THE FIRST WORLD ATLAS
FINE^ ARTIMAGES/HERITAGEIMAGES/GETTYIMAGES(BABYLONIANMAP^ OF^ THEWORLD,^ THISPAGE&^PREVIOUS)The Greeks were the first
known culture to apply a scien-
tific approach to measuring and
mapping the world. The philos-
opher Pythagorus theorized as
early as the 6th century B.C. that
the Earth was round. And by 200
B.C., the scholar Eratosthenes
compared the angles of shad-
ows cast simultaneously in two
distant cities to accurately esti-THE WORLD
THE OLDEST SURVIVING WORLD MAP
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The oldest surviving world
map depicts the worldview of
Babylonians circa 600 B.C.
The 5-inch stone tablet is cen-
tered around Babylon, the wide
rectangle, which straddles the
Euphrates River, depicted by the
crooked lines running from top
to bottom. Babylon, likely the
world’s most populous cit y at the
time, is surrounded by neighbor-
ing cities represented by small
circles, all within a greater cir-
cle to denote the ocean. Though
its geography is limited, this
map reveals the inherent bias of
mapmakers to place themselves
at the literal center of the world.
Other early maps served more
practical needs, such as the stick
and shell charts built to denote
currents around islands in the
South Pacific over 2,000 years
ago, or the Egyptian papyrus
maps that led miners through
the desert in the 12th century
B.C. But the Babylonian Map of
the World is the earliest example
of a political map used to cham-
pion a country or city.