Introduction to Historical Maps as Artifacts
I want to start the unit topic by looking at maps as historical artifacts. The goal is to set students up to understand that maps can be used for more than just tools for navigation, but also as markers of history and culture. By studying maps through a broader lens, we can trace the evolution of the world through expanding empires and trade routes that illustrates how gradually unknown regions were integrated into our understanding of the world.
If we look back through history, we can find two early examples of maps used for navigation. The Stick Sailing Charts used by people native to the Marshall Islands (Marshallese) used sticks and shells, tied together with palm fiber – “the curved sticks, representing ocean currents and swell, curving from contact with islands; the shells representing islands.”1, as an explorational tool. The Marshallese would memorize the patterns on the charts to help them navigate from island to island in the Pacific. The ancient Greeks, considered the founders of scientific cartography, knew the general size and shape of the Earth. The are also credited to have developed the latitude and longitude grid system. Anaximander, a Greek philosopher (c. 6110-546 BC), is known for creating one of the earliest known maps of the world. He used a circular representation of the world to enhance navigation and trade around the Mediterranean and Black Sea.
Moving away from maps as navigational tools, cartographers during the Middle Ages in Europe drew maps to reflect, not only locations, but religious beliefs. Fra Mauro, an Italian monk from the 15th century, created one of the most definitive maps of the world, “he wanted to chart the known world as traversed from the Mediterranean to the horn of Africa and to the far reaches of the Orient.”2 This map depicts geography, history, and religious understanding and included 420 cities, plants, animals, birds, and unknown creatures. Mauro’s map also illustrated the changing patterns of Christian pilgrimages. By not placing Jerusalem in the center or marking locations of biblical references, Mauro placed accuracy ahead of religion and tradition marking, “the beginning of the end of the early medieval mappae mundi that reflected biblical geographical teaching.”3 When students view maps as more than just geographical representations, they can see how maps are cultural and even political documents that show knowledge of their time.
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