The Story of Maps
Drawing the world accurately turned out to be brutally hard, and mapmaking history is full of guesswork, blank spaces, and outright invention.
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Some of the topics covered in this episode
- The earliest known maps, from Babylonian clay tablets to ancient Greek world models
- How medieval cartographers blended geography with faith and imagination
- The role of Arab and Chinese scholars in advancing the science of mapmaking
- The Age of Exploration and how maps were redrawn as the world was discovered
- Mercator's revolutionary projection and how it changed navigation forever
- The birth of scientific surveying and the solving of the longitude problem
- How satellite imagery and digital mapping transformed our relationship with place
Let the guesswork, blank spaces, and outright invention behind the earliest maps be the last thing your mind wanders through before sleep. However this story guides you, I hope it leads to a calm, restful sleep.