Interpreting the Human Environment

Interpreting the human environment

Your place in the world, the decisions you make, your views, and experiences, are directly influenced by your surroundings. Understanding the world in which you live - for example it’s physical features, climate, political divisions, language spoken, distance, length and time taken to travel between important places - will vary greatly from person to person. No world view is ever the same. We are all unique. You will likely identify within a family, tribe, school, or team, for example, but your personal journey is never the same. Mapping the world, as you know it, has been the work of people, not God. You may be influenced by religious beliefs, but in turn, your physical space on this earth, wherever you are, has been predetermined by factors beyond your control.

The earliest physical maps created (that have survived) were often very simple drawings used to establish boundaries, locations and prominent landmarks on the surface of the earth. Far from mathematically accurate, they were usually descriptive guesswork. Long distance travel was rare, and would usually cover a small area of land considered important to the map maker. The ‘Turin Papyrus’ - a painted scroll dating from c.1150 BC, contains a map of an area of Egypt’s Eastern Desert between the Nile and Red Sea. It depicts dried up river beds and tracks running through Egypt’s main gold and stone quarrying regions, giving distances in ‘Khets’ (around 50 metres/55 yards.) In order to accurately map larger distances, it was important to develop accurate ways of measuring the distance between certain points. In c.1620 Edmund Gunter developed the Surveyors Chain which enabled plots of land to be accurately surveyed and plotted. The chain was made of 100 links, marked in to groups of 10 by a brass ring, and was 66 feet in length. 80 chains equalled a statute mile (5280 feet). The first link would be held in position by a pole and the surveyor would literally walk the distance with the chain until point B had been reached. If point B was further than the end of the chain, a pole would hold the last chain in place, and then the surveyor would continue with the chain, etc , until the final destination had been reached. Around the same time as this method was developed, a more complex method of surveying called ‘Triangulation’ was being introduced, a method which could be used to accurately measure longer distances. Triangulation is a surveying method that measures the angles in a triangle formed by three survey control points. Using trigonometry, and the measured length of just one side of the imagined triangle, the other sides/distances of the triangle are calculated. One calculated side of the initial triangle then forms the basis of the next triangle, and a chain of triangles can be created. The first measured side is called the ‘baseline’, from which all other triangles eventually stem.

On a much larger scale, longitude and latitude are ways of dividing the entirety of the earths surface in to specific sections, to enable us to detail the precise location, as geographical co-ordinate, and define the likely features of the earth (ie climate and weather). Imagined lines running parallel to the equator, of equal distance between each other, which run east-west around the circumference of the earth, are called latitude. Latitude is an angle which ranges from 0degrees at the equator to 90 degrees at the north or south poles. The five lines of latitude (from north to south) are called the Artic Circle, Tropic of Cancer, Equator, Tropic of Capricorn, and the Antarctic Circle. Longitude, also known as a meridian, is a collection of imaginary lines drawn from the North Pole to the South Pole, which divide the earth in to sections like an orange. The Prime Meridian is the central line at 0 degrees, with lines every 15 degrees each side of the Prime Meridian, the farthest away is +180 degrees eastward and -180 degrees westward (a sphere being 360 degrees). Unlike latitude, there is no natural starting position, - the equator, that can be used for longitude. The primary measurement of longitude is time. Divided up in to an hourly rate, calculated by distance from the sun, because the earth rotates 15 degrees every hour, hence 24 hours or meridian/longitude lines. Conversely, sundials tell the time by the apparent position of the sun. Time is calculated by the position of the sun in the sky and the length of the shadow created. Sundials are the oldest known devices that are used to measure time.

Celestial mapping, or celestial cartography, maps stars, galaxies, and planets. The earliest known maps are of the stars, not the earth. On the walls of painted caves - named as the Shaft of the Dead Man - in Lascaux, France, a map of the ‘Summer Triangle’ was discovered in 1940. The map, thought to be painted over 16,500 years ago depicts a bull, a bird-man, and a bird on a stick. Symbolic representations considered to be scientifically accurate representations of the three brightest stars Altair, Deneb, and Vegas (creating an imaginary triangle) in the three constellations of Aquila, Cygnus, and Lyra. It is also thought the Seven Sisters (Pleiades) are represented in another picture of a bull, also painted on the cave walls.

Tycho Brahe (1546 - 1601), a Danish astronomer prominent in the 16th century, built two of the first observatories for celestial cartography, on an island called Hven. At 7.5 square kilometres, the island was given to Brahe by King Frederick II in 1576 to develop a school and research laboratory. The first building was named Uraniborg (and is considered the last observatory built without a telescope) and the building served as a viewing platform where Brahe would study and develop scientific and mathematical ideas in order to accurately map the night sky. The second observatory, a ground level observatory, was named Stjarneborg (Castle of the Stars). Whilst living on the island Brahe produced a hand drawn map of the island itself, considered to be the first accurately drawn map in Scandinavia that was based on scientific measurements and fact.

The first world Atlas to be produced, and printed, was ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’ (Theatre of the World), written by Abraham Ortelius and published on May 20th 1570 in Antwerp. It was a collection of 70 maps, on the same size copper plates, logically arranged by continent and region. The collection of maps, none of which were the work of Abraham Ortelius, but 87 other named masters, was the first time that Western European world knowledge was bought together in one publication.

In the 21st century, the idea of not knowing what is literally around the corner would be absolutely absurd. The development of satellite navigation, first developed by the US military in the 1960’s, now allows small electronic receivers to determine your position based on longitude and latitude, and altitude/elevation. The signals also allow the electronic receiver to calculate the current local time to high precision. But still, not all areas of the world have been completely, and accurately mapped. Computer technology has largely reduced the bias of the early cartographers who would create a map from their own, often limited, knowledge. Whilst obviously highly skilled, it is difficult to remove personal ideas in their entirety and differing world views would often be represented in one way or another - be that spatial awareness, religion, or political agenda, for example. Successive map makers would often duplicate the work, and mistakes, of a previous map maker, until new ideas were born, or old ideas were debunked. The true size of Africa, for example, is rarely represented on world maps made on Mercator’s projection. Africa is really 11.7 million sqaure miles - big enough to fit the Untited States, China, India, Japan, and much of Europe within it’s borders. And we haven’t even started on the Universe..