Heavy Metal Madness: Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me a Map
Never having a very good sense of direction, I’ve always depended on maps to get me where I’m going. But aside from their practical purposes in getting us from point A to point B, maps are one of our most important forms of visual communications, and MapQuest aside, were often great works of art and craftsmanship as well.
At another time I’ll look at the era of American road maps—those frustrating-to-fold, free products promoted primarily by oil companies and automobile associations. For most of us, when we think of maps, we think of that variety. But the most significant era of mapmaking, in my book, is from about 1500 to 1700.
Scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, and others have always depended on visual communication skills to promote their theories. But in these early days of true scientific discovery, the ability to draw, engrave, and print was perhaps even more important than specific scientific knowledge. It was the visual scientists and mathematicians that had the greatest impact, and mapmaking is a perfect example.
We Want the World to Be Flat
The idea of projecting physical three-dimensional space on to a flat plane, is mostly credited to Egyptian astronomer and cartographer Claudius Ptolemy (87-150 AD). Man had certainly been drawing crude maps long before that, but Ptolemy was the first to take the spherical view of the earth and attempt to flatten it. Little was known about the earth at that time, so it was much later, in the era of great exploration, that we started to gain more accurate information.
The man most associated with “modern” map making is Gerard Mercator, a German/Belgian philosopher who had great religious doubts and questioned the origin of the universe. After he began to study mathematics, Mercator applied his new pursuit to his interest in geography and astronomy. By learning the art of engraving, Mercator was able to put his education and drawing skills together and began producing globes in 1535.
Mercator was a pioneer in the use of copper for engraving, rather than the wood that had been used prior. By using copper, Mercator was able to get much finer detail, and so his first globe, commissioned by the Emperor Charles V, had much more information than previous efforts to depict the earth.
Because of his religious beliefs, Mercator was imprisoned for a brief time as a heretic in 1544, but was not held very long. His quest became making an accurate world map—a difficult project given the rapidly changing information coming back from explorers throughout the world. But one thing he did understand was the complex mathematics needed to turn a spherical world in to a flat surface. We still use the basic Mercator “Projection” of the world, which many modern cartographers would now dismiss as hopelessly inaccurate in how it portrays relative size of the continents.
Mercator is also famous for giving us the term “atlas” to describe a collection of maps. He chose the word atlas to “honor the Titan, Atlas, King of Mauritania, a learned philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer.”
Early maps were like illuminated manuscripts—they served as both information sources and great works of art. The border drawings on many maps depicted popular mythology, or highlighted call-out locations and points of interest. Maps were hand engraved and sometimes took years to produce. Owning maps was something for the most elite—it would be hundreds of years before maps were simple commodities.
Look Up, Look Down
While one group of scientists-turned-artists (or was it artists-turned-scientists?) was plotting the shape and scale of the earth, another group was looking upward and trying to chart the night sky. Celestial maps followed the path of terrestrial maps—they were meant to have as much mystical and spiritual impact as scientific. As the printing press became more pervasive in the seventeenth century, maps became more widely distributed, so they often told stories as well as presenting information, giving them appeal to a broader, less scientific audience.
Maps were a terrific platform for the practice of copper engraving, and most early map makers were expert craftsmen, as shown in the examples presented here. Many were philosophers or great “thinkers,” and their agenda in illustrating maps was often religious or political. Indeed maps played a big role in the evolution of man, breaking people out from their local surroundings and giving them a global or even universal perspective.
Not a Lost Art
Despite our reliance on global positioning systems and online map sites, mapmaking is an active art form, and a huge group of map collectors exists. Maps for practical purposes are more efficient and much more accurate now, but maps for artistic purposes still often embellish or distort in order to make an impact.
If you are interested in maps, one of the best collections out there is the David Rumsey collection. This online database of over 10,000 high-resolution images is a terrific site that specializes in 18th and 19th century maps of North and South America.
Most of us have learned as part of our general education, how to properly read a map, what it means to think in terms of north, south, east and west, and we have trained our brains to project what we see in one dimension into our three-dimensional world. It won’t be long before we have holographic maps that overlay directly in to our space, and guide us automatically via global positioning satellites.
The big question that remains is, however, will the maps of the future be any easier to fold?
I know the creativepro.com editor has a great sense of humor. But this headline is the best!