From Cartography To GPS

Finding the right path has evolved to almost pinpoint level accuracy

- Arnab Mukherjee

Maps, in one form or another, have been crucial in the story of human civilisations. Travelling vast distances, prehistoric man communicated the details of the route back to the people left behind, and that is where mapping began in its true sense. Over the years, maps have evolved to a point where we can trust our smartphone navigation apps more than we would trust our own sense of direction. In fact, today everyone with a smartphone can become a cartographer with programs such as Google maps local guides. But this journey started long ago, when most of the roads in the world were unmapped.

TRACING THE HORIZON

While it is well known that the Egyptians had made maps and city plans on papyrus long ago, very little evidence of the same made it to our time due to the fragile nature of the medium. The earliest known instance is more of a town plan that was discovered in the 1960s. The wall painting discovered there by James Mellaart was carbon dated to 6200BCE and it appears to represent a crude layout of the town and the nearby strato volcano Mount Hasan. While there is speculation whether this is a map at all to begin with, this serves as an interesting example of what mapping was all about back then – subjective interpretation.

Another helpful instance is a Babylonian map from about 600 BC. In the representation, Babylon was represented at the centre of the map, which was a common practice of the time, while several other cities like Assyria and Urartu were represented around it.

A SCIENCE