The Shape of Things: How Mapmakers Picture Our World

How did the first people explore the land they lived on? How did civilizations expand their boundaries and chart courses into new lands? Learn about the history of cartography across cultures in this ode to mapmaking through the ages.



Join history's first mapmakers as they explore the wonders of the world! In these pages, you’ll find the tools ancient people used to depict their surroundings, methods different cartographers developed to survey new lands, and how we’ve arrived at modern mapmaking today. Above all else, the thread that runs throughout thousands of years of civilization is the spirit of exploration that helps us measure the shape of things around us, the world we all share.