ㆍPreface

1 Human footprints drawn on the map
2 When the sun shines on the well of Syene
3. The Legacy of Rome
4 The Road to Paradise
5 Discovering a New World
6 We came first
7 The first circumnavigation of the world
8 Explore every corner of the world
9 Mercator's chart
10 Land of the South
11 Slave Trade
12 Scientific Measurement
13 The Problem of the Empire
14 Longitude and Latitude
15 Territorial Disputes
World War 16
17 Narratives of City Maps
18 To a higher place

ㆍThank you
Translator's Note

How should we read and accept maps, the starting point for understanding the world?
A history of mapmaking that broadly encompasses diverse information, knowledge, and contemporary worldviews.

In 1881, an archaeologist discovered a fragment of a clay tablet inscribed with cuneiform script west of Baghdad, once part of the Ottoman Empire.
It was the oldest world map, looking straight down at the world from above.
The space between the two concentric circles is the salt sea surrounding the world, within which lies the 'known world', and a symbol interpreted as the Euphrates River flows through this 'world'.
Around the river, major cities and centers are marked, along with symbols indicating mountains, swamps, and canals.
In this world map created in the 6th century BC, the Babylonians divided the circle into 360 equal parts and defined the length of a year as approximately 360 days.
These calculation methods are still useful today and play an important role in map making.

This book tells the story of mapmakers who tirelessly explored and realistically expressed the world we live in, and who, despite all the adversity and hardship, tirelessly sought to fill in the unknown gaps.
We will also examine the process from the first world maps created by ancient people to the completion of today's world maps through scientific surveying using cutting-edge equipment, and consider the future of mapmaking.
This book, based on the rich insight and knowledge of a cartographer who has been making maps for over 50 years and has created over 100 volumes of various field histories and the largest number of thematic maps in history, contains the historical stories each map tells while the authors personally recreate 65 carefully selected maps from among tens of thousands of examples.

This book first examines the research that ancient people conducted to understand the world and what their achievements were.
Anaximander, believed to be a disciple of Thales, believed that the world was cylindrical, floating in the middle of 'infinity'.
His world map thus evokes the Babylonian notion that the upper surface, habitable for human beings, was surrounded by a ring-shaped ocean.
Eratosthenes, a multi-disciplinary ancient Greek, measured the size of the Earth, established some of the basic rules of mapmaking, and taught many later cartographers the importance of astronomy.
Ptolemy's maps and writings, which were the first to use latitudes and longitudes and to specify the locations of places through astronomical observations, not only imposed geometric order on the world but also had a lasting influence, lasting long after the Renaissance.
In particular, his monumental work, Geography, would define mapmaking in the West for the next 2,000 years.

In the Middle Ages, 'Christian geography' became dominant, and various forms of mappa mundi were handed down, including the territorial map, the TO map (a three-part map), the Beatus map (a four-part map), and the composite map (the Great Map).
The most famous of these is the Hereford Mappa Mundi (made around 1300), which depicts fifteen biblical events, five scenes from ancient mythology, 420 cities and towns, and people, animals, and plants on a single, massive sheet of vellum.
Meanwhile, the representative of Islamic cartography is Al-Masoudi.
His world map viewed the world with the south facing upward, following the Arab tradition of the time.
And Al-Idrasi's maps, which combined Islamic and Christian geographical traditions, became the standard for accuracy for nearly 300 years after they were produced.

In the section covering the story of the Age of Exploration, we look into the paths taken by Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, and others to explore the oceans and the New World, open trade routes, and establish settlements, as well as how the 'Mercator' projection, the most famous in history, was created and why it is used by all navigators.
In addition, the story of the discovery of Australia by European explorers including James Cook, the slave trade, and the Cassini family, who laid the foundation for mapmaking in each country by applying accurate information and triangulation techniques to create the maps we are familiar with today, and by establishing standards for systematic mapmaking, is also very interesting.


World history on the map, meet that decisive moment!
A book that meticulously examines everything from the worldview of ancient people to the historical facts contained in each theme.

As new lands were discovered, the scramble for colonies among European powers, including Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal, who sought to expand their empires across the globe, became more intense.
As surveys of national territories and colonies were conducted in various places and joint surveys between countries began, the need for more precise maps increased.
One such example is the Great Triangulation Survey across India.
This extensive survey, which lasted from 1802 to 1871, gave the British administration a bird's eye view of the territory within the Indian subcontinent.

Sometimes a single line on a map can have a huge impact.
After 1763, as the number of settlers from the British Isles to Britain's North American colonies increased rapidly, land disputes began to arise in the colonies due to inaccurate maps based on land previously granted by the British government.
There is one famous boundary line that has been drawn to address this situation.
This is the Mason-Dixon Line, a line surveyed in colonial America that not only resolved territorial disputes between Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, but also created a cultural boundary.
It became a cultural dividing line between North and South, free and slave, rebel and Union.

The role of leadership in war is more important than anything else.
Because it is an essential element not only for assessing the situation but also for executing strategy and tactics.
Armed with the religious belief of holy violence, this book maps the movements of the Four Crusades, the major battles of the American Civil War that left a terrible scar on the memory of all Americans, and the operational plans and bridgehead battles of World War I that brought about the end of four empires: Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Imperial Russia.
Additionally, the outlines of the war are examined through four battles in World War II: the Battle of Britain, Operation Barbarossa, the Battle of Midway, and Operation Overlord.

The book also tells the urban history of London, Paris, and New York.
It also shows maps that narratively express each city, such as the map of Harry Beck, who designed the first London Underground map and influenced subway and other route maps around the world; the formation of the Paris Commune, a revolutionary self-governing government established through an uprising of citizens and workers; and the appearance of New York, which has preserved its former form to this day.

The author, a cartographer, visits various places in this book, shows various thematic maps related to them, and meticulously adds historical events. In this journey, he points to the development of aerial photography in the early 20th century as the most dramatic change in mapmaking.
Unlike the past, when countless surveyors and cartographers were dispatched to survey the landscape on foot to prepare base maps, a single high-resolution camera and an aerial mission can now document thousands of square miles.
Accordingly, mapmakers who recreate human history face endless challenges, and in the future, artificial intelligence will be able to create and continuously update maps of global events such as migration, population growth, and climate change based on statistics.
Yet, I remain convinced that maps still reflect our ability to understand and relate to the world around us, and that mapmaking plays a special role in understanding our past and pointing the way forward for the future.