The past twelve months captured in photographs
The Imago Mundi, a clay tablet dating back to 2300 BCE, is the earliest surviving map of the known world. Also called the Babylonian Map of the World, Imago Mundi is centered on the Euphrates, and shows the city of Babylon, although it's a symbolic, not a literal representation. The tablet is on display at the British Museum in London.
A manuscript Portuguese world map dating back to 1502, the Cantino planisphere is named for one Alberto Cantino, who smuggled the document from Portugal to Italy for the Duke of Ferrara. It is the earliest surviving map showing Portuguese geographic discoveries in the east and west, and is particularly notable for portraying a fragmentary record of the Brazilian coast. The planisphere is preserved in the Galleria Estense in Modena, Italy.
Pictured is one of at least four mappa mundi ("world maps") drawn up by 15th- century Venetian geographer and cosmographer Giovanni Leardo. This 1452 ink and colors on parchment edition is held by the American Geographical Society Library in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and is the oldest world map in the library.
The Tabula Peutingeriana is a 13th-century parchment copy of an ancient Roman road map originally drawn up in either the 4th or 5th century. Representing central Italy and Rome, the document was later named for the 16th-century German antiquarian Konrad Peutinger and is now conserved at the Austrian National Library in Vienna.
Regarded as the oldest surviving map from the ancient world, the Turin Papyrus Map is dated back to 1150 BCE. It shows a 15-km (9 mi) stretch of Wadi Hammamat in Egypt, between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea. It's housed in the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy, for which it is named.
The Tabula Rogeriana, or Kitab Rudjdjar, is an early world map created by the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi (1100–1165). The map was commissioned in 1154 by King Roger II of Sicily. It's housed at the University of Oxford, England.
Described as the most important medieval map in the Catalan language, the Catalan Atlas was created in 1375 and attributed to the Majorcan Jewish cartographers Abraham Cresques and his son, Jehuda Cresques. It is is one of the earliest portolan charts (used by marine navigators) to incorporate geographic data drawn directly from Marco Polo’s record of his travels. The document is preserved in the National Library of France, in Paris.
The 'Dauphin' map of the world was created in 1546 by French cartographer Pierre Desceliers for the Dauphin Henri II of France (Crown Prince) on the order of the King of France, Francis I. It was one of several large world maps Desceliers made in the style of nautical charts.
A map of the world made by Italian monk and cartographer Fra Mauro, the intricately detailed Fra Mauro Map is one of the finest examples of medieval cartography ever created. Made in 1460, the document is a circular planisphere drawn on parchment and set in a wooden frame. It features information provided by Marco Polo.
This is the known world as it was recorded by the second-century Greek mathematician Ptolemy. The map is a 15th-century reconstitution from Ptolemy's 'Geography' (circa 150 CE). Besides the European continent, it indicates "Sinae" (China) at the extreme right, beyond the island of "Taprobane" (Ceylon or Sri Lanka, oversized) and the "Aurea Chersonesus" (Southeast Asian peninsula).
Ottoman cartographer Piri Reis compiled his world map in 1513. Only a fragment survives, which shows the western coasts of Europe and North Africa and the coast of Brazil. Intriguingly, the map appears to show Antarctica almost 300 years before it was discovered. Furthermore, the continent is drawn as a land mass as it would have appeared before it was covered with its ice cap over 6,000 years ago. The map is kept in the library of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, but is rarely on public display.
The Catalan Atlas is also noted for being the first map to incorporate a compass rose (pictured).
Seven years after the Erdapfel, Castilian navigator and cartographer Juan de la Cosa produced a world map that included the earliest known representation of the New World, in 1500. Pictured is an engraving of the map, the only cartographic work made by an eyewitness of the first voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Indies that has been preserved.
The Lopo Homem-Reineis Atlas, also known as the Miller Atlas, is a richly illustrated 1519 map of Brazil, the joint work of Portuguese cartographers Pedro and Jorge Reinel and Lopo Homem. The artwork is by António de Holanda. It was acquired in 1897 for the National Library of France by the librarian Bénigne Emmanuel Clement Miller, hence the name Miller Atlas.
Diogo Ribeiro, a Portuguese cartographer working for Spain, made what is considered the first scientific world map, the 1527 Padrón Real World Map. It's preserved at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Vatican City.
As more of the planet was being charted—and definitely not found to be flat—it was left to German cartographer Martin Behaim to create the Erdapfel, or "Earth Apple," in 1492. It's considered to be the oldest surviving example of a terrestrial globe. The Americas are not included, as Columbus returned to Spain no sooner than March 1493. The venerable sphere is on display in the Germanic Museum in Nuremberg.
The map created by Joan Blaeu in 1664 depicts a double hemisphere map of the world and was prepared for the 'Atlas Van Loon,' a handsome portfolio of maps published between 1649 and 1676.
In 1777, Colonel Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBarres created a monumental four volume atlas of North America, 'Atlantic Neptune.' It's the most important collection of maps, charts, and views of North America published in the 18th century.
Long before the Greenwich prime meridian (a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°) became the international standard reference for cartographers in 1884, map makers like Gerardus Mercator, in his Atlas Cosmographicae (1595), used a prime meridian he called the Mercator Projection which corresponded somewhere close to 25°W, passing just to the west of Santa Maria Island in the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean. His 180th meridian runs along the Strait of Anián (Bering Strait).
Over five thousand years after the creation of Imago Mundi, NASA published its latest World Map. By using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square km (.386 square mi) of our planet to produce the finest image yet of an increasingly fragile Earth.
Sources: (Compass Rose Geocoin) (The Vintage News) (Geographicus Rare Antique Maps) (Carnegie Council) (The Keyword)
The first half of the 20th century saw mapmaking taken to new heights. The first images from space were taken on the sub-orbital V-2 rocket flight launched by the United States on October 24, 1946. These early photographs were the precursor of satellite imagery. Pictured in this US Army photograph is one of the first ever images of Earth taken from space.
This NASA image is the first crude photograph taken by the satellite Explorer 6 on August 14, 1959. At the time, the satellite was crossing Mexico and shows a sunlit area of the Central Pacific Ocean and its cloud cover.
On July 23, 1972, the joint NASA/United States Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Technology Satellite was launched and with it the Landsat program, the longest-running enterprise for acquisition of satellite imagery of Earth. Landsat satellites have acquired millions of images that have made documentation of many areas possible that were previously inaccessible. Pictured in February 2013 is the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas-V rocket with the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) spacecraft onboard.
With Google Maps, the whole world was suddenly at your fingertips. Pictured is Apple's Steve Jobs in 2007 demonstrating Google Maps on the iPhone. In 2012, Apple released its own mapping service in iOS, replacing Google Maps as the default mapping service for Apple operating systems.
Also in 2007, Google released Google Street View, a feature of Google Maps that provides 360° panoramic street-level views of various locations. Today we often reach a destination by way of Sat Nav technology.
The 21st century has seen extraordinary technological mapmaking advances. Google Earth, a computer program launched in 2001, rendered a 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. In 2005, Google Maps was launched.
Created by an anonymous ancient Chinese cartographer, this early Western Han Dynasty (202 BCE–9 CE) silk map, discovered at the Mawangdui Han tombs site, depicts the Kingdom of Changsha and the Kingdom of Nanyue in southern China.
On display at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris is the map used by Italian explorer Christopher Columbus to plan his voyage to India, which in fact resulted in his 'discovery' of the Americas.
A map of the world showing in red the extent of the British Empire in 1901. Historically, maps have often been used as much for political and ideological purposes as they have been for reference and navigation, points out the Carnegie Council.
Published in 1827, the well-known Finley Map of the World is based on the aforementioned Mercator's Projection.
This 1902 commercial map of the world is published re-positioned according to Greenwich prime meridian coordinates.
These days, we rarely get lost. All we have to do is program our GPS devices or consult Google Maps. Of course, there's still the good old paper map to fall back on. Five thousand years ago, however, you might have turned to a clay tablet to get your bearings. Later, a papyrus scroll would have done the trick. And by the 16th century, the first world maps had started to appear. Maps have been part of human history for millennia, and the development of cartography, or mapmaking technology, is as fascinating as the many destinations a map assists us in arriving at.
Click through, pore over this gallery, and chart the timeline of maps.
Charting the history of maps, from Imago Mundi to Google
Mapping out the development of cartography
LIFESTYLE Cartography
These days, we rarely get lost. All we have to do is program our GPS devices or consult Google Maps. Of course, there's still the good old paper map to fall back on. Five thousand years ago, however, you might have turned to a clay tablet to get your bearings. Later, a papyrus scroll would have done the trick. And by the 16th century, the first world maps had started to appear. Maps have been part of human history for millennia, and the development of cartography, or mapmaking technology, is as fascinating as the many destinations a map assists us in arriving at.
Click through, pore over this gallery, and chart the timeline of maps.