The Keynote Address Maps as the Heritage of A1ankind* REVEREND FRANCIS J. HEYDEN, s.J. Astronomer, Georgetown Univ., Washington, D. C. T IS unusual for an astronomer to give a an old envelope. As long as he indicates the I keynote address to people who are earth­ right number of turns in the road and shows bound in their avocation of mapping the you the number of stt'eams you are to cross, earth. Of course, you could not have done you can probably find the place I\'ithout too very much without stars, without the rota­ much difficulty. tion of the earth or without the timekeepers In the same way, some of the most primi­ who give us the longitudes we need for any tive maps have shown the the right number of distance to be measured on the surface of the turns in a river; they have shown the por­ earth. tages at waterfalls and even have used camp­ Having been in charge of a time service sites bet\\'een one day's travel, \I'hich was the similar to that at the Naval Observatory in custom among the Indians of this country, the Philippines for three years, I presume I rather than longitudes. Each campsite, am qualified for at least one dimension, and whether you were climbing a mountain for a that is longitude. day or walking rapidly across a plain, would I am going to talk to you, however, about be spaced equidistant apart. something entirely different from the meas­ Thus, the sources of scale in many very old urement of longitude. Everybody has a maps which have been found are quite arbi­ hobby on the side, and one that has intrigued trary. But we have some maps which do not me for several years has been old maps and have such an arbitrary scale, but actually had new maps. a mental picture of the entire area which he I like to look at them; I like to see how could reproduce from memory. much work has gone into the delineation of a An example of this is shown in the book by contour or of an elevation on a map. I have Raisz entitled "General Cartography." A wondered who does all this work? \iVho wan­ part of northern Canada covering an area of ders afield? \Vho has measured the eleva­ several hundred square miles was drawn by tions; who measured the coast lines, the lati­ an illiterate Eskimo. "'hen you compare it tudes and the longitudes? wi th a very carefull y prepared map, you are Because every time there is a detail that is amazed at the accuracy with which this indi­ put down accurately on an ancient map, there vidual remembered minute details and scale. must have been somebody there who set foot It is upon this type of person that I believe on the spot. Who has not looked at a very old many of the very ancient maps we have de­ map and wondered how much real labor and pended for their amazi ng accuracy. study went into it, not only on the part of the Most intriguing of all, of course, is the work man who brought in the original data but the of the compiler whom \I'e find here and there man who finally compiled it from all sorts of in the history of mapping. I shall talk about a data and made it what it is. couple of these people. Some very old maps appear very crude. Compilers are the men who have gathered They are no better than some of the directions the information that has come helter skelter you receive from a friend who invites you to from d ifferent travelers and voyagers. The his country home and d raws it on the back of compilers are able by the best means at their * ASP-ACSM General Assembly, Main Ballroom, V,;edneselay, March 27, 1963 at 1:00 P.M. EDITOR'S NOTE: Father Heyden has been Director of the observatory at Georgetown University since 1948. This well-known scientist was Chief Astronomer of the Manila Observatory from 1931-1934, and a mem bel' of the eclipse expeditions to Brazil in 1947 and to China in 1948. He has designed equipmen t, trained personnel and selected the observation sites for a numberof U. S. Air Force-sponsored eclipse ex­ peditions to may parts of the worlel, including, most recently, Sudan and Iran. Father Heyden ~as written numerous articles on scientific subjects for a number of technical journals and is an authonty on the photo-electric method of observing solar eclipses. He is a consultant for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on applications of space relationships. Father Heyden was recently named by the Washington Academy of Sciences as "Science Teacher of the Vear." 573 574 PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING command to coordinate all of this heterogene­ looking at them is, where did all the evidence ous information into a unified whole. That, of for drawing these maps come from? course, has been the principal task of all of One map, a very ancient one, shows a part you with the adyantages of modern tech­ of Alaska. Whoever added the annotations in niques. the course of time has made me wonder about Perhaps the earliest known map of this sort the exploration entailed in it. was that done by the Alexandrian scientist Mr. Mallery tells me that he heard about it and astronomer, Eratosthenes, who is cred­ through a Norwegian sea captain. On it you ited with having compiled a map of the then will find that there are two words which refer known world on which he shows the British to a "muddy glacier" and "lava beds." There Isles, a good part of Siberia, India, Ceylon, are scarcely any traces of these features now, the whole Mediterranean area, the Iberian but evidence of them has been found in the Peninsula and North Africa. preparation of the Geological Survey. One The unusual feature of this map by Eratos­ estimate of the age of the "muddy glacier" is thenes is the coordinate system similar to the abou t 1,500 years. mercator projection which was introduced Another ancient map of the North Atlantic centuries later. showing Greenland and Labrador was used by Eratosthenes, of course, did know some­ Father Erlend Thordsen and published later thing about coordinate systems. He was an by Zeno. Certainly, this particular map outstanding astronomer. He also had an ad­ existed before some of the most modern sur­ vantage in gathering the data for his map in veys and explorations of the country. It indi­ the library at Alexandria, of which he had cates that there have been voyagers there charge. It was a relatively new library at that with competent surveyors among them. time because it had been founded by Alexan­ Whether or not we shall ever be able to fully der the Great. With all of this material at his explore all of the information that these peo­ command, he produced his map of the world, ple brought back with them and have pre­ which was lost along with the original data in served is a question that we should try to the destruction of the library at the time of answer in the future. the rise of the Moslem empire. This same em­ I have often 1V0ndered about the way cer­ pire which did so much devastation in the be­ tain islands and other land masses have been ginning, was to produce a number of eminent put together on these ancient maps. I believe scientists and astronomers a few centuries that the compilers did not pay much atten­ later. tion to the transoceanic distances in those Only a description of Eratosthenes' map of days. When at sea, they simply sailed ami the world survived. The map itself was de­ sailed until they saw evidence of land. Most stroyed, but it has been reproduced only from of the ancien t maps seem to have been pre­ the description. pared for piloting rather than for navigation. Eratosthenes probably holds the title of There is another ancient map (Figure 1) having made the first map of the world. which indicates a projection viewed from the Ptolemy, who came three centuries after north and it shows the northern coast of Eratosthenes, was the next great compiler of Alaska with the Aleutian Islands going off to ancien t maps; and from then on, the art of the righ t. mapping became routine with explorers sav­ Another (Figure 11), presumably prepared ing their little drawings prepared mostly for by Zeno, shows Greenland. Most of the detail coastwise navigation. Not much effort was di­ is now under ice. The accuracy of these buried rected toward a map of the entire known features has intrigued Mr. Mallery and my­ world, until fairly recent times. It does appear self. Paul Emile Victor has found evidence of that there were maps which could be trusted these land areas which make Greenland ap­ ,\"i th some degree of accuracy. pear to be divided into two larger land masses I have studied a few such maps with a with a seaway between them. friend of mine whom I have known for many The names of places have been put on this years. He is about 80 years old now and has map, not necessarily by the same people who been having a wonderful time collecting an­ drew the map. None of these maps were pre­ cient maps. His name is Arlington H. Mal­ pared by one surveyor, probably not even by lery.