In order to help the sailors the maps also had to be accurate .The Greeks tried to make the maps accurate with the help of longitudes and latitudes .They tried to find out a set of places. where the midday occured at the same time . These places were joined together with a line from North to south this was the meridian or longitude. They also tried to draw the latitude by connecting places which had equal length of shadow at noon
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Article by Jenni Back and Liz Pumfrey
Published February 2011.
The person who is credited with our coordinates system is a man called Descartes. If you look here then you can find out how he was inspired by a fly!
Coordinates are one way of describing the position of something. If you are trying to find your way to a place you've never been to before, chances are, you'll use a map. Has it ever occurred to you how that map was made? Or perhaps who first thought of the idea of designing maps? We're here to answer these questions for you.
What is a map?
A map is a way of showing position, described by a coordinate system, using lines, areas and points. The process of making maps is called cartography . Maps are drawn for many different purposes:
To find a point on the earth's surface
To show patterns e.g. an earthquake hazard map
As a navigational tool e.g. on the World Wide Web
The person designing a map (the cartographer ) may use colour, size, shape, numerical value, texture, pattern and orientation to help get across information.
Here we will concentrate on maps which help us to locate a position on the earth's surface.
The History of Map Making
We cannot be completely sure of where the first map was made. It seems that maps were being developed at similar times in different parts of the world. Some of the earliest maps were drawn on clay tablets by the Babylonians, possibly around 2000BC. This one was found at the town of Ga-Sur, approximately 200 miles north of the site of Babylon:
Clay Tablet from Ga-Sur