Hi from Caldwell, Idaho
My name is Steve Creitz, and I am an illustrator working outside Boise, ID.
I have come to this forum seeking advice. I am writing and illustrating a novel that deals with characters before the Great Flood mentioned in the Bible. MY protagonist is one of Noah’s sons, and I have decided it is good for him to learn cartography.
I am looking for information regarding ancient practices and tools used in early map making. I need to gain some understanding about terminology and the how-tos of cartography in general, and be able to accurately illustrate and describe what my hero is learning. I have no prior knowledge of cartography except having just read a rather lengthy Wikipedia article about the history of the field. That did not really help me because it did not discuss anything about methodology apart from the introduction of lat and long and various kinds of trigonometry.
Any help in pointing me in an appropriate direction would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Steve, and welcome to the Guild! I know a great deal of us are maybe a bit more on the artistic than the historical side when it comes to mapping, but there may still be people here who could help you out. If there are any specific things you are looking to start a discussion on, I'd recommend heading over to the the General Discussion section of the forum and starting a thread there. I can't quarantee you'll find an expert here, but doesn't hurt to ask!
Trigonometry was definitely used to make old maps but these are more in the medieval and onwards. For one thing you would have had to have some accurate devices made to measure the angles.
Very old maps used to be artistic with very little accurate representation of land shape and concentrated much more on the interconnections between places. So you had lines where dots were marked on it for towns with names and the map shown you which town you would encounter next if you kept on the same road. Whether the road was East or West was rather irrelevant to them. So if you had to get to a certain city you would pick your road by name and head out on it and pass through the sequence of villages and towns much like train stops.
My advice is to look through the guild for links to historical collections. Many of the museums and universities have been putting their entire collections in an online lookup web page interfaces and we often link to them because a) many of the historical items are maps and b) historical artifacts like jugs and bowls can still be used in fantasy maps for icons.
Look out for the older maps. Some are famous enough with names like the Mappa Mundi etc. But there are many that are older than cartographic land representations that are on display somewhere.
https://www.themappamundi.co.uk/
(oh didn't realize that Mappa Mundi is on display in Hereford... Not exactly local to me but not all that far either. Maybe I ought to go visit it post Covid.)
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