Cartography

So in the development of cartography or mapology, it was the custom from the earliest times to draw maps which were ornamental as well as useful. In the absence of lighthouses and buoys, the appearance of the shore, its contours and the houses upon it were significant. In the manuscript and printed maps of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the cardinal, and later the ether points of the compass, were frequently represented by heads, often of cupids with full cheeks, blowing from near the margin of the charts, and indicating the direction of the winds from these quarters. The points of the compass first appeared as a four-leaved rose, which became later eight, sixteen and thirty-two leaved, as knowledge of the compass increased. A country was represented not merely as land of such and such a size and shape, but forests and mountains were actually depicted and the size and importance of the cities were indicated by symbolic houses, small and few for villages, large and many for cities.
— Louis A. Holman, Old Maps and their Makers

I wisely started with a map, and made the story fit.
— J.R.R. Tolkien

I tried to visit Albania but I couldn't find it on the map.
— Oscar Wilde

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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