, and in sunny days a Parisian landmark is deformed by 18 centimeters ... In our article, we have collected several amazing facts about the Iron Lady. ...

Bastille Day
Every year on July 14, the French celebrate one of the most significant national holidays - Bastille Day. This tradition has existed since 1880, but for the inhabitants of the state, the holiday has long lost its revolutionary significance. In all the cities and villages of France, fun parties are held on this day, restaurants and nightclubs barely accommodate everyone, and the citizens themselves show a willingness to have fun until the morning. Den...

Geography of the Russian bath
Oddly enough, baths in Russia, with the exception of its northwestern regions, began to appear relatively recently. And before that, washing in the oven was widely practiced in Ryazan, and in the Vladimir-Suzdal regions, and even in the Moscow region, which, by the way, was widespread in Moscow itself in the last century. In general, the localization of various bathing traditions in Russia largely coincided with the settlement zones ...

English astronomer William Herschel
The famous English astronomer William Herschel (Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel) went down in history as the discoverer of the planet Uranus. But by profession he was a musician. Herschel was born in 1738 in Hannover, Germany. He was probably taught music by his elder brother, who was an organist in the church. The family moved to London, and Herschel became a musician in the royal guard. At the age of seventeen, the young man first introduced himself in ...

Caesar gold coins
The state of the ancient Romans started minting gold coins quite late. During the Republic, the issue of gold coins was random and few were issued. Their mass emissions began from the time of Caesar's reign. In addition to the inscription CAESAR, the numbers LII are minted on these coins. It is assumed that this could indicate the age of Caesar. Since the year of Caesar's birth is debatable, then to accurately date the release of these mon...

History of the geographical map. completed: 8th grade student MBOU "Gymnasium" No. 5 Krezhkov Nikita

Purpose: to get acquainted with the history of the creation of a geographical map

Introduction. Cartography is the science of displaying and understanding natural and socio-economic geosystems through maps as models. Cartography originated in ancient times, there are even references to maps in the Bible. The first manuals on cartography were compiled by ancient Greek. scientist K. Ptolemy. The heyday of cartography falls on the Renaissance and the great geographical discoveries. The authors of the famous maps of the world and the first atlases were the Dutch cartographers G. Mercator and A. Ortelius. In Russia, the development of cartography is associated with the names of S. U. Remezov, V. N. Tatishchev, F. F. Schubert,

"MAP - LANGUAGE OF GEOGRAPHY" tells about objects; you can find out the location; distance can be measured; shows the state of the objects.

The map is reduced, generalized images earth's surface on a plane, built according to mathematical laws using special notation.

The first acquaintance with the map.

Image of the earth's surface in antiquity Drawing on a rock Drawing of the Ancient Egyptians

Picture drawings on old maps It is clearly seen that the area was shown with the help of well-understood picture drawings.

Map of Transylvania from the "Atlas" by G. Mercator - J. Hondius (1607)

The ancient Greek scientist Anaximander is considered the creator of the first geographical map. In the VI century. BC. he drew the first map of the then known world, depicting the Earth in the form of a flat circle surrounded by water. In the III century. BC. The ancient Greek scholar Eratosthenes wrote the book "Geography", for the first time using the terms "geography", "latitude" and "longitude". The book consisted of three parts. In the first part, the history of geography was outlined; the second describes the shape and size of the Earth, the boundaries of land and oceans, the climates of the Earth; in the third, the land was divided into parts of the world and sphrageds - prototypes of natural zones, and a description of individual countries was also made. They compiled and geographic map populated part of the earth.

In the II century. AD The ancient Greek scientist Claudius Ptolemy summarized and systematized the knowledge of ancient scientists about the Earth and the Universe in his eight-volume work "Guide to Geography", which during the 14th century enjoyed such great popularity among scientists, travelers, merchants that it was reprinted 42 times.

Ptolemy compiled detailed map A land like no one has ever created before him. It depicted three parts of the world: Europe, Asia and Libya (as Africa was then called), the Atlantic (Western) Ocean, the Mediterranean (African) and the Indian Seas. The rivers, lakes and peninsulas of Europe and North Africa known at that time were depicted quite accurately.

The first map of Russia called "The Big Drawing" was compiled, as scientists suggest, in the second half of the 16th century. However, neither the "Large Drawing" nor its subsequent supplemented and modified copies have come down to us. Only the appendix to the map has survived - "The Book of the Big Drawing". It contained interesting information about the nature and economic activities of the population, about the main roads and main rivers as communication routes, about "cities" and various defensive structures on the borders of the Russian state.

Peter I considered it a matter of national importance to draw up a map of Russia, which would help in the development of little-known regions of the country, in particular in the study of the sea route from Novaya Zemlya to the "Tatar Sea" (obviously, the Pacific Ocean), where he wanted to establish shipyards for building ships in order to send them to China, Japan and other countries.

Conclusion. Maps don't just help us get from point A to point B. They can serve as a tool of politics and a snapshot of history, and can reflect the fears and prejudices of their era, says historian Jerry Brotton. One of the amazing things about maps is that people are unwilling to accept the most basic fact of cartography, which is that a map cannot be a 100% objective, accurate depiction of our world. Talk to any cartographer - and he will tell you that the algorithm for turning a globe into a flat image always leads to certain distortions, manipulations and selectivity. Just because you can't turn a circle into a square. But for most people who use maps on a day-to-day basis - whether it's satellite navigation, online mapping, a mobile phone app, or even a good old paper map - the idea that a map is just a partial, selective snapshot of the Earth is simply unbearable.

It is impossible to establish when a person made the first card. It is only known that many millennia before our era, man already knew the surrounding area well and knew how to depict it on sand or tree bark. These cartographic images served to indicate roaming routes, hunting places, etc.

Many more hundreds of years passed. People, in addition to hunting and fishing, began to engage in cattle breeding and agriculture. This new, higher stage of culture was also reflected in drawings-plans. They become more detailed, more expressive, more accurately convey the character of the area.

A very valuable ancient drawing of the hunting grounds of the North Caucasus has been preserved to this day. This engraving was made on silver around 3000 BC. e., i.e. This cultural monument of the inhabitants of the ancient Caucasus was found by scientists during excavations of one of the mounds on the banks of the river. Kuban near Maykop.

AT ancient world The drawing up of geographical maps has reached a great development. The Greeks established the sphericity of the Earth and its dimensions, introduced cartographic projections, meridians and parallels into science.

One of the most famous scientists of the ancient world, geographer and astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who lived in the city of Alexandria (at the mouth of the Nile River) in the 2nd century, compiled a detailed map of the Earth, which no one had created before him.

This map shows three parts of the world - Europe, Asia and Libya (as Africa was then called), as well as the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean and other seas. The map has already a degree grid. Ptolemy introduced this grid in order to more correctly depict the spherical shape of the Earth on the map. The rivers, lakes, peninsulas of Europe and North Africa known at that time are shown quite accurately on Ptolemy's map.

If we compare Ptolemy's map with the modern one, it is easy to see that the areas located far from the Mediterranean region, that is, known to Ptolemy only by rumor, received fantastic outlines.

Particularly striking is the fact that Asia is not depicted in its entirety. Ptolemy did not know where it ended in the north and east. He also did not know about the existence of the Arctic and Pacific oceans. Africa continues on the map to the South Pole and passes into some kind of land, connecting in the east with Asia. Ptolemy did not know that Africa ended in the south and was washed by the ocean. He did not know about the existence of independent continents - America, Antarctica and Australia. Ptolemy depicted the Indian Ocean as a closed sea, into which it is impossible to pass on ships from Europe. And yet, in the ancient world and in subsequent centuries, until the 15th century, no one compiled the best card world than Ptolemy.

The Romans widely used maps for administrative and military purposes; they were compiled road maps.

During the Middle Ages, the achievements of ancient science were forgotten for a long time. The Church entered into a fierce struggle with scientific ideas about the structure and origin of the world.

Fables were taught in schools about the creation of the world by God in six days, about the global flood, about heaven and hell. The idea of ​​the sphericity of the Earth was considered "heretical" by churchmen and was strictly persecuted. The idea of ​​the Earth has taken on an absolutely fantastic form. In the VI century. Byzantine merchant monk Cosmas Indikoplios depicted the Earth in the shape of a rectangle.

The main type of maps are rough, far from reality and devoid of a scientific basis "monastery maps". They testify to the decline of cartography in medieval Europe. During this period, many small closed states arose in Europe. With a subsistence economy, these feudal states did not need connections with the outside world.

By the end of the Middle Ages, trade and navigation began to develop in the cities of Europe, art and science flourished.

In the XIII-XIV centuries. in Europe, a compass and marine navigation charts, the so-called portolans, appear.

On these maps, the coastline was depicted in detail and very accurately, while the inner parts of the continents remained empty or were filled with pictures from the life of the peoples inhabiting them.

The era of great geographical discoveries created the conditions for the rise of cartographic science: navigators needed a good, truthful geographical map. In the XVI century. more correct maps appeared, built in new cartographic projections.
Geographic maps include a lot of scientific material. If we compare various cards the same area, study them, you can get a very detailed idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthis area.

Therefore, maps are a huge source of knowledge. But a map can become a real source of knowledge only when you have a certain stock of geographical knowledge.

Anyone with knowledge of geography and the ability to read a map can accurately understand the terrain depicted on it, rivers, mountain lakes, high or low hills, cities and villages, railways.

The map is more important than the text, as it often speaks much brighter, Semenov-Tien-Shansky

First cards

Geographic maps have a long history.

Once upon a time, travelers on a long journey had no maps, no navigational instruments - nothing that would allow them to determine their location. I had to rely on my memory, the sun, the moon and the stars. People made sketches of the places they managed to visit - this is how the first maps appeared.

Since ancient times, maps have been one of the most important documents for any state. The rulers of many countries organized expeditions to explore unknown lands, and the main goal of all travelers was, first of all, to compile detailed geographical maps with the most important landmarks on them: rivers, mountains, villages and cities.

The modern name "CARD" comes from the Latin "charte", meaning "letter". Translated "chartes" means "a sheet or scroll of papyrus for writing."

It is difficult to determine when the first cartographic images appeared. Among the archaeological finds on all continents, one can see primitive drawings of the area made on stones, bone plates, birch bark, wood, the age of which scientists determine is about 15 thousand years.

The simplest cartographic drawings were already known in the conditions of primitive society, even before the birth of writing (appendix). This is evidenced by primitive cartographic images among peoples who, by the time they were discovered or studied, were at low levels of social development and did not have a written language (the Eskimos of North America, the Nanais of the Lower Amur, the Chukchi and Oduls of northeast Asia, the Micronesians of Oceania, etc. ).

These drawings, made on wood, bark, etc. and often distinguished by great plausibility, served to satisfy the needs that arose from the conditions of the general labor of people: to indicate the ways of nomads, places of hunting, etc.

Preserved cartographic images carved on the rocks in the era of primitive society. Particularly remarkable are the Bronze Age rock paintings in the Camonica Valley (Northern Italy), and among them a plan showing cultivated fields, paths, streams and irrigation canals. This plan is one of the oldest cadastral plans.

Before their appearance, oral stories were the main source of information about the location of an object. But as people began to travel more and more frequently, the need for long-term storage of information arose.

The most ancient of the surviving cartographic images include, for example, a city plan on the wall of Catal Huyuk (Turkey), dating from about 6200 BC. e., cartographic image on a silver vase from Maykop (about 3000 BC), cartographic images on clay tablets from Mesopotamia (about 2300 BC), numerous petroglyph maps of Valcamonica in Italy (1900 -1200 BC), the Egyptian map of gold mines (1400 BC), etc. From Babylon, through the Greeks, the Western world inherited the sexagesimal number system based on the number 60, in which today geographical coordinates.

Early cartographers themselves collected descriptions of various parts of the known world by that time, interviewing sailors, soldiers and adventurers and displaying the data on a single map, and filling in the missing places with their imagination or honestly leaving blank blank spots.

The first cards contained great amount inaccuracies: at first, no one thought about the severity of measurements, scales, topographic signs. But even such cards were highly valued. With their help, it was possible to repeat the path traveled by the discoverer and avoid the troubles that lay in wait for travelers in many.

Starting from the VI century. BC e., the main contribution to the technology of creating maps in ancient world introduced by the Greeks, Romans and Chinese.

Unfortunately, no Greek maps of that time have been preserved, and the contribution of the Greeks to the development of cartography can only be assessed from textual sources - the works of Homer, Herodotus, Aristotle, Strabo and other ancient Greeks - and subsequent cartographic reconstructions.

The Greek contribution to cartography was the use of geometry to create maps, the development map projections and in the dimension of the Earth.

It is believed that the ancient Greek scientist Anaximander is considered the Creator of the first geographical map. In the VI century. BC. he drew the first map of the then known world, depicting the Earth in the form of a flat circle surrounded by water.

The ancient Greeks were well aware of the spherical shape of the Earth, as they observed its rounded shadow during periods of lunar eclipses, saw ships appear from the horizon and disappear behind it.

The Greek astronomer Eratosthenes (circa 276-194 BC) back in the 3rd century BC. e. accurately calculated the size of the globe. Eratosthenes wrote the book "Geography", for the first time using the terms "geography", "latitude" and "longitude". The book consisted of three parts. In the first part, the history of geography was outlined; the second describes the shape and size of the Earth, the boundaries of land and oceans, the climates of the Earth; in the third, the land was divided into parts of the world and sphrageds - prototypes of natural zones, and a description of individual countries was also made. He also compiled a geographical map of the inhabited part of the Earth.

As already noted above, Eratosthenes proved the sphericity of the Earth and measured the radius of the globe, and Hipparchus (about 190-125 BC) invented and used a system of meridians and parallels for cartographic projections.

In the Roman Empire, cartography was placed at the service of practice. For military, commercial and administrative needs, road maps were created. The most famous of them is the so-called Peutinger table (a copy of the 4th century map), which is a scroll of 11 glued sheets of parchment 6 m 75 cm long and 34 cm wide. It shows the road network of the Roman Empire from the British Isles to the mouth of the Ganges, which is about 104,000 km, with rivers, mountains, settlements.

The crown of the cartographic works of the Roman time was the eight-volume work "Guide to Geography" by Claudius Ptolemy (90-168), where he summarized and systematized the knowledge of ancient scientists about the Earth and the Universe; indicating the coordinates of many geographical points in latitude and longitude; which outlines the basic principles of creating maps and provides the geographical coordinates of 8000 points. And, which during the I4 centuries enjoyed such great popularity among scientists, travelers, merchants that it was reprinted 42 times.

"Geography" of Ptolemy contained, as already mentioned, all the information about the Earth available by that time. The maps attached to it differed in great accuracy. They have a degree grid.

Ptolemy drew up a detailed map of the Earth, the likes of which no one had ever created before him. It depicted three parts of the world: Europe, Asia and Libya (as Africa was then called), the Atlantic (Western) Ocean, the Mediterranean (African) and the Indian Seas.

The well-known at that time rivers, lakes and peninsulas of Europe and North Africa were quite accurately depicted, which cannot be said about the lesser-known regions of Asia, recreated on the basis of fragmentary, often contradictory geographical information and data.

8000 (eight thousand) points of the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean were plotted by coordinates; the position of some of them was determined astronomically, and the majority was plotted along the routes.

The map is stretched to the east. Half of the map is dedicated to known countries. In its southern part, a huge continent is depicted, called the Unknown Land.

Regardless of European traditions, cartography developed in China. The oldest surviving document on the official surveying of the country and the creation of maps is from the Zhou Dynasty (1027-221 BC). And the most ancient Chinese maps of the surviving are maps on bamboo plates, silk and paper, found in the Fanmatang graves of the Qin (221-207 BC) and Western Han (206 BC - 25 g) AD) dynasties, as well as in the Mawangdui graves of the Western Han dynasty.

These maps are comparable in character and detail to topographic maps. In terms of accuracy, they significantly exceeded even later European maps.

The main Chinese contribution to the creation of maps was the invention no later than the 2nd century. BC e. paper, on which maps began to be drawn, and a rectangular grid of coordinates, which was first used by the great Chinese astronomer and mathematician Zhang Heng (78-139 AD). Subsequently, Chinese cartographers invariably used a rectangular grid of coordinates.

A century later, the Chinese cartographer Pei Xu (224-271) developed the principles of mapping based on the use of a rectangular grid of coordinates, as well as the principles of measuring distances based on the laws of geometry.

Invented by the Chinese in the 8th century. book printing allowed them to be the first in world history to start printing maps. The first surviving printed Chinese map dates from 1155.

Related publications