Gallery: The Greatest Maps in History, Collected in One Fantastic Book
Reproduced by permission of DK, a division of Penguin Random House ©201401p80-venice
Made in 1500, Jacopo De'Barbari's woodcut map of Venice is the first known birds-eye view of any city. Predating modern surveying techniques, the cartographer achieved his impressively accurate scale by building a custom geometric grid before overlaying the city's buildings, canals, and labyrinthine streets.
The State Library of New South Wales02The Molucca Islands by Petrus Plancius
Petrus Plancius' map to the riches of the Moluccas was the first successful attempt to convince mariners that the Mercator projection was a useful navigational tool.
<a href="http://gillmark.com/" target="_blank">Gillmark Map Gallery</a>03Britannia Road Atlas Map
Road maps date back to the early Persians, but the first proper road atlas was John Ogilby's 1675 *Britannia*. This is just one of the 100 sheets detailing over 7,500 miles of roads.
Library of Congress Geography and Map Division04Map of the Tracks of Yu
This famous Chinese map from c.1136 is carved on stone and is the first known map to use a grid showing scale. The side of each square shows approximately 30 miles.
Library of the London School of Economics & Political Science05London Poverty Map
Combining maps with data allowed them to tell powerful stories. In 1889, Charles Booth collected surveyed poverty in London and published what was one of the first maps for social justice.
Reproduced by permission of DK, a division of Penguin Random House ©201406p67-Kangnido
The Korean-made Kangnido map (c.1402) is dominated by Ming China, which was Asia's dominant regional power. Like other Asian mapmakers, Cartographer Kwŏn Kŭn emphasized rivers because they were viewed as arteries for terrestrial energy.
Reproduced by permission of DK, a division of Penguin Random House ©201407p53-Portolan
Made by an unknown cartographer and published sometime around 1300, the Carte Pisan is the earliest known portolan chart. These maps used right angles and compass points to connect distant ports (portolano in Italian).
Reproduced by permission of DK, a division of Penguin Random House ©201408p209-Marshall
Native sailors of the Marshall Islands in the south Pacific developed their own sophisticated navigational charts. The curved sticks indicate swells, the horizontals measure distance between islands, and the chevrons show how swells refract around important islands. These charts allowed Pacific Island culture to propagate among hundreds of remote islands.
Reproduced by permission of DK, a division of Penguin Random House ©201409p46-Idrisi
Like most early Islamic world maps, Al-Sharīf al-Idrīsī's 1154 "Entertainment for He Who Longs to Travel the World" is oriented towards the south. The mountains in the middle of Africa were believed to be the source of the Nile.
Reproduced by permission of DK, a division of Penguin Random House ©201410p185-UKstrata
In 1815, the former coal miner and self-taught surveyor William Smith made the first geologic map. It was the beginning of using maps as scientific, as opposed to descriptive or navigational, tools.
Reproduced by permission of DK, a division of Penguin Random House ©201411p143-Blaeu
Joan Blaeu's 1648 copperplate engraving was the first map to acknowledge that the Earth circled the sun. Despite his forward-thinking heliocentrism, Blaeu couldn't resist preserving the myth of California as an island.
Reproduced by permission of DK, a division of Penguin Random House ©201412p161-calinoesisla
It took until 1710 for someone to explore California thoroughly enough to prove it was not an island. Unfortunately, because the explorer, Eusebio Kino, was a missionary and (despite his obvious mapmaking ability evinced above) not a trained cartographer, nobody believed him.
