How to Draw a Map

About this book

How to Draw a Map is a fascinating meditation on the centuries-old art of map-making from the first astronomical maps to the sophisticated GPS guides of today. Maps have influenced humanity in many unexpected ways: life death sexual reproduction espionage war and peace. How to Draw a Map traces the story of mapmaking - cartography - from the first scratchings on the cave wall to the detailed high-tech navigator. This is the story of human conceptions often misconceptions of our world. It is also a very personal story about a mapmakers journey through life - the exciting new perspectives and the occasional misadventures. Over the last 5 000 years societies and empires have risen and fallen; most if not all attempt to record their own visions of our world. In the 15th century Europeans developed a global reach with their oceanic ships exploring outward into the world revealing new possibilities peoples and opportunities. Mapmakers recorded this journey revealing to us a window into past triumphs and disasters. The story continues into our own day when diplomats carve up our globe presenting what we now see as the modern world. In How to Draw a Map father and son cartographers Alexander and Malcolm Swanston demonstrate the skill creativity and care involved in the timeless art of creating maps - and what these artefacts reveal about the legion of mapmakers who went before us.