Drawing the Line: Tales of Maps & Cartocontroversy
Written: Jun 20 '01 (Updated Jun 24 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Interesting History. Gives a New Perspective
Cons: Can get technical at points.
The Bottom Line: It would have been easier if the world really were flat.
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| naphtalia's Full Review: Drawing the Line: Tales of Maps & Cartocontroversy |
Years ago, I collected antique maps. A teacher-friend had gotten me interested in them. About the same to Dr. Hoshen (rhymes with ocean) had introduced me to maps, he also taught me what the solstice was all about. More on the solstice later. First, a little about the history of maps in my lifetime.
When I was growing up (in the long ago 70's) a furor raged in our schools about the maps that hung on our walls. The maps on our walls were called "Mercator Maps" or "Mercator Projections." Why the controversy? These maps were named for Gerhardus Mercator (that's the latinized version of his Flemish name - he was Belgian.) Mercator invented this particular map projection in 1569, but it didn't become popular for another 30 years until an explanation of it was published. What Mercator was trying to do was to produce a map which sailors could use to determine courses. Sailors at that time used compasses, and it was convenient to sail a course with a constant heading. I won't go into the technical aspects of this, but it is quite a feat. Mercator managed to create a projection that could not be devised without Calculus (which wasn't devised yet.)
So what was the controversy? Mercator's map, which is very useful to sailors, shows the land in the northern hemisphere as disproportionately large compared to the land in the southern hemisphere. Thus Europe looks far more prominent than it actually is. Africa and South America look smaller. In the late 60's and early 70's, this was seen as racist.
The Mercator controversy is only one of several controversies involving maps that have occurred over the years. In the book, "Drawing the Line" the author does a great job of discussing various controversies and how they were resolved (or sometimes not resolved.) It is interesting to note that scientific tools such as maps are subject to so much hullabaloo. It's easy to draw a map of a small area, but the larger the tract, the more complicated it gets. Because maps are a representation of a round area on a flat surface, there is always some distortion that takes place in drawing maps of large areas. How people choose to distort the map is one controversy with maps.
Other controversies include difficulties in where to draw political boundaries. One such controversy involves the border between New York and New Jersey. Depending on where you put the line and if it goes one direction or another, Liberty Island might be in either state. Since this is a major tourist attraction and brings in lots of dollars, it's important that the people in charge resolve this controversy.
How about the controversy over where a farmer's land is. There was a problem with the legal description indicating that one farmer's property began in the middle of a river and another on the other side. No problem until a flood caused the river's course to change more than 100 feet.
And so we can get back to solstice (which is the theme of this write off) lets talk latitude and longitude. Longitude (the lines that run north and south - from pole to pole) was particularly difficult and map makers used to use their homeport as the starting measure of longitude. Thus, if you lived in Venice, that was 0 degrees longitude. If you lived in London, that was 0-degrees longitude. Captain's of ships used to lock away their maps so no one else could use them. Of course, if you didn't know that the map was drawn in Venice, it might not be useful for you to use. Even when it was resolved that Greenwich observatory would be the site of 0-longitude, it wasn't over. The French (who were never Anglophiles) objected and their maps show 0-longitude in Paris for many years after the rest of the world switched to Greenwich.
Of course, latitude was never a controversy. Ancient people's knew about latitude. The summer solstice, (see, this does relate to the write-off!)is determined by the day when the earth's tilt and rotation conspire to have the sun appear directly overhead at the Tropic of Cancer.
"Drawing the Line" is an incredibly interesting book with many more controversies than I have discussed here. More importantly, it contains loads of good information about the science (both physical and social) of geography. There is lots of interesting history here, too. Reading it will give you a new appreciation of historic battles and of the art and science of cartography. There is more to making a map than one would ever consider.
Even in today's world with computers and advanced math, how we portray the planet on which we live continues to raise blood pressure and eyebrows. The latest controversy? Why are most maps centered on North America and Europe? Why not on Asia and Europe? or Asia and North America? And why is North always on top? Is it more racism? That's for you to decide. Check out the facts, though, and you might find yourself surprised.
This review is part of the Summer Solstice Write-Off hosted by wovengold to celebrate the long days of summer. Please take a few minutes to check out the summer scribblings of amycamus, art_ana, BeeCharmer, bmcnichol, caspian,
eplovejoy, flak-attak, Girl_Goddess, jo.com, jro26, marytara, naphtalia,Pearman, phineaskc, Social14, wardukeky, windfish and wovengold.
Go to
http://wovengold.tripod.com/solstice for links to their
write-off submissions. Thanks for reading!
Recommended:
Yes
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naphtalia
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