Mapping the World : Stories of Geography

by Laffon, Caroline

• ISBN13: 9781554075256
• ISBN10: 1554075254
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-09-10
• Publisher: Firefly Books Ltd

Summary

Over and above their practical function, maps reveal their makers' worldview as well as the myths, beliefs and legends of their time. By patiently creating maps, globes, charts and atlases, humans have sought to understand the universe and our place in it. This book explores many rare and fascinating mapping artifacts, beginning with the first crude drawings and progressing to the fascinating satellite views of today. Many ofthese examples will be unfamiliar even to serious cartographers and collectors. Thirty chapters answer the questions map-makers have asked and reveal the roles their maps played in finding those answers.

Author Biography

Caroline Laffon is a documentary filmmaker and author. Martine Laffon is an editor, writer and philosopher. They are the coauthors of A Home in the World and several other reference books.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Where Are We?

Step by Step

Daydreaming about the World

Tiny Cosmos

Holy Places

Navels of the World

From One Point to Another

Spheres and Poles

Geographers in the Field

Finding One's Bearings

Scholarly Calculations

Every Which Way

Blown by the Winds

On the Road

On a Global Scale

Landscape Images

Mountains and Marvels

The Glory of the Kingdom

Lay of the Land

Following the Flow

Foreign Seas

Personal Projections

Order and Disorder

Battle Plans

Organizing the Resistance

Power of Persuasion

Point of View

Traveling the World

The Conquest of Space

And Beyond?

Climbing to the Sky

Head in the Clouds

From the Earth to the Moon

Views from Above

Bibliography

List of Maps

Photography Credits

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

IntroductionWhere Are We?"'Where do you want to go, fellah?'... 'Leper's Depot, we want to go to Leper's Depot...' With what I imagine to be a smile of superiority, the Master of the Pumps effortlessly reads the map's alphabetical index. 'Lardivista, Lawrence, Lernis, Leper's Depot. Here it is. E5.' I count from 1 to 5 at the side of the map. I go from A to E along the bottom. I extend the imaginary lines. What do you know? There it is. Leper's Depot. Right where it is supposed to be, a demonstration, if any were needed, that any point on a map can be fixed by two coordinates and that every coordinate pair (letter and number) picks out a point on the map..." David BerlinskiWithout a doubt, we need poetry to create spaces according to the size of our imagination and to describe the surface of the earth. Beyond our hometown, the places we visit, the tall buildings and the dark forests, we know nothing of what lies beyond the horizon. There is a boundary between what we know, what we can guess and that "somewhere else" others talk about. So we have to invent these far-off places or go and see them for ourselves to discover what returning travelers have described. Those who reached other shores have always taken with them a nostalgic image of their country or a largely mythical image of a paradise lost. How then can the truth be untangled from what was projected onto that "somewhere else" in the form of memories, desires or regrets?If people searched for other routes, other passages over land and sea, it was to discover where the world ended and who might live there. Yet, aside from promoting knowledge, there was also a need to profit from these expeditions while also contemplating possible expansion.Once the known world was drawn flat on a map, people may have asked where they could find that tiny point indicated by the imaginary lines that crisscross the surface. Compared to the immense lands discovered at the end of the world, a local kingdom, governed by the great and the powerful, can suddenly appear very small. And, since it is the great and the powerful who financed the mapmakers and the geographers' education, how could the mapmakers not be tempted to cheat a little by expanding the provinces of their protectors and shrinking neighboring territories on the map? By illuminating their maps with castle towers, landscapes, rivers and mineral resources, they emphasized the glory and the honor of the monarchs. The images rarely reflected reality.However, cartography has a good memory, and it can trace the progress of people moving from one place to another or from one port to another, drawing the network of routes that geometry will transfer to a canvas of latitudes and longitudes.Caution, patience, a keen eye, courage, the desire to learn and a knowledge of arithmetic, mechanics, geometry and astronomy, not to mention philosophy, are the things a person needs to undertake a trip around the world...All that remains is determining where the earth lies. In the middle of the universe as cosmic center of worlds and spheres? And if, over thousands of years, myths have tried to answer the why and the how of the earth, humans and the universe, they must give up their enchanting stories to the instruments of observation, calculation, measurement and secular reasoning. Yet, chase away the imaginary, and it returns through the cracks in the ancient maps, in the names of the cities and in the outlines of the countries that history changed according to conquests and empires. The silk roads, the spice routes, the paths of the great pilgrimages, the clashes and the victories and the defeats of the Crusaders and Muslims at the foot of t