Fig. 1. Fragment Map of Egyptian Gold Mines.
Fig. 2. Tablet Representing Babylonian World-Plan.
The credit of being the first scientific cartographer has been generally assigned to the Greek Anaximander of Miletus (610-547 B. C.).[5] While there is not a detailed description extant of the maps he is reputed to have made, we know that he accepted the so-called Homeric idea, that the earth has the form of a circular disc,[6] and is surrounded by the Ocean Stream, an idea generally approved by the Ionic School of Philosophers.[7] It is not improbable that we have an allusion to the work of Anaximander in the History of Herodotus (484-400? B. C.), wherein we are told that Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, when on a mission to Cleomenes, the King of Sparta, carried with him “a copper plate on which was engraved the whole circuit of the earth, and likewise all the Seas and Rivers.”[8] In another passage, Herodotus takes occasion to criticise maps of this circular character. “I laugh,” he says, “when I see that, though many before this have drawn maps of the Earth, yet no one has set the matter forth in an intelligent way; seeing that they draw the Ocean flowing round the Earth, which is circular as if drawn with compasses, and they make Asia equal in size to Europe. In a few words I shall declare the size of each division and of what nature it is as regards outline.”[9] It is, however, interesting to observe that the father of historical geography and of history nowhere records his idea of a properly constructed map, and further that the circular form, which he condemned, is one which found wide acceptance even to the close of the middle ages.
We are not definitely informed as to just the course of improvement or advancement in early scientific map making among the Greeks, yet not a few names are known to us of those who made it a matter of special endeavor, as they specifically stated, to improve the work of their predecessors. We, for example, are told that Hecataeus (550-480 B. C.),[10] likewise a native of Miletus, improved the maps of Anaximander, and that scientists of his day were astonished at his results; that Dicaearchus of Massina (350-290 B. C.)[11] was the first to employ a central line of orientation on a map, one passing through the Mediterranean east and west, and that he represented on his map all the lands known since the expedition of Alexander the Great into the Far East; and further, that Eratosthenes, the librarian of Alexandria (276-196 B. C.),[12] was the first to attempt a representation of the curved surface of the earth on a plane in accord with geometrical rules. The scientific cartographical ideas of Eratosthenes were further developed by Hipparchus (180-125 B. C.),[13] who is generally referred to as the greatest astronomer of antiquity, and by Marinus of Tyre (fl. ca. 100 A. D.),[14] who introduced the idea of inscribing lines of latitude and longitude on a map, crossing the same at right angles, which lines could be made to serve the useful purpose of orientation and be of assistance in giving proper location to all known places on the earth’s surface.
Map making in that early period reached its climax in the work of Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria (ca. 87-150 A. D.).[15] His ideas, however, seem not to have found general favor with his contemporaries, nor with the geographers of the middle ages. (Fig. [3.]) It was not until the so-called period of great geographical discoveries and explorations in the fifteenth century that he became a real teacher within his chosen field.