History of Maps

Road Maps - Cartography or Map making
Survey Maps - Worlds Oldest Map

Cartography or map-making is the study, and often practice of crafting representations of the Earth upon a flat surface and one who makes maps is called a cartographer.

Road maps are perhaps the most widely used maps today, and form a subset of navigational maps, which also include aeronautical and Nautical Charts railroad maps network maps, and hiking and bicycling maps.

In terms of quantity, the largest number of drawn map sheets is probably made up by local surveys, carried out by municipalities, utilities, tax assessors, emergency services providers, and other local agencies.

Many national surveying projects have been carried out by the military, such as the British Ordnance survey maps (now a civilian government agency internationally renowned for its comprehensively detailed work).

In addition to location information maps may also be used to portray contour lines (isoclines) indicating constant values of elevation, topography, rainfall, temperature etc.

Worlds Oldest Map

Archaeologists have discovered what they believe is man's earliest map, dating from almost 14,000 years ago Photo: EPA

Archaeologists have discovered what they believe is man's earliest map, dating from almost 14,000 years ago Photo: EPA

A stone tablet found in a cave in Abauntz in the Navarra region of northern Spain is believed to contain the earliest known representation of a landscape.

Engravings on the stone, which measures less than seven inches by five inches, and is less than an inch thick, appear to depict mountains, meandering rivers and areas of good foraging and hunting

Australia ’s First Map

First map of Australia from Nicholas Vallard's atlas, 1547, in the Library of Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bart. At Middle Hill, 1856 [cartographic material].