Columbus's world map is based on ancient maps, which greatly overestimates the area of Eurasia and depicts the situation that the circumference of the earth is 25% smaller than the actual situation-his own wishful thinking and wrong mathematical methods make this judgment wrong. According to his calculation, India is within a voyage of 2500 miles west of Spain. He walked about 8,000 miles, and Columbus's mistake was just one chapter in a series of discoveries, theories and mistakes about maps and cartographic stories.
Maps are the 10000-year history of human beings trying to understand the earth. 1492, most people don't know what the world is like. Even some impressive and accurate maps are full of myths and mistakes, from strange monsters to the whole missing continent to thousands of "unknown places".
As time goes by, mistakes are corrected and gaps are filled. Nowadays, many people put maps into their devices. It's so detailed that you can see your front door. However, to understand how we are so successful today, please understand these eight maps, which tell the historical evolution of our view of the world.
The oldest existing world map depicts the Babylonian worldview around 600 BC. The 5-inch stone tablet is a wide rectangle with Babylon as the center and across the Euphrates River. It is depicted by lines that bend up and down. Babylon, perhaps the most populous city in the world at that time, was surrounded by neighboring cities represented by small circles, which in turn surrounded a larger circle to represent the ocean. Although the geographical location is limited, the map reveals the inherent prejudice of map makers to put themselves at the center of world figures.
Other early maps met more practical needs, such as the stick-shell map used to represent the current around the South Pacific islands before 2000, or the Egyptian papyrus map that enabled miners to cross the desert in 12 BC, but the map of Babylon and the map of the world were the earliest examples of political maps used to defend a country or city.
The Greeks were the first known civilization to use scientific methods to measure and map the world. As early as the 6th century BC, the philosopher Pythagoras put forward the theory that the earth is round. By 200 BC, Eratosthenes, a scholar, accurately estimated that the circumference of the earth was within 1000 miles by comparing the shadow angles projected on two distant cities at the same time.
Ptolemy, a Greek-Egyptian astronomer, combined the works of early Greek scholars with the stories of travelers in the Roman world and the records of towns at that time to compile Geography. This eight-volume atlas laid the foundation for surveying and mapping in 1500. About AD 150, the geography handbook as a mapping method was completed. Ptolemy explained map projection-drawing a sphere on a plane. He listed the coordinates of 8000 locations in Eurasia and North Africa according to the similarity of precursor latitude and longitude of the current system. According to Ptolemy's blueprint about the shape and size of the world, the map provided information for Columbus's voyage to America and led Ferdinand Magellan on a global expedition. However, with the decline of the Roman Empire, his works disappeared and rarely revived in 800 years.
Tabra Rogier was completed by Moroccan cartographer Mohamed Idrisi in 1 154. This book was drawn for King Roger II, who hoped to inform and expand his rule through maps. It contains 70 regional maps, each of which describes his city, roads, rivers and mountains in detail. In the next three centuries, it was one of the most accurate geographical works in the known world. Later, it helped guide vasco da gama to sail from the sea to India.
Although the atlas was made for the Norman king of Italy, it was the highest achievement of the golden age of Islam, and in the early Middle Ages, science was on vacation in most parts of Europe. Al-Idrisi's works are largely based on geography, which was rediscovered around the 9th century and translated into Arabic. On the basis of Ptolemy's works, Islamic cartographers corrected their mistakes according to their knowledge of the developing empire. They pulled the Indian Ocean apart accurately and connected it with the Pacific Ocean, not the inland waters of Ptolemy.
Islamic map makers also produced some of the most exquisite maps of that era, which were mainly inspired by the need to determine the direction of Mecca from anywhere in the world. The top of the map of the Islamic world faces south and "faces" the holy city.
Back in Europe, this map tells a spiritual story, not a geographical story. Just as the ancient map of Babylon in the middle ages can glimpse their world view, the world map in the middle ages also shows how the western Christian world views the world.
Hereford's map of the ancient world was made in England around 1300, which is an interesting peek at the imagination of the Middle Ages. It is drawn on a huge animal skin, and it is the largest and most famous world map in existence since the Middle Ages. The top depicts Judgment Day, which is one of the scenes recorded in the Bible, while images of wild animals and fantastic monsters lurk at the edge of the world, representing unknown dangers. Reford map represents the most common map in the ancient world, that is, the "TO" map. It is called the "TO" map because the "T" shape divides the world into three continents (Asia, Europe and Africa) and is surrounded by an "O" shaped ocean.
TO maps were first described in the 7th century. It usually places Jerusalem at the center of the world, with the East as the top. It is considered as the most sacred direction and the location of Eden. In fact, the word "direction" comes from the Latin root oriens, which means "East". "Positioning" maps means putting the East at the top, which has been the standard of European map making for hundreds of years. But this is about to change.
Ancient sailors sailed the ocean by observing the land, the sun and the stars. If clouds are rolling, they sail and wait for better visibility.
The discovery of the compass-a magnetized needle on a piece of wood, floating in the water, aligned with the magnetic pole-changed navigation. Sailors can safely enter the high seas without visual cues. In 1 1 century, China first mentioned the compass. It spread along the Silk Road connecting East and West, and a new map of Europe named Portugal followed. These charts are covered by crossing lines, indicating the trade routes between ports. The oldest existing example is Carte Pisane, which can be traced back to 1290. It accurately mapped the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, and today's ships can sail with it. But the most famous and extensive map of Portoland is Catalonia Atlas. In 1375, Cresk Abraham, a cartographer in Mallorca, drew eight pages of kraft paper.
The compass triggered the transition from actual navigation to geographic map. Religious symbols defined most maps of medieval Europe. A map can tell you the general direction of Eden, but it can't tell you how far it is. ) 65438+At the beginning of the 5th century, European monarchs began to explore the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean in order to find new trade routes to the East. At that time, Ptolemy's Geography was translated into Latin, which marked the beginning of the upsurge of exploration and mapping.
When we saw the most complete map in the world in16th century, it also overcame one of the most intractable problems in cartography: how to navigate the spherical earth on a two-dimensional map. A picture of an orange peel on a flat surface-it's impossible not to distort its shape. Ptolemy has solved this problem, but the navigator still can't complete the simple task of drawing the shortest route between points with straight lines on the map. 1569, Gerardus Mercator, a German cartographer in Flanders, solved this problem with thousands of years of history with a new map projection: the earth as a cylinder is unfolded into a square grid of latitude and longitude. The farther the projection is from the equator, the farther the distance is. Today, we still see the shortcoming of this prediction, that is, it distorts the two poles of the mainland. Eurasia and North America have expanded, while equatorial regions, such as most parts of Africa, seem less misleading.
The first photo taken in the air was taken from a 260-foot hot air balloon at 1858. This is an unfortunate start-a photo of a small French village is lost-but the aviation industry will completely change map making. From the above, a photo can collect a large amount of data at a time, which is a great progress in labor-intensive ground investigation.
After the outbreak of World War I, maps became a powerful weapon. The detailed trench map of the front line can be shelled without practicing shooting, thus retaining surprising elements. After the war, aerial photography gradually became popular. In 192 1 year, the aerial map of Fairchild in Manhattan was introduced into popular culture consciousness. Sherman Fairchild, an American entrepreneur in new york, has been developing new aerial photography technology for World War I, and has introduced an aerial camera, which can automatically take photos and rotate the film at certain intervals.
This camera is installed under the war-torn biplane, flying 65,438+00,000 feet over new york, taking pictures of the city every 27 seconds, and moving back and forth on the island for 69 minutes. Then the negatives are overlapped to form an accurate Manhattan grid, which sets the standard for aerial mapping in the next 50 years.
The Cold War promoted the next leap of map technology. When MIT scientists realized that they could track Soviet satellites from the ground by observing the changes of Soviet radio signals when they moved, the launch of artificial satellites triggered the development of GPS. Similarly, according to their distance from the satellite, objects on the earth can be located.
In the1960s, the US military developed early satellite navigation experiments to track intercontinental missiles. By the early 1970s, the military launched the first global positioning system, NAVSTAR, which can determine the precise spatial coordinates of any place on the earth. Today, a complete GPS satellite group (about 27 satellites) circles the earth twice a day, transmitting radio signals. When an object on the earth's surface receives signals from at least three satellites, its precise geographical coordinates can be determined within a few centimeters. In 2000, the US Department of Defense cancelled the policy of reducing the tracking accuracy of civil GPS. In the subsequent technology boom, Google launched three products-Earth, Map and Street View-to jointly create the most complete map of the world.
Google Earth, released in 2005, provides an interactive 3D image of the Earth, which is formed by millions of overlapping satellite photos covering the 3D digital Earth. Close-up 3D details are added from aerial images that capture the depth of buildings and terrain.
Google Street View began in 2006. At that time, trucks were driving in six major cities in the United States, equipped with GPS sensors and multi-lens cameras to reproduce the earth from the line of sight. The 20 17 street view camera is updated to a laser scanner to record the size and depth of the object, thus creating a 3D view along the way. With crowdsourcing data and machine learning technology, these cameras have drawn millions of miles of roads in 87 countries on seven continents. Combining "map", "street view" and "earth", the whole world can really be in the hands of billions of people. Now, by clicking and zooming, you can navigate and explore almost anywhere on earth.