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How did people originally create maps of the world?

I can't understand how, for example, Victorian maps were drawn without the benefit of overall views from planes or satellites. These, and much earlier maps seem uncannily accurate when compared with satellite views of the earth.

Public Comments

1. they sailed around their shores and mapped with a compass by using distance, the stars, how fast they were going etc. pretty neat eh
2. It just goes to show that people COULD do things without having to refer to bloody wikipedia first all the time, doesn't it!!!! A bit of sailing round the world and keeping good records ON PAPER instead of in a box of electronics worked wonders for them. Pity it's nearly all been done now.
3. Using trigonometry you measure the angles and distances to known reference points, from these you can work out altitude of mountains and the angle of shorelines. The John Speede maps illustrate this best, but military engineers are taught the techniques today. Latitude is measured by the angle of the sun, longitude required knowing the time in other parts of the world.
4. they used to sail along the coastline in a boat and estimate the miles and then follow a scale they had created. (i.e. inlet goes inland one mile and is 3 and a half miles wide)
5. i don't know when exactely people became to make maps (but they surely started to make plans earlier), but the first real maps were made by travellers, many of whom were sailers, when people began to use longitude and latitude to locate themselves. if you take a look into an old map, you will certainly see that the latitudes are almost real, but the longitudes are wrong, wich gaves a xxxx (i don't know the word in english) look to this old maps.they used a sextant to measure zenithal angles of the sun, the stars... to find thier latitude and only in the 18-th or 19-th century, was found a method to definate the longitude with satisfying precision: measure the position of the sun and look in the manach in wich time the sun will have this position in the sky in greenwich, the difference of time is the longitude. thanks god,now with all satellites,planes...,you don't need to go somewhere and make measurements on place to be able representing it on a map.
6. It's easier to do it on land than on the sea. The first really accurate map of England was done by the Ordinance Survey using triangulation. Look for fixed points on hill tops. Mapping India proved a problem as the results on the ground did not fit with sextant observations. It was then realised that the Himalayas were pulling the 'vertical' on the theodolite towards them - being of such great mass. Sea surveying was largely done by sextant and rowing a boat about measuring angles between points. Maybe not so accurate but then they were more concerned with not hitting things like reefs. Very early maps were much more guesswork and seemed to depend on how difficult it was to walk to the places on them. The 'Map Man' series on television was very good on this point. RoyS
7. HEY. yu should know this one. Do yu know victorians did in early stages. they used to walk anywere , so when they walk they will leave something, stones leafs ,so that when they come back they will know which way they were using, so it helps them to draw the maps on and the other thing is it is because they did not have things like wat we have in our days , so they had to think not like wat we are doing now to seat on top of our minds. Now we dont think but machines will do it for us coz at first we thought of using our minds to creat all machines now machines are the ones who only think.