Concept in Definition ABC

Cartography is known as the science that is dedicated to the study and elaboration of maps that are used for navigation, for the location of the human being, etc., and we also use the word to refer to the art of drawing these geographical charts.

Key role in the location of any point on our planet

Man has always been concerned about his location and also about finding his way, while this intense dedication led to occupy himself in developing tools that would help him in this regard and of course with cartography he transformed it into a fact concrete.
The reliable proof of this that we mentioned are the various murals and engravings that were found and that date from many years before the appearance of Christ. Undoubtedly these constitute the antecedents of cartography and it is on these that science could develop as it has done.

All the most important civilizations of antiquity, such is the case of the Greeks and the Romans, developed sophisticated maps to locate themselves.

The word cartography comes from the Greek and means 'the writing of maps'. Cartography is a science that has existed for centuries and that has always been very useful for geographical location and space of the human being, allowing him to make all kinds of trips that, eventually, made him able to unite all the globe.

Cartography works on a flat representation of the Earth that facilitates its exposition complete and that allows to put on the same surface all the continents, seas and oceans. This two-dimensional way of representing the Earth had to do in large part with the belief (which lasted millennia, until modernity) that our planet was flat. Thanks to the contribution of numerous scientists and thinkers, the human being managed to understand that the Earth was round and thus, with the help of appropriate maps, he understood that if he started from a point and continued right I would get to that point again.

Incorporation of technology

Traditionally, the human being turned to the stars and the celestial elements to locate, to the mathematics, geometry and many other disciplines to make the maps that were later used for the navigation. Nowadays, and on the basis of those works achieved by the man of other past times, technology was incorporated to be able to obtain more reliable information. For example, today high-tech satellite technology is used. quality and detail to take pictures of the planet (both ours and the Moon), analyze them and thus create more and more specific and useful maps. And in the past, devices like the compass marked a huge advance when it comes to very accurate mapping.

Cartography, like all science, has a method of study as well as the appropriate elements of classification and categorization of knowledge. In this sense, it is a rule to represent the physical forms of the terrain with different colors ranging from darker blue for the deepest parts of the ocean, to the strongest browns for the deepest mountains high. In addition, maps can also represent political boundaries, zones and regions not determined by countries, spaces of specific climates and biomes, etc.

According to the production carried out by the cartography, it is usually differentiated in general and in theme

The first is concerned with producing maps that are aimed at broad audiences because they expose various references, such is the case of a world map. Meanwhile, the theme is concerned with capturing on the maps that it elaborates special themes and that are of interest to a specific or determined public, such is the case of a map that indicates the manufacturing poles of a certain region.

On the other hand, we can find topographic maps that precisely specify the topography that has a place on the planet.

Ultimately, it follows from the foregoing that cartography is a discipline very important for humanity because it facilitates us the location and in recent years it has advanced a lot in the creation of specific maps that contribute a lot to the population and to certain economic areas.