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You and I may take ordinary road maps for granted, but the history of mapmaking shows that ancient peoples carefully relied on their relatively primitive maps.
Noted author and professor John Noble Wilford wrote: "Before Europeans reached the Pacific, the Marshall Islanders were making stick charts. Sticks were lashed together with fibers to depict prevailing winds and wave patterns; shells or coral were inserted at the appropriate places to represent islands. When a Tahitian communicated his knowledge of South Pacific geography to Captain Cook by drawing a map, it was clear that he and his people were quite familiar with the map idea.
"Pre-Columbian maps in Mexico indicated roads by lines of footprints. Centuries ago Eskimos carved accurate coastal maps in ivory, the Incas built elaborate relief maps of stone and clay, and early Europeans drew sketch maps on their cave walls" (The Mapmakers, 1981, p. 7).
The map idea
According to Wilford, cartographers agree that there is something fundamental about the map idea: "It is a basic form of human communication . . . Indeed, the term map is often used metaphorically to explain other types of knowing and communicating" (p. 13).
Wilford carefully explored the symbolic values of mapmaking: "In everyday conversation, the word map is used to convey the idea of clarification: someone maps out a plan or maps out his future" (ibid.). Later in this book he wrote, "Maps embody a perspective of that which is known and a perception of that which may be worth knowing" (p. 386). He makes a very good case that maps are excellent symbolic tools, communicating that which is so far unknown by that which is known.
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