12 cards that have changed our world view

12 cards that have changed our world view

based on this great adventure instrument we go through 12 cards that have changed our world view

There are few things that cause adventure romance as much as a map - especially old maps. Full of exotic names (Persia, Abyssinia, Rhodesia!) And old lettering, remind you of a time when people sacrificed their lives for adventures and explorations.

cards awaken hopes and awaken dreams. They encourage you to leave the safe harbor and to explore, dream, dream, discover, discover, discover, discover it with the words of Mark Twain

cards that have changed our world view

based on this great adventure instrument, we run through 12 cards that have changed our worldview, starting where other than in Greece?

1. Anaximander world map, 6th century of

Alt = "Maps-Changed-World-Anaximander"> (Image: Public Domain)

First in our list of cards that have changed our world view, the Anaximander World Card.

Anaximander was a Greek philosopher who in the 6th century BC BC lived and was probably the founder of cartography. His card is probably the first in the well -known world.

Anaximander's world was very different from ours: it only included the Mediterranean and three large land masses: Europe, Asia and Libya, which represents today's North Africa. Above all, there was something to build on future cartographers and promoted trade, research and association.

2. Eratosthenes' map of the well -known world, 194 v

300 years later the "father of geography" was born. Eratosthenes (another Greek) developed the map of Anaximander and the work of other pioneers and brought the map of the well -known world forward.

Alt = "Card-modified-world eratoshenes cut"> (Image: Public Domain)

eratosthenes inserted grid lines of length and latitudes and indicated the existence of poles and equators on his cards. 400 cities and their places were shown on his great work of Geographika. Geography was born.

3. World map of Ptolemy, around 150

The Greeks had pretty much a lock for early cartography and the work of Ptolemy only cemented this. The ( deep breath ) mathematician, astronomer, geographer and astrologer Claudius Ptolemy lived in the late first and early second century, but his cards were used almost 1,500 years later.

Alt = "Card-modified world-tapemy"> (Image: public domain)

Ptolemäus realized that he only knew a small part of the world, although it included much larger areas of China in the east to the middle Atlantic in the west. Most of Europe was mapped together with larger areas of Africa.

4. Fra Mauro Weltkarte, around 1450

This type is not a Greek! He is an Italian monk and a little hippie. His card is considered "the largest monument to medieval cartography", which is quite special when you consider that he has drawn it upside down. Far out, man.

alt = “cards that have changed our world view-Fra_mauro”> (Image: Public Domain)

Despite the reversal, the card is exceptionally precise compared to its predecessors. It contains detailed representations largely non -mapping areas of India, Africa, China and Japans.

he was also one of the first to point out that the Indian ocean was not closed and Africa could be circled from its southern end. Or would that be north ...

5. Mercator's world map, 1569

Next in our list of cards that have changed our world view, there is a map that is responsible for some of the greatest misunderstandings in cartography.

alt = "Cards that have changed our world view of Mercator"> (Image: Public Domain)

That is why Greenland looks as big as Africa on Google Maps. Gerardus Mercator's world map of 1569 is both an ingenious and controversial work.

Mercator's card was designed to facilitate navigation and, to quote the man himself, “to spread the surface of the ball on one level in such a way that the positions of the places on all sides correspond to each other, both in terms of the true direction and removal as well as correct length and width levels.”

Mathematics behind the Mercator projection is solid and therefore it is the most popular card projection that is still used today and is seen in this way.

6. Atlas Maior, 1634

The Atlas was born in Amsterdam and coffee tables have never looked the same since then. Atlas Maior was the last version of Joan Blaeus Weltatlas.

alt = "maps that have changed our world view"> GuShefrei (Image: Public Domain)

It contained 594 cards and around 3,000 pages of text. It was the largest and most expensive book published in the 17th century. I suspect your Atlas is also the largest and most expensive book in your bookshelf?

7. Life and work of the people in London, 1889

It is good to know where the poor live. At least that's what Charles Booth thought. He was a businessman based in London who believed that the poverty estimates in London were exaggerated.

alt = "cards that have changed our worldview"> (Image: Wellcome Trust, Creative Commons)

He set out to prove the opposite by creating this card, and instead proved exactly the opposite: that up to a third of the Londoners lived in poverty.

The idea of ​​presenting health and inequality on a map would be invaluable to understand social welfare and go on.

8. Broad Street chola card, 1854

When Cholera broke out in London in 1854, the doctor John Snow defended himself against the popular opinion that it was caused by "bad air". He thought differently and started to draw points on a map of London that represented known cases of cholera.

alt = “maps that have changed our world view - cholera”> (Image: Public Domain)

his method proved that it was not a bad air at all, but bad water from a street pump. The connection may sound trivial, but in reality Snow is responsible for saving millions of human life. His work was an important event in the history of public health and is considered the founding event of the science of epidemiology.

9. Ordnance survey (OS) cards, 1791-today

Alt = “Official topographical map”> (Image: Public Domain)

In fact, these cards are among the best and most important in world history. The methods of trigonometry, geometry and triangulation used in their creation have been responsible for the progress of cartography, navigation and discovery in the past 200 years. Not to mention the security of British hikers.

10. Peters world map, 1973

1973 the filmmaker Arno Peters presented a world map based on the work of the spiritual James Gall from the 19th century. Therefore, the Gall-Peters card projection is my favorite card projection. (Yes, I have a favorite card projection - not everyone?)

alt = “Peters Weltkarte”> (Image: Streben, Creative Commons)

This projection uses a mathematical formula to project areas of the same size on the globe as the same size on the map. For example, in contrast to the Mercator projection, Africa is shown in its true size: 14 times larger than Greenland (just compare it to the card below).

11. Google Maps, 2005 - today

Google not only changed with its online card service, as we see the world, but probably also the world itself. Thanks to Google, we know exactly where our house is, because we all did it first when Street View came on the market, right?

Alt = “Google Weltkarte”> (Image: Google Maps)

In fact, thanks to the various services and mobile apps, we know exactly where everything is located. Kia does not leave the house to us until we have looked up our destination on Google Maps. I am less enthusiastic. You use the Mercator projection, you see. Bah.

12. Facebook connection card, 2010

Yesterday was Christmas and from here in Tahiti I exchanged my exchanges with friends from all over the USA, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The Facebook intern Paul Butler created this card based on where people live relative to their Facebook friends.

Alt = “Facebook connection card”> (Image: Facebook)

He said the following: "What really impressed me was to know that the lines do not represent coasts or rivers or political boundaries, but real human relationships."

In many ways, the world is now connected.

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If you liked this article, we recommend Simon Garfields Excellent on the Map: Why the World Seen the Way It Does.
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