For full access to all OER Project resources AND our amazing teacher community, 
By Bennett Sherry, OER Project Team
Mapping with purpose
The original sin of all maps—their dirty little secret—is that they are flat, and the Earth is round. Maps are grand works of fiction. They bend reality and illuminate the parts of the world their creators cared about. The majority of all the physical, natural, and human complexities of our world are missing from every map. And yet, each map reveals truths about its creator and the society and time they inhabited. All maps tell a story. They serve a purpose. Some are art. Some are stories. Some are tools. Some are religious doctrine. Many are propaganda.
All maps have a purpose. One map has become infamous for this. The Mercator Projection was developed by the Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. His purpose was to guide sailors navigating across oceans. To translate a 3D shape (the Earth) into two dimensions, he distorted the poles. This allowed him to draw straight lines across oceans. As a result, Europe—where the cartographer and the navigators he served lived—appears much larger than it is. Today, geographers claim that this distortion has reinforced a global north bias.
Showing the Mercator projection size distortion. By Jakub Nowosad, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Mapping worldviews
Reading maps as primary sources is a great way for students to compare how different societies viewed the world and how those views changed over time. Let’s begin with two maps from colonial North America. The first is the Catawba Deerskin Map. European colonizers frequently relied on Indigenous American geographic knowledge, but since Europeans usually didn’t preserve the originals, very few of these Indigenous maps from the colonial period have survived.
Catawba Deerskin Map. This map is a copy made by the colonial governor of South Carolina from the deerskin original. It features English spellings of Indigenous communities, and a path marked as “English path to Nasaw.” By Library of Congress, public domain.
This map, originally drawn on deerskin in 1721, is a rare exception. It was made by members of the Catawba nation for the British governor of South Carolina. The map is oriented with west at the top and shows the paths linking colonial Virginia, Charlestown, and several Indigenous nations. But rather than using geographic accuracy, the map is laid out based on relationships between communities. English settlements are portrayed as squares, and Indigenous nations as circles of varying sizes. The purpose of this map was political—to illustrate diplomatic relationships among these communities and how the English might navigate them. The creator cared about the human networks linking these places, rather than the physical world separating them.
Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississippi with a zoomed-in view, by Guillaume de l’Isle, 1719. By Library of Congress, public domain.
In stark contrast, this 1719 map by Guillaume de l'Isle shows French and British territories in North America. Geographic features like rivers, mountains, and coastlines are carefully traced. Text, lines, and colors mark the claims of two empires. Indigenous communities are shown within these borders. This was a map designed to highlight land ownership. Geographically, this was the most detailed and accurate map of North America at the time. However, the map was a political fiction, commissioned by the king of France. De l'Isle claimed the massive “La Louisiane” for France, pushing the empire’s territorial claims to their absolute limits. The British were outraged and responded with their own maps, pushing the border west—all part of a rivalry between the two empires that in 1756 escalated into the Seven Year’s War. Maps have impacts beyond the page.
Mapping the world
Humans have been making maps for thousands of years. The first maps are so old, we’re not even sure they are maps. The Mezherich Map—scratched on mammoth tusk in Ukraine 15,000 years ago—and a mural on walls in Çatalhöyük are among the oldest maps we have. These early maps feature just a single settlement. We think. They might not even be maps.
As networks expanded and populations grew, people imagined bigger worlds. The first “world” map was made 3,000 years ago, in ancient Babylon. Known as the Imago Mundi, this cuneiform tablet shows Mesopotamia, including the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, surrounded by a circular ocean (the “Bitter River”) and outlying triangle regions. The map and its text feature elements from Babylonian myths and religion. Babylon itself sits at the top-center of the map, as a bar astride the Euphrates.
Imago Mundi map, Babylon, sixth century BCE. By Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP, CC BY-SA 4.0.
We usually think north is at the top of maps, but that only became common after the sixteenth century, when Europeans began crossing oceans. Until then, the top and centers of maps featured the most important direction or point. During the medieval period, these mappa mundi reflected religious interests.
Ebstorf Map, c. 1234.By American Geographical Society Library, public domain.
Many medieval European maps, such as the Ebstorf Map above, were oriented with the east on top and were centered on the holy city of Jerusalem. This map was surrounded by ocean and by text with stories from Christianity. The map features the head of Jesus Christ at the top, with his feet and hands at the west, south, and north. This map’s “T and O” orientation—with east at the top and Jerusalem at the center—was common at the time.
Diagrammatic T-O map by Saint Isidore, twelfth century CE. Public domain.
Muslim maps from this period feature similar elements. The circular map to the left was made by Muhammad al-Idrisi for King Roger II of Sicily in 1154 CE. It’s oriented with south at the top, and the Muslim holy city of Mecca sits at the center. Al-Idrisi’s atlas included more-detailed regional maps, which later cartographers pieced together to reveal the most detailed geographic knowledge of the age.
Al-Idrisi's world map. Public domain.
World map by Muhammad al-Idrisi, 1154 CE. By Library of Congress, public domain.
Mapping routes and empires
Sometimes, you just need a map that will get you there. As people gained greater awareness of their world, they needed reliable guides. It’s been said that all roads lead to Rome. This 22-foot map of the network of roads connecting the Roman Empire takes that idea literally.
Tabula Peutingeriana, c. first to fourth century CE Public domain.
Similarly, the English cartographer Matthew Paris illustrated several pilgrimage itinerary maps, detailing routes from London to holy sites as far away as the crusader state of Acre. Red lines denoted travel times between important stops along the route.
Itinerary maps by Matthew Paris, 1250–1259. Public domain.
The Iberian Jewish cartographer Abraham Cresques made the Catalan Atlas for the King of France in the fourteenth century. The map provided the court with geographic, political, and most important, economic information about the world beyond France. One of the most prominent figures on this map is the King of Mali, Mansa Musa, holding a nugget of the West African gold that Europeans desired so much. The map was designed to sit on a table, with the figures and text oriented in all directions so it could be read from any side. The map illustrates European monarchs’ desire to gain access to the wealth and trade routes of the east—a desire that resulted in oceanic voyages across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. As these voyages became more common, a new type of map— portolan charts—emerged, with their focus on coastlines and ports.
Catalan Atlas by Abraham Cresques, fourteenth century CE. Public domain.
Examples of a Genoese (left) and Ottoman portolan chart (right). These were maps for maritime navigation along coasts and across oceans. Notice the windrose network lines used rather than lines of latitude and longitude. Major ports are listed in red while minor ports. Portolan Atlas and Piri Reis world map, public domain.
As European empires spread across the world’s oceans, they both financed and were supported by cartographers. This dynamic drove improvements in geographic methods during the long nineteenth century as various empires sought to map the entirety of the world’s oceans. In the South Pacific, Captain James Cook and the HMS Endeavour sailed from island to island with the help of the Polynesian navigator Tupaia. For centuries, Polynesian navigators passed down oral stories and navigational methods that enabled voyages across thousands of miles of open ocean. Tupaia created this map from memory. It shows a stretch of the Pacific Ocean over 2,000 miles wide, including 130 islands—74 identified by name. Unlike European maps, which plotted oceans in relation to latitude and longitude, Tupaia’s map showed the islands in relationship to each another and the voyaging routes linking them.
For a deep dive into how Tupaia’s map depicts space, see this article. Public domain.
Eyes in the sky
Today, GPS (Global Positioning System) maps are often thought of as reflecting a kind of absolute truth. We rely on them to get where we’re going. But one of the most important lessons students learn from geography is that the world changes constantly. A 3,000-year-old Babylonian map doesn’t show the real world, and neither does Google Earth. But both were accurate for their time and purposes.
Google Earth only updates every one to three years. A lot can change in that time. That’s why we recommend you finish the lesson plan linked above by zooming in on your town and school. What do students notice about their living, breathing world that this static map misses? Even if it has all the buildings and names in the correct spots, elements like cars and trees will have moved or grown. The seasons change.
As a personal example, Google Earth last updated my town in 2021. My son’s school on Google Earth still shows the large outdoor tent used for social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
If you’d like to hammer home how maps can help us see continuity and change over time, show students Google Earth’s Timelapse to see things like the shrinking Great Salt Lake, coastal expansion in Dubai, changes in the Amazon Rainforest, the retreat of Alaskan glaciers, irrigation in Saudi Arabia, or the expansion of urban areas in northeast China—or even how their hometown has changed over the years.
Comparison of the Great Salt Lake in 1984 and 2016, by Benjamin J. Burger. CC 4.0.
About the author: Bennett Sherry holds a PhD in history from the University of Pittsburgh and has undergraduate teaching experience in world history, human rights, and the Middle East at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Maine at Augusta. Additionally, he is a research associate at Pitt’s World History Center. Bennett writes about refugees and international organizations in the twentieth century.
Cover image: Psalter World Map, c.1265. Considered one of the great medieval world maps. Probably a copy of the map that adorned King Henry III bed chamber. By British Library, public domain.
