mapping

Geographic

2022

We explain what cartography is, its history, branches, elements and what it is used for. In addition, digital and social cartography.

On paper or digital, cartography is the creation, analysis and study of maps.

What is cartography?

Cartography is the branch of the geography in charge of the graphic representation of a geographic area, usually in two-dimensional and conventional terms. In other words, cartography is the art and the science to do, analyze, study and understand all kinds of maps. By extension, it is also the set of maps and similar documents that exist.

Cartography is an old but current science. Try to satisfy the desire of the human being to visually represent the surface of the planet Earth, which is relatively difficult given that it is a geoid.

To do this, this science uses a system of projections that tries to serve as an equivalence between the sphere and the plane. Thus he constructs a visual equivalent of the contours of the terrestrial geography, his relief, its angles, all subjected to a specific scale and a prior criterion, which chooses which things are important to represent and which are not.

History of cartography

Cartography was born with the desire of the human being to explore and venture, which happened quite early in history: the first map in history dates from 6,000 BC. C., and consisted of a painting mural in Anatolia, in ancient town of Çatal Hüyük.

Possibly the need to make maps was due to both the establishment of trade routes and the military planning of the conquest, since at that time they did not exist state endowed with territory.

The first world map, that is, the first map of the entire world known to the society western 2nd century AD C., It was the work of the Roman Claudius Ptolomeo, perhaps obeying the desire of the proud Roman Empire to define its extensive borders.

On the other hand, during the Middle Ages, Arab cartography was the most developed in the world, as was China dating from the 5th century. It is estimated that about 1,100 world maps survived the Middle Ages.

The real explosion of cartography in the West came along with the expansion of the first European empires, between the 15th and 17th centuries. Initially, European cartographers copied old maps and used them as a basis for their own, until the invention of the compass, the telescope and surveying allowed them to aspire to greater accuracy.

Thus, the oldest globe, that is, the oldest surviving visual representation of the modern world in three dimensions, appeared in 1492 and was the work of Martín Behaim. The incorporation of America (with that name) was produced in 1507, and the first map with a graduated equator emerged in 1527.

Throughout this journey, the types of cartographic documents changed considerably in their essence. The first flat charts were made by hand and used for navigation using the stars as reference.

But they were soon displaced by the appearance of new technologies graphics, such as printing and lithography. In recent times the emergence of electronics and computing they changed the way of making maps forever. Currently there are global and satellite positioning systems that offer much more accurate representations of the planet than they have ever been able to be.

Importance of cartography

Mapping is essential today. It is essential for all global activities, such as International Trade and mass intercontinental travel, as they require minimal understanding of where things are in the world.

Since the dimensions of the globe are so large that it is impossible to contemplate it as a whole, cartography is the science that allows us the best possible approximations.

Branches of cartography

Thematic mapping analyzes only some aspects of geography.

Cartography comprises two main branches: general cartography and thematic cartography.

  • General cartography. It deals with representations of the world of a broad nature, that is, aimed at all audiences and for an informative use. The world maps, the national maps, are all made up of this specific branch.
  • Thematic cartography. This branch, on the other hand, focuses its geographical representation on certain aspects, themes or specific specifications, such as economic, agricultural, military elements, etc. A map of the world exploitation of sorghum, for example, belongs to this branch of cartography.

What is cartography for?

As we said at the beginning, cartography has a great function: the elaboration of representations of our planet, with varying degrees of accuracy, scale and different approaches. It also deals with the study, collation and criticism of these maps and representations, in order to be able to debate their strengths, weaknesses, objections and possible improvements.

After all, there is nothing natural about a map: it is an object of technological and cultural elaboration, an abstraction that human beings have developed, a little from the way we imagine our planet.

Elements of cartography

Broadly speaking, cartography bases its representational work on a series of elements and concepts that allow it to accurately organize the different contents of a map according to a specific point of view and scale. Such cartographic elements are:

  • The scale. Since the world is immensely large, to represent it visually we need to reduce the size of things in a conventional way, in order to maintain the proportions of things. Depending on the scale used, the distances that are normally measured in kilometers will be measured in centimeters or millimeters, thus building an equivalence criterion.
  • The parallels. The globe is cartographically divided into two sets of lines, the first of which are parallel. If the planet is divided into two hemispheres from the equator, then the parallels are lines parallel to that imaginary horizontal axis, which section the globe into climatic stripes, based on two other lines known as the tropics (cancer and Capricorn).
  • The meridians. The second set of lines that divide the terrestrial globe by convention, the meridians cross the parallels perpendicularly, the meridian being "axis" or central (called "zero meridian" or "Greenwich Meridian”) The one that passes through the Royal Observatory of England in Greenwich, London, and that coincides in theory with the axis of rotation of the Earth. From then on the world was divided into two halves, demarcated by a meridian every 30 °, cutting the earth's sphere into a series of segments.
  • The coordinates. Crossing parallels and meridians a grid is achieved, and with it a coordinate system that allows assigning to any terrestrial point a latitude (determined by the parallels) and a length (determined by meridians). Applying this theory is how global positioning systems work.
  • Cartographic symbols. Maps have their own language, which allows to identify the elements of interest, based on a specific convention. Thus, for example, certain symbols are assigned to cities, others to capitals, others to ports and airports, etc.

Digital cartography

Digital cartography offers large amounts of information and interactive use.

Since the emergence of the digital revolution at the end of the 20th century, few sciences have escaped the need to use information technology. In this context, digital cartography is the use of satellite and digital representations in the manufacture of maps.

The ancient techniques of He drew and printing on paper, therefore, are today a matter of collectors and vintage. Even the simplest cell phones today have access to Internet and therefore to digital maps. In them it is possible to introduce huge amounts of information recoverable and also work interactively.

Social cartography

Social mapping is a collective and participatory method of mapping. Try to break with rules and cultural preconceptions that traditional cartography brings with it, born according to subjective criteria regarding the center of the world, the importance of regions and other similar political criteria.

Thus, social cartography is born from the idea that there is no cartographic exercise devoid of community, and that the elaboration of the maps should be done as horizontally as possible.

!-- GDPR -->