When was the first world map made? The first world map was made in the 6th century BC, but it was very limited. The first map that is close to a modern map, i.e. having all of the continents on it, was probably made in the late 19th century.
The problem with maps is that you cannot map an area unless you have been there. Even if you can get there, it is often very difficult to make an accurate map. It has only really been since the invention of the airplane that we can make accurate maps. Even then, it was not easy. Satellites have made modern maps fairly accurate and as close to a true representation of Earth as possible. They mostly all use the Mercator projection, which means they cannot be completely accurate because that stretches continents near the poles. Google gets around this by using a digital globe for their map.
The oldest map ever found was made in the 7th century BC. It was made in Babylon and is engraved into a clay tablet. Babylon was a city in the middle of the ancient kingdom of Mesopotamia, roughly where Iraq is today, and the Babylonian map depicts the area around Babylon. It is difficult to see that it is a map and at first glance it looks like a collection of shapes and symbols. However, if you know what you are looking at (which Wikipedia does a wonderful job of explaining), then you can see the different places on the map. It is not a world map, but it was the world to the people that made it. They would not have had a lot of contact with the people outside of it or occasion to travel too far.
The evolution of maps move step in step with exploration, colonization, trade, and technology. Early Greek and Roman world maps were maps of their empires. They showed Greece or Rome as the center, and the maps basically go as far as they have traveled. The Roman maps cover the top of Africa, part of Asia, Southern Europe, and the UK up as far as Scotland. Early Chinese world maps were also maps of their empire. The Chinese were able to make very detailed maps and pieces of maps going back to the 3rd century BC have been found. These maps only covered the territory controlled by the ruling dynasty. These maps were made by people traveling to the areas and drawing it on paper. They were as accurate as you can get with guesswork.
For the next thousand years, maps increased in scope, but there was never a world map. Any map was fairly detailed with respect to the area it concerned, and everything else was guessed at. Europe was very well mapped, but Asia was guessed at and the Americas and Australia didn’t exist.
World maps increased in size as explorers started to sail the seas. Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English sailors began to sail further down the coasts of Africa and across the Atlantic. In 1488, Bartlomeu Dias was the first person to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, and in 1492 Columbus reached the Americas. These sailors had no way of knowing longitude, so they tracked their routes in books called rutters. These books were carefully kept state secrets because no country wanted another country to find the places they were exploring. However, information got out and cartographers began to make more accurate maps. The Martellus map in 1489 shows a large part of Africa, part of India, and Europe. The Spanish had a map that was constantly updated by all of their explorers in the early 1500s. It was called the Padron Real and contained most of the coasts of South and North America. Then, in 1599, Edward Wright came up with the Mercator projection as a way to portray maps.
It was difficult for people to draw maps because there was no way of knowing the exact distances and sizes of places. All of this changed when the marine chronometer was invented in 1735 and sailors could now use longitude as well as latitude. They could record anywhere on Earth accurately. Map making took off from this point. All that remained was to discover the parts of the world that weren’t on the maps yet. Australia was discovered in the late 18th century and it appears on a map drawn in 1778. And by 1832, a European world map shows every continent except for the Arctic. And this is what I learned today.
Try these:
Sources
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2019/07/the-shape-of-the-world-according-to-old-maps
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_Map_of_the_World
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartography_of_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutter_(nautical)
Image Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1883425