According to the Royal Spanish Academy of Language, “cartography” is the art of drawing geographical maps or the science that studies maps.
Art or science? To answer this question, I looked for different maps:
Historical Maps. History of Cartography
Map of Mesopotamia
The oldest one I found is from Mesopotamia and is 2500 years old!
Doesn’t look very scientific, does it?
Map of Mesopotamia from over 2500 years ago.
The First Atlas
I kept searching and found the first atlas, a work by the Greek Ptolemy, around the 2nd century AD. I’m not quite seeing it; it doesn’t really convince me either.
First atlas. Work by Ptolemy.
”T in O” Maps
I thought there might be some progress in the Middle Ages, and I found “T in O” maps. What’s that? Well, they are maps with a strong religious focus that represent the landmasses and the ocean surrounding them as an “O,” and the seas that divide them form an inscribed “T.” I’m starting to like this. I see it as something peculiar and detailed.
Hereford Mappa Mundi.
Maps in the Modern Age
In the Modern Age, the interest of powerful people in reaching places full of riches (gold, silver, silk, spices…) encouraged the creation of maps of newly discovered places.
Map of Juan de la Cosa
Map of Diego Ribero
Making Maps
America, Africa… So much information and what drawings: ships, animals, plants…
Art or science? I’m still not sure, although I’m starting to think that drawing something so big (the Earth has a diameter of 12,739 km) on a piece of paper must be difficult. And on top of that, the Earth is round. How can you represent a sphere on a flat surface? It would be like peeling an orange and spreading out the peel without distorting the surface.
To solve the first problem, mapmakers use scales that show the relationship between reality and the map. This way, the representation is proportional and not random. There are two types: numerical and graphic. The numerical scale represents proportions using numbers, and the graphic scale uses a horizontal line that shows the values expressed on the map as equivalent to the real landscape.
For example, 1:100,000 indicates that a measurement (1 cm, for example) on the map represents 100,000 of the same units on the Earth’s surface. The larger the second number, the less detail we include, and the larger the area represented will be.
It’s like someone read my mind: a guy named Gerardus Mercator decided to use a projection to solve the second problem. He used parallels and meridians as straight lines that intersect perpendicularly. Some distortion is unavoidable, but it’s minimal near the equator.
It’s a cylindrical projection because it mathematically projects a vertically oriented cylinder tangent to the equator.
Seen this way, cartography is a science. We must not forget that maps were intended to represent ordered spatial information for a very specific audience: those people who could read them.
Furthermore, a wide variety of instruments are used to create them, such as quadrants, sextants, octants, astrolabes, compasses, cross-staffs, heliotropes, etc.
Conclusions
- So, for at least 2500 years, humans have created maps with the goal of understanding and making sense of the world around them, their vision of the known. They are written testimonies.
- They are also scientific instruments, since they gather knowledge obtained through observation and reasoning.
- In any case, the resulting images are true works of art. In fact, Doctor of Art History Sandra Sáenz-López believes that cartography has always been linked to art because maps are made with great aesthetic care, often being the work of painters.
Currently, we have access to the Earth in three dimensions thanks to Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which are tools for working with georeferenced information, that is, information that comes with a geographical position using spatial coordinates.
As a result, we have online maps very present on smartphones and the web, which have helped familiarize the public with working with maps; ArcGis online, cartography software that allows connecting people, locations, and data that draws on the contributions of its users and results in continuous coverage of geographic information from around the world; or Google Earth, based on satellite images, aerial photographs, GIS data models, and computer-generated imagery that allows us to have a 3D view of the Earth’s surface, the Moon, or Mars.
So, is it art or science? You decide.
