For our ancient ancestors, the world was often limited to the land that surrounded and nourished them. But even the earliest human civilizations still tried to measure the scale of this world and made the first attempts at mapping.
It is believed that the first such map was created in Babylon more than 2500 years ago, and it shows the world outside the Babylonian kingdom in the form of poisonous waters and dangerous islands, where (they believed) people could not survive.
Over time, the maps gradually became larger in scale as people grew more knowledgeable about what lay outside the Mediterranean. With the beginning of the era of wandering and exploration in the 15th century, the concept of the vision of the world changed, the East began to appear on the maps, a huge unexplored ocean appeared in the place of America. And with the return of Columbus, the maps of the world began to take on a form that is already understandable to us, modern people.
1. The oldest known map of the world from Babylon (6th century BC). At the center of the world is the Babylonian kingdom itself. There is a "bitter river" around him. Seven points across the river are islands that cannot be reached.
2. World map of Hecateus of Miletus (5-6 century BC). Hecateus divides the world into three parts: Europe, Asia and Libya, located around the Mediterranean Sea. His world is a round disc surrounded by an ocean.
3. World map of Posidonius (2nd century BC). This map expands on the early Greek vision of the world, including the conquests of Alexander the Great.
4. World map of Pomponius Mela (43 AD)
5. Ptolemy's world map (150 AD). He was the first to add lines of latitude and longitude to the world map.
6. Peitinger's Tablet, 4th century Roman map showing the road network of the Roman Empire. The complete map is very long, showing lands from Iberia to India. In the center of the world, of course, Rome.
7. World map of Kozma Indikoplov (6th century AD). The world is depicted as a flat rectangle.
8. Later Christian map in the form of a multi-colored clover leaf, compiled by Heinrich Banting (Germany, 1581). In fact, she does not describe the world, or rather, according to this map, the world is a continuation of the Christian trinity, and Jerusalem is its center.
9. World map of Mahmud al-Kashgari (11th century). The world is centered around the ancient city of Balasagun, now the territory of Kyrgyzstan. This also includes places (countries) that are predicted to appear at the end of the world, such as Gog and Magog.
10. Map "Book of Roger" Al-Idrisi, compiled in 1154. It was created on the basis of information received from Arab traders who traveled around the world. At the time, it was the most accurate and extensive map of the world. Europe and Asia are already well visible, but from Africa so far there is only its northern part.
11. Hereford map of the world of the 14th century by a certain Richard of Haldingham. Jerusalem is in the center, East is above. The circle on the south side of the map is the Garden of Eden.
12. Chinese map "Da Ming Hunyi Tu" of the late 14th century. The World Through the Eyes of the Ming Dynasty Chinese. China, of course, dominates, and all of Europe is squeezed into a small space in the west.
13. Genoese map, compiled in 1457 based on the descriptions of Niccolò da Conti. This is how Europeans see the world and Asia after the opening of the first trade routes to Mongolia and China.
14. Projection of the Erdapfel Globe ("Earth Apple") by Martin Begeim (Germany, 1492). Erdapfel is the oldest known globe, showing the world as a sphere, but without America - instead of it there is still a huge ocean.
15. World map of Johann Ruysch, compiled in 1507. One of the first images of the New World.
16. Map of Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann of 1507. It was the first map to call the New World "America". America looks like a thin strip of the east coast.
17. World map of Gerard van Shagen in 1689. By this time, most of the world has already been mapped, and only small parts of America are still empty.
18. Samuel Dunn's world map of 1794. By mapping the discoveries of Captain James Cook, Dunn became the first cartographer to depict our world as accurately as possible.
What the map of Europe looked like from the early years of our era to the year 2000. It is especially interesting to pay attention to the appearance of Belarus on the map of Europe. For some reason, many of my readers believe that Belarus was even before Russia. It is curious that the Americans are not worried about their short history, while the Belarusians are. What's the catch?
The map of Europe in the first year of our era looked like this. In fact, apart from the Roman Empire, there was nothing, scattered wild tribes.
For a hundred years, practically nothing has changed, the Roman Empire only added to the territory. 100 year.
300 years old. You can already see how the tribes of the Franks were formed into some kind of state formation.
500 years. On the territory of the split Roman Empire, movement begins in Europe. On the territory of modern Russia, there is a full ales. Scattered tribes without any sign of statehood.
800 years old. France, the largest state in Europe. Let's pay attention to the Caliphate that expanded by this period. The state created by Muhammad, by the way, in the mid-700s, also occupied the territory of almost all of Spain. At this period, the Poles begin to load up.
900 years old. The Rusichi tensed to gather in something that can already be called a state. And in Europe, life is already in full swing.
1000 years.
1100 years old. Russia is a collection of scattered principalities with constant civil strife.
1200 years old. The Balts organized themselves into the Principality of Lithuania. It's a trifle on the map of Europe, but later on they will play an important role in the geopolitical game.
1300 years old.
1400 years old. The Polish-Lithuanian principality becomes a major state in Europe. Why is it then Lithuanian, then Polish-Lithuanian. Santa Barbara was constantly there, the prince gave daughters for husbands for a prince, and then they kiss on the gums, then shit for life and death, so we do not pay attention, this is how they lived. Well, in fact, they suppress the Rusichi on the one hand, and the Golden Horde on the other. In place of modern Germany, a complete scattered kapets, worse than with the Russian principalities. France and England are already full-fledged states. Hungary and the Ottoman Empire are big players.
1500 years old. Poland separately, the Lithuanian principality separately, I already said, we do not pay attention, a profitable marriage did not turn up :). The Moscow principality combines the concept of Russia.
1600 years old. The Moscow principality already specifically combines the concept of Rus. He fights with the Polish-Lithuanian principality in earnest. In Europe, the major players are France, England, Spain, the Ottoman Empire. The territory of modern Germany is full of ales and fragmentation, as in Italy. In these places, by the way, the Venetian Republic was quite influential.
1700 years old.
1800 years old. England is already becoming Great Britain. In Eastern Europe, everything is generally simple. Germany as such still does not exist.
1900 years old. On the threshold of the twentieth century, Europe looked like this. Until that time, Europe did not know Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia and a number of Balkan countries as such. Here Germany is already appearing. Germany as a state is not much older than the same Belarus. Well, in the near future, Europe will be shaken by the events of which you already have an idea, these are the First and Second World Wars, which will radically change the map of Europe.
year 2000. Large empires fell apart in the twentieth century. We didn’t even see the Soviet Union, which didn’t last even a century.
Well, of course, there were also local territorial formations, all kinds of Latgale, Courland. Or such a state as Litbel, which was invented by the communists and existed for only two months, but they did not particularly appear in the general theater of action in Europe.
If anyone is interested, there is a cool site.
Download over 200 high-resolution old maps for free. The section is constantly updated.
What if you print the map and hang it on the wall?
Many of us in childhood had huge wall maps on the wall, carefully hung from pushpins. Many hours were spent painstakingly studying them. As if by magic, new countries and cities floated before my eyes. Someone learned by heart the capitals of states, someone calculated the distances, and someone just looked for their hometown, trying to learn more about the world around them. Now they are no less popular, and it is not difficult to buy wall maps.
Whether you're on vacation or looking to find a spot you've seen on the news, all you have to do is walk up to the wall and find it. Returning from vacation, you can trace the entire path you have traveled with your finger along the surface with undisguised pleasure. And even carefully mark the winding route with a pencil, so that when you accidentally glance at the wall map, unforgettable moments of relaxation emerge in your memory. And modern technologies allow you to make maps much more colorful and more detailed.
Vintage maps
Wall charts today are no match for their lackluster and often torn ancestors. Colorfulness, clarity of drawing, extraordinary detail will make them a real treasure of your collection. Visiting guests will definitely stay with her, and then with envy they will ask where you bought such a lovely thing.
To be honest, and from an aesthetic point of view, kats win the competition with many design solutions. With whatever apotheosis they prove to you that such a picture or vase will look good, I assure you, there is nothing more mysterious and interesting than a wall map.
Much is changing in life. There are ups and downs, but the stability symbolized by the wall map always remains somewhere deep in the soul. One has only to hang a map on the wall once and a whole world will appear in your house, not invented, but real. Our world, where today there is an incredibly vast Russia, Africa drowning in heat, Europe expiring in politics, romantic Caribbean islands. But you never know on earth beautiful places that can easily fit on your wall.
Many centuries have passed since then when people began to mark symbols on objects that could inform others about their location. The simplest landmarks are trees, paths, rivers, at that time everything was plotted on primitive maps. Today it is already a problem to find your city on an ordinary globe if its population is less than five hundred thousand people. Maps created by our ancestors are in museums and tell about the history of the development of cartography. But old drawings can tell a lot of interesting facts and give an opportunity to unravel the secrets of the past.
I doubt that it is now possible to find in a modern traveler a sample of a handwritten map with marked designations that would identify the population of the country or the people living there. When creating a map today, preference is given to the accuracy and clarity of the borders of states, while losing aesthetics.
But along with the fact that the old maps are fictional, inconvenient to use, they are a work of art. Many artists around the world are amazed and inspired by ancient maps and study them with great pleasure and admiration. In our computerized and internet era, many different maps can be found. It is very convenient and fast. Having collected cartographic material for many years, today we can provide you with more than two hundred maps, they can be downloaded or printed directly from the site in excellent quality and high resolution. Anyone can do this, be it a local historian, a historian, a treasure hunter or just a curious person.
Most people use maps to purposefully search for the antiques of our ancestors. Those who believe in the secrets of treasures and treasures can use ancient cards, and luck may smile upon them. But remember that an antique card can be a wonderful decor in your home. Your guests will certainly be surprised and fascinated by this wall design, thanks to which you can learn a lot about your region and about the whole world in general.
You can also make a gift and associate it with an old card. For example, a lover of China can be presented with an ancient Chinese map that was copied from a stone column in 1137. The birthday boy will certainly be delighted and will remember the gift for a long time. On our site you will find all the maps you are interested in. Have a lot of fun studying them and experience a lot of positive emotions.
A large, updated collection of old maps in high resolution.
