History of the World Map by Map

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If you weren't paying too much attention during history classes, here's your chance to pay catch up. Released in 2005, Google Earth provided an interactive, 3D image of the globe formed from millions of overlapping satellite photographs overlaid on a 3D digital earth. Close-up 3D details are added from aerial images that capture the depth of buildings and terrain. The Hereford Mappa Mundi, created around 1300 in England, is a fascinating peek into the medieval imagination. Drawn on a huge piece of animal hide, it is the largest and most famous surviving world map from the middle ages. The top depicts the Day of Judgment, one of many biblical scenes inked onto map, while images of wild beasts and fantastical monsters lurk on the edges of the world, representing the dangers of the unknown. Please note: By accepting the licence you are agreeing to the terms and conditions listed in the End User Licence Agreement (EULA).

Visit Machu Picchu via Google Earth and hike the Inca Trail with Street View. Courtesy Google Street View As much as is included, though, no book can cover every possible historical topic. One examkple that was surprisingly missing was mention of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland during the 20th Century caused by the oppression of Catholics by the Protestant authorities and business class. The Greeks were the first known culture to apply a scientific approach to measuring and mapping the world. The philosopher Pythagorus theorized as early as the 6th century B.C. that the Earth was round. And by 200 B.C., the scholar Eratosthenes compared the angles of shadows cast simultaneously in two distant cities to accurately estimate the planet’s circumference within 1,000 miles. Indeed, everyday people were realizing that a map was an act of persuasion, a visual rhetoric. In 1553, gentry in Surrey, England, drew a map of the town’s central fields, to prove these were common lands—and that villagers thus should be allowed to graze animals there. The map, they wrote, would allow for “the more playne manifest and direct understondying” of the situation. Maps, says Rose Mitchell, a map archivist at the National Archives of the U.K., were “used to settle arguments.” Meanwhile, educated people began collecting maps and displaying them “to show off how knowledgeable they were,” she adds. Even if you couldn’t read the words on a map from a foreign country, you could generally understand it, and even navigate by it. The persuasive power of a map was its glanceability. It was data made visual. Most certainly—because it already has. Three thousand years ago, our ancestors began a long experiment in figuring out how they fit into the world, by inventing a bold new tool: the map.Maps don't just show us where to go, but also where we've been. A stunning overview of all human history, side by side with 140 custom maps. Manhattan was Fairchild’s second first aerial survey. His first, a map of Newark, New Jersey, failed to gain notice. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division

This was becoming the cardinal rule of maps: “No map entirely tells the truth,” notes Mark Monmonier, author of How to Lie With Maps. “There’s always some distortion, some point of view.” The first photograph taken from the air was shot from a 260-foot-high hot air balloon in 1858. It was an inauspicious start—and that photo of a small French village was lost—but aviation would revolutionize mapmaking. From above, a photograph could gather a huge amount of data at a time, a major improvement on labor-intensive ground surveys. Last spring, a 23-year-old woman was driving her car through the Ontario town of Tobermory. It was unfamiliar territory for her, so she was dutifully following her GPS. Indeed, she was so intent on following the device that she didn’t notice that her car was headed straight for Georgian Bay—so she drove down a boat launch and straight into the frigid water. She thankfully managed to climb out and swim to shore, as her bright red Yaris sank beneath the waves. Come on a journey through global history, told in more than 130 specially made maps that each offer a window on a key event. Step into the action and follow Ghengis Khan sweeping through China, Napoleon conquering Europe, or two world wars raging across the globe. See empires rise and fall - from the Egyptians and the Aztecs to the British Empire and the Soviet Union. You know there were people living throughout North America before Columbus stumbled upon Hispaniola in 1492, but you may be surprised by the maps that show the volume of settlements by a diverse number of native cultures across the current U.S. and Latin America.

The Hereford Map represents the most common type of mappa mundi, the “T-O” map, so called because a “T” shape splits the world into three continents (Asia, Europe, and Africa) surrounded by an “O”-shaped ocean.