maps
mapsMany cultures, including those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, use visual representations of aspects of space that cannot be directly perceived. The Ionian Greeks (perhaps taking the idea from other traditions) produced the first maps in the classical tradition (Eratosthenes, Strabo 1. 1. 11 (7), attributed the first map to Anaximander); the famous one shown to King Cleomenes I of Sparta by Aristagoras of Miletus (Herodotus 5. 49) is an example of such maps: these fit into the context of new world-views that are also found in Hecataeus and Herodotus. World maps are mentioned at Athens in the late 5th cent. bc, but do not seem to have been widespread.
These early maps were attempts to depict the wider order of the world rather than to survey smaller areas in detail; such local maps, if known, were not related conceptually to the geographers' task. Only the calculation of linear...
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