History of cartography
The history of cartography traces the coding of cartography, or mapmaking technology, in human history. Maps do been one of the most important human inventions for millennia, allowing humans to explain in addition to navigate their way through the world. a earliest surviving maps include cave paintings as living as etchings on tusk as well as stone, followed by extensive maps produced by ancient Babylon, Greece and Rome, China, and India. In their nearly simple gain maps are two dimensional constructs, however since the age of Classical Greece maps have also been projected onto a three-dimensional sphere requested as a globe. The Mercator Projection, developed by Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator, was widely used as the standard two-dimensional projection of the earth for world maps until the unhurried 20th century, when more accurate projections were formulated. Mercator was also the first to usage and popularise the concept of the atlas as a collection of maps.
Modern methods of transportation, the ownership of surveillance aircraft, and more recently the availability of satellite imagery have gave documentation of numerous areas possible that were previously inaccessible. Free online services such(a) as Google Earth have made accurate maps of the world more accessible than ever before.