Talk:History of cartography

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Which part/section may not represent a worldwide view/your view? - Explain.

I've just created this page as a branch from the cartography article. In the process I added some content and did some copyedit, but it still needs a *lot* more work to make it both globally relevant and historically comprehensive. Some missing areas I can think of:

  • Africa map traditions
  • India pre-British
  • North America maps pre-colonization
  • Persian mapmaking

And probably a lot more. Also, I know nothing about images - some help there would be fantastic! HMAccount 23:45, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

A sticky wicket. Myself, I like to think of the modern map as largely a western invention, now widely adopted. The English term "map" and its European cognates don't have equivalents in many of the cultures/regions you mention. Might it be better to make a VERY general article about the "mapping" instinct as shown in a variety of cultures (i.e. the tendency to describe geographical space from a vertical perspective and/or record it in a permanent form), and then a separate article dealing (as the current map article mostly does) with conventions of Western/modern cartogrpahy? And then also separate articles on the subjects you mention? Also add:

  • Performative cartography (e.g. Hawaiian traditional geographical knowledge)
  • Persuasive cartography (maps as a tool of rhetoric rather than record)

It is conceptually kind of a mess....--Natcase 21:12, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I posted the above reacting both to Map and History of Cartography. I guess I'm sugegsting we deal with both of these at the same time. Maybe:

  • Map as a general discussion point for the form as developed in Europe and then generally in the modern global commons. This would point to current forms and conventions directly, and also to...
  • Depictions of geographic and cosmographic space as a more general discussion of the relationship among maps, views, cosmological diagrams, performative descriptions of space, etec etc... linking to specific articles on specific traditions, many of which cross this line of modern invention
  • History of cartography broken up, the majority of the article remaining. Perhaps renamed "Hisotry of Western and modern cartography"--Natcase 21:22, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pictorial maps

I have added a link to a new page I created on pictorial maps

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