A Journey Back in Time Through Maps

In our modern day and age, when satellite imagery and GPS services like Google Maps, offer strikingly accurate images of the world, we can easily forget that for most of human history the world was an unknown tabula rasa on which cartographers, scientists, men of god, and kings imprinted their own dreams and ideals. This new extended edition, with the addition of about 15 maps, explores changing perceptions of the world map through the centuries and across multiple vastly different cultures. It juxtaposes 18th century Buddhist cartography in Japan with European mercantile maps of the same period. It travels with speculative cartographers and they argue in the scientific academies of Paris, London, and St. Petersburg over theories about what ‘must’ fill the great unknown. The book observes the emergence of the modern world view through the cartographic lens.