Cartography History!

For centuries, civilizations have tried to accurately map our Earth on a 2 dimensional map, there is one issue with that, it's not possible because of planets sphere-like form. Cartography, the study of map making not only enables us to learn more about maps but just like Thematic Maps, we can make connections with how maps have been made.    

For instance the map listed bellow which we went over in class:

World Map by Eratosthenes (195 BC)

 

Notice: Not too much of Russia had been explored due to the large mountain range in which prevented explorers from mapping/voyaging that general continent.

Now lets jump to 1571 AD

Notice: There were large revisions on our world map over 1700 years later that still aren't nearly on par with what we have today. 

With added technology we can now find the location of specific points in accuracy thought to never be possible. Today in class we also focused on locating these points with certain methods. The most accurate method being Absolute Location which gives the X and Y coordinates of a point. Whereas with Relative Location, we can locate a point by using references that are known such as oceans, tropics, continents, and landmarks. 

Coordinate Location Example: You can find The Empire State Building at

40.748817 N, -73.985428 W

Relative Location Example: The Empire State Building can be found Southwest of Grand Center Terminal. 

That concludes my September 9 Blog Post, see you next time!