Ancient maps of Russia. What is the difference between ancient maps and modern cartographic images? Geographic maps, their creators
Maps are a product that countless people have been working on for over six thousand years. Cartography appeared before writing, and the methods of drawing the earth and sea surface changed along with the entire human civilization: from the first rock paintings to digital online and offline maps containing ethnographic, economic, social information about the inhabitants.
From the first day when maps began to be used for orientation in the world, shortcomings were revealed in them: rivers changed their channels, fires destroyed forests, human settlements wandered from place to place, making it difficult to fix objects on the map. So the history of the cards is also ancient history bug fixes in an attempt to create the perfect product.
Today we will decide whether, centuries later, we managed to get closer to the canonical scheme of reflecting the world.
The oldest maps of the world
In the picture above, you see an exact copy of the original piece of mammoth tusk found in the vicinity of the city of Pavlov (Czech Republic). After many years of research, the ornament on the tusk was recognized as the oldest map known to date. Its age is estimated at 25-27 thousand years. The tusk depicts river bends, ridges, ravines of loose loess slopes, rocky peaks and a hunters' house.
Such a map, even for its creators, could not last long. It was necessary to change the drawing every time, to make new map or find a fundamentally different way to navigate the terrain.
On the left is a bronze Heavenly disc from Nebra. On the right is Murdorf's gold disk (probably a fake). Both disks contain maps of the location of celestial bodies
How to fix the image of the area, if the territory is undergoing constant transformation?
Perhaps it is worth navigating by unchanging objects - the stars. The polar star, which is part of the constellation Ursa Minor, always points north, deviating only one and a half degrees during the night (due to precession, the role of the polar star in different time assigned to various stars). Knowing where the North Star is located, it is easy to determine the cardinal directions: when you look directly at the star, east will be on the right side, west on the left, and south on the back.
The first constellations were singled out about 16 thousand years ago and fell into various drawings of Paleolithic art. It should be borne in mind that the cartographic feature of the night sky patterns was used as a side effect. A celestial disc from Nebra (≈ 3000 BC) depicting the Sun, Moon and 32 stars was supposedly used to measure the angle between sunrise and sunset at the solstices.
Choice of perspective
Over 6,000 years ago, the first top-down maps appeared. A fresco in the ancient settlement of Chatal-Hyuk is regarded as a detailed plan of the village. The streets in the village were not marked - probably, the isolation of each house was shown with light lines.
A modern reconstruction of the map at Çatal Huyuk. The orange color indicates a presumably real-life volcano. White rectangles - houses covered with flat roofs
A copy of the "Carta Marina", made in 1949
The Carta Marina map of 1539 is notable for the fact that, perhaps for the first time, images of terrible sea creatures began to be of practical use - they correspond to currents, storm fronts, dangerous underwater rocks and shoals.
The 1565 map of Venice is in the style still used in tourist guides.
Equangular Mercator projection, thanks to which it is possible to build nautical charts on which the ship's course is depicted as a straight line
In 1569, the cartographer Gerardus Mercator, in an effort to make the world look "right" on maps, developed a new projection using mathematical formulas. With the Mercator projection, maps take on the form we are used to.
"Map of the World, placed in the head of the Fool", 1590. The map depicts the world "dressed" in the traditional surroundings of a court jester: a two-horned cap with bells and a jester's staff
Map by Claes Janson Wischer "Leo Belgicus", 1611. Leo Belgicus is the Latin name for the Dutch lion. Since 1583, the Netherlands has often been depicted as a lion. The map shows the period of the truce between Spain and the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands.
In 1675, John Ogilby depicted the roads as narrow stripes on the map, excluding all other surrounding space, leaving only the objects necessary for orientation. This vintage map became the prototype of maps in modern car navigators.
The fashion for axonometric projection in maps was established by the French in the detailed plan of Paris, drawn up in 1734–1736. The image above shows the Louvre Palace. To assess the scale of work, open the entire city plan. Almost three hundred years later, the Chinese did something similar for the Baidu search engine.
Have you heard of the "travel map"? On such a map, you need to paint over / erase a piece of the territory that you have visited, revealing the name and full geographical information. The first such map was created in 1761 by John Spilsbury, who came up with the “sliced geographical map”. Each individual piece of the map contained some geographic information. By collecting the necessary plots, it was possible to study the entire world known at that time.
By the 19th century, map makers began to try to visualize economic, social, and political information. However, until the mass introduction digital maps in the 21st century, additional information on maps quickly became obsolete.
ultramodernity
In the 20th century, maps became incredibly detailed, first from aerial photography, then from space photography. However, satellite imagery, quickly gaining popularity, also quickly turned into a tool for creating diagrams. On the scale of the city, they are practically useless. Above the territory of forests - they are completely useless. Then projects came to the rescue, in which people began to independently mark objects inaccessible for shooting on maps.
In our time, maps appear that reflect the interests of the most different people. For example, Greek researchers have developed a system that converts images of traditional paper maps into three-dimensional city plans. With the help of virtual reality gloves, a blind person can literally feel the map and read data from it (or turn on the voice engine that announces the names of the streets).
Airbnb is experimenting with creating maps whose boundaries are defined by cultural context. On the map above, traditional “tourist” accommodations are highlighted in green, Airbnb accommodations in red. Any template map advises housing in the "green" zone, however, more complete impressions of real life in the city can be gleaned from the "red" territory.
When the white spots finally disappeared, cards with added value quickly gained popularity. For example, on the map of New York, you can see the most criminal areas and areas where you can feel safe.
The second open source project in the Mail.Ru Group (after the Tarantool database) is not by chance the offline MAPS.ME maps based on OpenStreetMap data. The essence of the OSM project (like MAPS.ME) is to give every person in the world free map with which you can do whatever you want. For thousands of years of the history of cards, it was difficult to imagine such a thing, and pocket cards themselves appeared only in the 19th century. Now, instead of pockets, there is a smartphone, but at least the cards no longer need the Internet. Another difference between OSM and cartography of the past is accessibility. Anyone can make additions to a map on their own almost as easy as editing a Wikipedia article. One of the biggest updates to MAPS.ME this year was the ability to edit maps by users themselves. Thanks to this, we will be able to find shops, fountains, best places in order to take a photo.
The advantages of open (in every sense) cards over commercial solutions- in their versatility. The same terrain map with a different set of data is used in a huge number of situations. With the help of OSM, forest trails and dirt roads, food distribution points in the poorest regions, forest fires ... Anything!
The flaws of the era
Comparing the maps of the past - not only from the Middle Ages, but also two thousand years ago - with modern ones, one involuntarily concludes that the maps have evolved into a utilitarian information product. The design has become much simpler, and the cards themselves, oddly enough, less detailed. Glancing over the three-meter canvas of the Renaissance, you could see dozens, if not hundreds of additional objects along your route. The smartphone offers to reflect only what reflects the UX logic of the map creators: that is, the minimum of available information per unit area.
A digital map does not need to impress with its design, because it seems to be just an add-on above the search bar - we are looking for ATMs, hotels, the shortest route, the nearest attraction. The map has become not a guide to the world, but a tool to save time. Extra information on it only consumes a person's time resource. "People's Maps" solve this issue to the best of their ability, introducing filters - while there is still an opportunity to see the city with all the variety of its objects.
What is data minimization? . This does not mean that some objects disappear from the map: you just need to zoom out. This method has both supporters (maps look clearer on a mobile device) and opponents (unfamiliar terrain needs to be scaled and searched by squares if you don’t know the exact name of the object). The map, at first glance, not overloaded with information, will only suggest the shortest route, and not the one where the most beautiful, safe, quiet path opens.
Modern maps are not made by artists / designers, not even cartographers, but by programmers. This is the requirement of the era, because if you do not adapt the card for any mobile device, simply no one will use it. The map has ceased to be a work of art, has lost the terrible monsters that swallow ships, while becoming surprisingly monotonous.
However, in comparison with ancient maps, modern ones have one significant advantage - they change very quickly. The day when the card will become completely personalized is not far off. For some, it will give details that require understanding of all the details and nuances, for others - only a compressed concentrated fact about the area.
One interesting example of the move towards "personalization" is the (open source) map of Galton's real-life walking distance, built on top of OSM. The map is named after Francis Galton, an English explorer and geographer who in 1881 compiled the Isochronic passage chart, indicating the number of days to travel from Great Britain to various places.
Fragment of a map of "quiet" areas of New York, obtained from the analysis of data on complaints about noise
What does such a card give? In addition to the obvious decision (where you can get in a certain time if you can’t walk on water and pass through walls), you can calculate the rating of a place, taking into account many parameters of objects located in the walking distance.
Sooner or later, a unified map of the world will cease to exist, because for different groups people the world will be filled with different events. Metamorphoses will not affect basic concepts, such as generally accepted borders of states or distances between cities, but a motorist, pedestrian, cyclist and bar lover will be able to find exactly what interests them in the geography of the surrounding space.
And the map will again become a source of discovery.
In my youth, I loved board game The “Star of Africa”, the playing field in it was a map of the African continent, made in the ancient style: some monsters were depicted in the ocean, cities were also indicated by ancient buildings. Subsequently, I learned that such images were indeed applied to ancient maps. For example, a place where ships often disappeared was indicated by a drawing of an unknown animal (more often a leviathan), which should have warned the seafarers of antiquity.
ancient maps
The first map of the area that has come down to us is dated to the 7th millennium BC. e. It depicts a Neolithic village in present-day Turkey. Naturally, it is very primitive and schematic. The heyday of cartography falls on the era of the great geographical discoveries, when the map ceased to be a pleasant help, but became a necessity. Previously, maps were drawn by just one person, based on their own observations, often providing them with various drawings and notes that were not related to the issue. Therefore, their accuracy was questionable. The leaders in the field of mapping of that time were eastern navigators.
Until now, there are disputes about the Turkish map of Piri Reis with Antarctica depicted on it 300 years before its official discovery.
Modern cartography
Nowadays, many people work on mapping, from astronauts to professional artists. Now no one draws maps alone by hand, and everyone is busy with their own business:
The main difference between modern maps and ancient ones is their applied significance, i.e. they do not need to stand out with some special design and beauty, the main thing in them is accuracy and ease of use.
For our ancient ancestors, the world was often limited to the land that surrounded and fed them. But even the earliest human civilizations still tried to measure the scale of this world and made the first attempts at mapping.
The first such map is thought to have been made in Babylon over 2,500 years ago, and it shows the world beyond the Babylonian realm in the form of poisonous waters and dangerous islands where (they believed) humans could not survive.
Over time, maps gradually became larger and larger as people's knowledge of what lay beyond the Mediterranean grew. With the beginning of the era of wandering and exploration in the 15th century, the concept of seeing the world changed, the East began to appear on the maps, a huge uncharted ocean appeared in the place of America. And with the return of Columbus, the maps of the world began to take on a form that is already understandable to us, modern people.
1. The oldest known map of the world from Babylon (6th century BC). At the center of the world is the Babylonian kingdom itself. Around him is a "bitter river". The seven dots across the river are islands that cannot be reached.
2. World map of Hecateus of Miletus (5th-6th century BC). Hecataeus divides the world into three parts: Europe, Asia and Libya, located around the Mediterranean Sea. His world is a round disk surrounded by an ocean.
3. Map of the world by Posidonius (2nd century BC). This map expands on the early Greek vision of the world to include the conquests of Alexander the Great.
4. World map of Pomponius Mela (43 AD)
5. Map of the world by Ptolemy (150 AD). He was the first to add lines of latitude and longitude to the world map.
6. The Peutinger Tablet, a 4th-century Roman map showing the road network of the Roman Empire. The complete map is very long, showing the lands from Iberia to India. In the center of the world, of course, is Rome.
7. Map of the world by Cosmas Indikoplov (6th century AD). The world is shown as a flat rectangle.
8. Later Christian map in the form of a multi-colored clover leaf, compiled by Heinrich Banting (Germany, 1581). In fact, it does not describe the world, or rather, according to this map, the world is a continuation of the Christian trinity, and Jerusalem is its center.
9. Map of the world by Mahmud al-Kashgari (11th century). The world is centered around the ancient city of Balasagun, now the territory of Kyrgyzstan. This also includes places (countries) that, according to predictions, will appear by the end of the world, such as Gog and Magog.
10. Map "Book of Roger" by Al-Idrisi, compiled in 1154. It was created on the basis of information received from Arab traders who traveled all over the world. At that time it was the most accurate and extensive map of the world. Europe and Asia are already clearly visible, but from Africa so far there is only its northern part.
11. Hereford map of the world of the 14th century by one Richard of Haldingham. Jerusalem in the center, East at the top. The circle in the southern part of the map is the Garden of Eden.
12. Chinese map "Da Ming Hunyi Tu" of the late 14th century. The world through the eyes of the Chinese during the Ming Dynasty. China, of course, dominates, and the whole of Europe is squeezed into a small space in the west.
13. Genoese map, compiled in 1457 based on the descriptions of Niccolò da Conti. This is how Europeans see the world and Asia after the opening of the first trade routes to Mongolia and China.
14. Projection of the Erdapfel globe ("Earth Apple") by Martin Beheim (Germany, 1492). Erdapfel is the oldest known globe, showing the world as a sphere, but without America - instead, there is still a huge ocean.
15. Map of the world by Johann Ruysch, compiled in 1507. One of the first images of the New World.
16. Map by Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann in 1507. This was the first map to label the New World as "America". America looks like a thin strip of the east coast.
17. Map of the world by Gerard van Schagen in 1689. By this time, most of the world has already been mapped, and only small parts of America remain empty for now.
18. Samuel Dunn's 1794 map of the world. By mapping the discoveries of Captain James Cook, Dunn became the first cartographer to depict our world as accurately as possible.
Earth maps made 30,000,000 years ago
Why did ancient cartographers depict the continents as they were millions of years ago?
On ancient maps, Antarctica is depicted without ice, and the rest of the continents are in completely different positions than today. These are the famous 16th century maps of Piri Reis, Orontius Fineus, Hadji Ahmed and some others. Scientists tried to determine when on our planet there was such a position of the continents, according to geology? The results were so amazing that the scientific world is still silent about them: ancient maps depict the planet Earth 24-34 million years ago...
Map of Orontius (Orontius Finn). Paris, 1534-1536
How is this possible? How did medieval cartographers know the outlines of the continents that took place long before the appearance of the first man (according to official history)? Independent researcher, geologist, editor-in-chief of the portal "Before the Flood" Alexander Koltypin analyzes information related to maps ancient earth and compares it with the data of geological and geographical reconstructions.
Alexander Koltypin:– Proof, probably, of everything that modern historical and archaeological science is probably not on the right track, one can also cite such a class of information as maps of ancient navigators, which include the map known, probably, to many Piri Reis, the map of Orontius Phineus, the map of Hadji Ahmed, well, and a whole series of maps that show the world completely different from what it is now. For example, on the Ica stones, which were found in Peru by Cabrera, the most ancient maps are also depicted, the continents were located differently than they are now. For example, on the Piri Reis map, South America is connected to Antarctica. On the map of Orontia Phineus or Hadji Ahmed, Antarctica is shown as a single continent, free from ice. And if you take Philippe Buache, for example, a map, Antarctica is shown as two islands. If on Orontia Phineus there the central part is the smallest, apparently, it was covered with ice, because it is without details, and the rivers are only drawn along the edge, then there are just two islands, as it is now, based on geophysical studies that began to be carried out with sixties, only the twentieth century only became known. How was this known to the ancients, in the 15th, 16th, 14th centuries?
How was this known? Because if you follow the theory that historians are now developing, the classical theory, then they could not know anything about it, and all this cannot be attributed to a coincidence. Trying to analyze the map of Antarctica by Orontius Feneus, well, they date it, as a rule, around the twentieth millennium BC. These are already non-scientific studies, these are studies that fall outside the category of official science. Naturally, as a geologist, I also could not ignore these maps. And, first of all, he began to ask such questions, why, for example, Antarctica is connected to South America? When did they separate? When was Antarctica completely free of ice and represented two islands? When did it become covered with ice in the central part? When did it have rivers? I found this answer in paleogeological, even more correctly, paleogeographic reconstructions that exist, and in paleoclimatic reconstructions, of which there are quite a lot, and also which show the location of the continent.
So, the separation of South America and Antarctica occurred, according to some sources, 24 million years ago, according to others 34 million years ago. Here, Antarctica in the form of two islands existed more than 30 million years ago. Antarctica without ice existed somewhere around 25, I don’t say the exact date, but I say approximately, approximately 25 million years ago. After 16 million years ago, the almost continuous glaciation of Antarctica began, and its contours were already very close, it was an icy continent, and 5 million years ago it was completely ice-bound and no longer differed from the modern one. Here's what the geological data says. So, if we consider that suddenly some ancient cartographers were not lit up with inspiration, then these were sketches of some kind with more early cards, which somehow survived from that time 30 million years ago, 25 million years ago, when there were highly developed civilizations that these maps were. We read the same Mahabharata, we read the Rigveda, they talk about a certain race of space aliens headed by Vaishvanara, and in the book of Enoch these are the guards who descended to Earth and began to map the Earth.
Moreover, this is figuratively spelled out enough, that is, not only the Earth, but also the near-Earth spaces, that is, it is possible that these maps really existed from that time, and they are somehow after the catastrophes, after the floods that saved the Earth, in the same underground structures could survive and somehow fall into the hands of these medieval cartographers, who, most likely, did not use them, but simply redrawn them and made their geographical discoveries on the basis of these maps. But the maps were not entirely accurate, because the contours of the earth have changed during this time, although they have not changed significantly over 20 million years, they have changed, so errors have occurred, and sometimes discoveries are completely unforeseen. I, at least, think that this is a great example when work at the intersection of geology and folklore makes it possible to decipher these maps in this way, among other things.
