Kaleb Olsacher
GEOG 196
February 8th 2018
Discussion
Questions
and Topics
-What can
truly be considered a map? The Sumerians in Southern Mesopotamia
were using
cuneiform tablets containing long lists of place names, rivers and
mountains
between 2500 and 2200 BC, long before Graeco-Roman maps were being
produced.
These cuneiform tablets were thought to have been used for
teaching or military
purposes rather than as an everyday map, but does that make it not
a map if it
still contains useful information about the surrounding landscape?
-Another
cuneiform tablet from 2300 BC depicts a map of the area around
Gazur in
Mesopotamia has the earliest example of physical orientation
(East, West, and
North). Even though this is the earliest written example of
physical
orientation, the Great Pyramid of Giza was built with precise
orientation to
the four compass points between 2600 and 2500 BC, almost 200 years
earlier. The
three Great Pyramids are also aligned precisely with the
constellation of
Orion, indicating that the Egyptians had awareness of both
physical orientation
and astronomical knowledge. The Egyptians used papyrus when
recording
information, which makes me believe it’s completely possible that
they had
papyrus maps around the time of the construction of the pyramids
that didn’t
survive all these years.
-The
Egyptians also had maps of religious areas, such as the
illustrated routes to
reach the gateway to the underworld which were painted on the
coffins in 2000
BC. How might religion have influenced the creation of physical
maps in ancient
times?
-How can we
be sure that Greeks like Anaxamander were responsible for some of
the creations
they were credited with if we have limited records from times
before
Anaxamander? For example, the gnomon, the upright part of the
sundial, which
Anaxamander is credited with having invented, yet there is
speculation that
Babylonian science had already created it, this could be a similar
scenario
with the map, which Anaxamander supposedly made the first of.
-Parmenides
believed the Earth was divided into five zones, two arctic zones,
two temperate
zones, and one large “burned” zone. In 168 BC Crates believed the
shape of
terrestrial mapping could only be accurate if the Earth was a
globe, and that
there were four symmetrical land masses each divided by ocean.
Both of these
views of the world are surprisingly accurate to what we know
exists today, how
were these people who only knew a small part of the whole world
existed able to
come up with such accurate maps for their time?