Early Maps Fetch a King’s Ransom
Despite the popularity of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and all the thousands of earth orbiting satellites, there are roads less traveled and places few have seen. Our current system of cartography (map making) was first developed by the Greeks, their maps remained unchallenged for centuries. The early map makers had exquisite imaginations and only the Mediterranean world was represented; anything beyond their knowledge, the cartographers would draw dragons, flora and fauna and even mermaids.
The art of the map maker has always attracted man’s fascination with faraway, unknown places. Cartography itself antedated printing and writing; probably the oldest known map was found on a Babylonian clay tablet, Imago Mundi, which dated back to 2500 B.C., it’s displayed in Harvard. The oldest Africa map , Da Ming Hun Yi Tu, dates back to 1389 and is on display in Cape Town and the Tabula Penutingeriana, a map showing the road network in the Roman Empire, dates back to 4th century, covering Europe, North Africa and parts of Asia.
After 1500, there were three events that contributed to cartography; first, the rediscovery of Ptolemy’s ‘Geography’; second, the invention of printing and engraving and the expeditions into Africa and to the New World. This renewed interest was especially advantageous for the works of Gerardus Mercator , the creator of the first modern world atlas in 1570, for the country of France that produced the first national survey in 1756, and for England’s national survey in 1801.
These early maps were surprisingly inexpensive even though books of maps brought a high price, like Mercator’s atlas, which was found recently in a Belgian roadside bookstall, was sold for a price-tag of $300,000. Auctioning off early maps can bring a wide range of bids, like for an 1844 map of New York brought in a winning bid of $650 and a 112 double-page maps that were published by Abraham Ortelius in 1584, brought in a winning bid of $20,000.
By World War II, cartography was becoming very complex, and with the advent of computer mapping, which was developed in the 60′s, the early, imaginative drawings of the Greeks has now gone to the way side, but can fetch a kings ransom, if ever auctioned.
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