The Maps of Ptolemy
Literature and art have long been considered a road map to the human soul, to the history of different societies and cultures through time. This is also true of the world map, it was a means for people to communicate about much more than the geography of an area. The old maps of the time of Ptolemy, were also venues to record data, scripture and legends. This kind of mystery, and of human participation is missed out on in today’s world of Google Maps and Mapquest. Which is truly a shame.
There were three sections or zones that were depicted by the early map-makers, or the cartographers. The heavenly world, or the world of God was always superimposed over the three continents. There was a divine sense to it all, to the experience and to the observations of the world. When the math of Ptolemy was translated in the fifteenth century to the Latin language this had a great impact and influence on the Renaissance map-makers.
It was during this time that the maps began to reflect the true geography and topography, and began to move away from the the divine. The maps began to reflect the physical reality of the the planet, the world, globe and skies combined. Ptolemy knew that the world was a sphere, and he recognized the difficultly in representing this on a one dimensional map. He worked endlessly to rectify this, but within just one hundred after his death, all of his research was over-looked and forgotten.
Later, these cartographers from the Renaissance period began to adopt his ideas, in the way that they went about “organizing” space. When the first world explorers headed out from Europe, they used these early versions of his maps, which gave them a perspective on the size of the earth, the framework of the geography, and also the limitations. The newer maps of the Renaissance cartographers provided some answers, and thus the world was discovered anew.
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