Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Mapping world history

Porcelain, sealskin, powder-horn, buckskin, silk, and parchment: these are what history is made of. Celestial histories — subway, radio, or Internet histories. Histories found in stick charts and ordnance surveys. From the Paleolithic Period to digital age, maps have illustrated and recorded history and culture: detailing everything from wars and colonization, to religious and jingoistic worldviews, to the textures of the heavens and the earth. Illustrated in the slideshow below are just a few maps from The Oxford Map Companion by Patricia Seed, which present some of the diversity of cartography and map-making across the centuries and across the globe.

 

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