Maps. Finding our place in the world

Hindu cosmological globe
Unidentified cartographer
19th century
Pigment on wood

This globe combines two common Hindu worldviews: the four-continent earth, and the seven-continent earth. From the top, four continents inhabited by man emerge as lotus leaves. On the bottom half, the alternating colored rings represent the seven continents (red) and seas (gray, white, or turquoise). As in many Hindu maps, this globe combines mythical elements (Mt. Meru, shown as a circle within a square, is the axis) and geographical elements (one cluster of buildings in the large blue ocean represents Sri Lanka).

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Finding Your Way
Countless wayfinding maps exist, but they all address three basic questions: Where am I? Where do I want to go? How do I get there? Understanding a map can shed light on a people's everyday life through the technologies, social structures, and environments that shape and influence their world.
Mapping Worlds
How do you define "world?" Is it limited to the planet Earth? Or does it include spiritual realms? Across time and cultures maps encompass worldviews from the scientific to the mythical.

Mapping Places
Familiar geography, like a neighborhood or a worship site, may be easy to navigate without a map. Still, an astounding array of local maps exist for a variety of reasons, such as to commemorate a sacred place, or to manage a territory. But who the map is intended for is also significant. A cartographer may use different symbols for cultural insiders or may intentionally distort features for an outsider.

Mapping History
Maps are not passive objects. They are active instruments in events that are important to us as individuals, as communities, and as nations. They inspire journeys, explorations, and migrations, and influence patterns of settlement. In times of war maps help plan battles, and when peace arrives they are tools for diplomacy. Maps can reveal what people know, what they thought they knew, what they hope for, and sometimes, what they fear.

Visualizing Nature and Society
As our quest for answers about the earth and its people turns up new data, cartographers develop new ways to visualize it. Using symbols and colors in novel ways the graphic language of maps explores issues ranging from ethnic diversity to geological layers. In revealing the unexpected or unknown about our world, maps can trigger major shifts in scientific thought and help solve practical problems.

Mapping Imaginary Worlds
All maps are in some sense a product of the cartographer's imagination, requiring leaps of creativity to conceptualize the world as a sphere, or discern geological formations. But some maps push the limits of imagination, representing realms that exist only in our minds. Fantastical maps created for literary works are a clever twist on the mapmaking process: instead of using imagination to visualize physical places, these maps use practical techniques to represent imaginary places.
Living With Maps
People have made maps since the dawn of history, but before the application of printing to mapmaking in the 16th century, few maps made it beyond the governing or religious elites. Printing widened cartography's horizons, and today's digital technologies put maps at the fingertips of millions. Both users and uses have multiplied; we are now using maps in ways that were unimaginable only a few years or even months ago. More than ever maps help us find our place in the world.


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