Geography has a lot of important branches that study different aspects of our planet. One of these branches is cartography. Cartography is what helps us to generate the maps that we are used to turning to to visualize the areas. However, many people do not know what is cartography nor what this discipline is responsible for.
Therefore, we are going to dedicate this article to tell you everything you need to know about What is cartography and its characteristics.
What is cartography
Cartography is the branch of geography that deals with the graphic representation of geographic areas, generally in two dimensions and in conventional terms. In other words, cartography is the art and science of making, analyzing, studying, and understanding maps of all kinds. By extension, it is also the existing set of maps and similar documents.
Cartography is an ancient and modern science. It attempts to fulfill the human desire to visually represent the Earth's surface, which is relatively difficult because it is the geoid. To achieve this, science resorted to a system of projections intended to act as an equivalent between a sphere and a plane. It thus constructed the visual equivalent of the Earth's geographic contours, its undulations, its angles, all subject to certain proportions and a priori criteria to select what is important and what is not.
The importance of mapping
Cartography is essential today. It is a necessity for all globalization activities, such as international trade and intercontinental mass travel, because they require minimal knowledge of where things are in the world.
Since the Earth's dimensions are so vast that it is impossible to consider it as a whole, cartography is the science that allows us to obtain the closest possible approximation. Furthermore, know this art It is essential to understand the historical evolution of maps, as is the case with the historical cartography dating back to the earliest civilizations.
branches of cartography
Cartography comprises two branches: general cartography and thematic cartography.
- General cartography. These are representations of worlds of a broad nature, that is, for all audiences and for informational purposes. Maps of the world, maps of countries, are all works of this particular department.
- Thematic cartography. On the other hand, this branch focuses its geographical representation on certain aspects, topics or specific regulations, such as economic, agricultural, military elements, etc. For example, the world map of sorghum development falls within this branch of cartography.
As we said at the beginning, cartography has a great function: to describe our planet in detail with different degrees of precision, scale and in different ways. It also implies the study, comparison and critique of these maps and representations in order to discuss their strengths, weaknesses, objections and possible improvements.
After all, there is nothing natural about a map: it is an object of technological and cultural elucidation, an abstraction of human development that stems in part from the way we imagine our planet.
cartographic elements
Broadly speaking, cartography bases its work of representation on a set of elements and concepts that allow it to accurately organize the different contents of a map according to a certain perspective and scale. These cartographic elements are:
- Scale: Since the world is very big, to represent it visually, we need to scale things down in a conventional way to keep the proportions. Depending on the scale used, distances normally measured in kilometers will be measured in centimeters or millimeters, establishing an equivalent standard.
- Parallels: The Earth is mapped into two sets of lines, the first set being parallel lines. If the earth is divided into two hemispheres starting from the equator, then the parallel is the line parallel to that imaginary horizontal axis, which divides the earth into climatic zones, starting from two other lines called the tropics (Cancer and Capricorn).
- Meridians: The second set of lines that divide the globe by convention, the meridians perpendicular to the parallels, is the "axis" or central meridian passing through the Royal Greenwich Observatory (known as the "zero meridian" or "Greenwich meridian"). ), London, theoretically coincides with the axis of rotation of the Earth. Since then, the world has split into two halves, divided every 30° by a meridian, dividing the Earth's sphere into a series of segments.
- Coordinates: By combining latitudes and meridians, we obtain a grid and a coordinate system that allows us to assign latitude (determined by latitudes) and longitude (determined by meridians) to any point on the ground. The application of this theory is how GPS works, a tool directly related to cartography.
- cartographic symbols: These maps have their own language and can identify features of interest according to specific conventions. Thus, for example, some symbols are assigned to cities, others to capitals, others to ports and airports, etc.
Digital cartography
Since the advent of the digital revolution at the end of the XNUMXth century, few sciences have escaped the need to use computing. In this case, digital cartography is the use of satellites and digital representations when making maps.
So the ancient technique of drawing and printing on paper is now a collector's item and a vintage item. Even the simplest cell phone today has access to the internet and, therefore, to digital maps. There is a wealth of retrievable information that can be entered, and they can also function interactively. In fact, technological advances have influenced the evolution of cartography, allowing the use of topographic map and other advanced types.
social cartography
Social mapping is a collective method of participatory mapping. It seeks to break the normative and cultural biases that accompany traditional cartography based on subjective criteria about the world center, regional importance and other similar political criteria.
Thus, social cartography arose from the idea that there could be no cartographic activity without communities, and that cartography should be done as horizontally as possible, which is also related to the impact of phenomena such as climate change in various regions.
History of cartography
Cartography was born from the human desire to explore and take risks, which happened very early in history: the first maps in history date from 6000 BC. c., including frescoes from the ancient Anatolian city of Çatal Hüyük. The need for mapping was probably due to the establishment of trade routes and military plans for conquest, since no country had territory at the time.
The first map of the world, that is, the first map of the entire world known to Western society since the XNUMXnd century AD, is the work of the Roman Claudius Ptolemy, perhaps to satisfy the desire of the proud Roman Empire to delimit its vast borders.
On the other hand, during the Middle Ages, Arabic cartography was the most developed in the world, and China also started from the XNUMXth century AD It is estimated that around 1.100 maps of the world have survived from the Middle Ages.
The real explosion of Western cartography occurred with the expansion of the first European empires between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. At first, European cartographers copied old maps and used them as the basis for their own, until the invention of the compass, the telescope, and surveying made them yearn for greater precision.
Thus, the oldest terrestrial globe, the oldest surviving three-dimensional visual representation of the modern world, dated 1492, is the work of Martín Behaim. The United States (under that name) was incorporated into the United States in 1507, and the first map with a graduated equator appeared in 1527.
Throughout its history, the nature of the cartographic archive has changed considerably. The charts on the first floor were handcrafted for navigation using the stars as a reference. However, they were quickly superseded by the arrival of new graphic technologies such as printing and lithography. More recently, the advent of electronics and computing has forever changed the way maps are made. Satellite and global positioning systems now provide more accurate images of Earth than ever before.
I hope that with this information you can learn more about what is cartography and their characteristics.