shutterstock.
RT Images / Shutterstock
Cartography has become one of the most successful technologies for understanding the world around us. But like the world itself, maps and map-making are constantly evolving.
Maps contain useful information, but that means leaving out other information that is also useful.
Associated Press
Geographers often talk about the ‘silences’ of maps – what’s missing and unseen. Those silences can be as meaningful as what’s shown.
State Library New South Wales
The Tasman map, dating from the 1600s, was promised to the Commonwealth – but NSW got it instead. Here’s how it happened.
The women’s suffrage movement was one of the most successful political movements in history.
Picryl
Women’s rights activists used maps to highlight which regions hadn’t given women the vote: we can use the same tactics to push climate action.
National Library of Australia: 31258061
In many cases, colonial maps would portray conquered land as having been ‘empty’ and available when settlers arrived — even if it wasn’t.
Shutterstock
Boundaries aren’t just treaties. They’ve been built from rivers, oral history and newspaper notices — and rocks in the way of farmers.
An early 20th-century NAACP map showing lynchings between 1909 and 1918. The maps were sent to politicians and newspapers in an effort to spur legislation protecting Black Americans.
Library of Congress
Mapping is one way African Americans fight for equality and help each other navigate a racially hostile landscape.
Shoppers in Leeds walk by a coronavirus alert signe.
PA/Danny Lawson
Counties, local authorities, councils – how you divvy up the map changes the game significantly.
Tharp with an undersea map at her desk. Rolled sonar profiles of the ocean floor are on the shelf behind her.
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the estate of Marie Tharp
Born on July 30, 1920, geologist and cartographer Tharp changed scientific thinking about what lay at the bottom of the ocean – not a featureless flat, but rugged and varied terrain.
Shutterstock
Maps shape our understanding of world events like the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s how to make sure they don’t mislead you.
Three very different maps, using the same deprivation data, for the same place: Hartlepool, UK.
Samuel Langton/MMU, using OS Data © Crown copyright 2019.
When mapping deprivation, using traditional boundaries can distort the data and distract readers from important information.
Geologic map of the near side of the moon by Wilhelms & McCauley in 1971.
USGS
We have the Apollo missions to thank for a lot of our geological knowledge about the moon.
A map showing Northern Canada and the Arctic Ocean.
Government of Canada
In May 2019, Canada made a partial submission to the United Nations on the limits of its extended continental shelf in the Arctic.
Maps can be a tool in the defense of Indigenous communities against extractive industries.
Canadian Centre for Architecture; Grant Tigner, painter. Seagrams Limited, publisher. The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project, in The St. Lawrence Seaway: The Realization of a Mighty Dream, 1954.
Historically, western corporate maps have been privileged over Indigenous ones. But given the essential debate of territory in resource conflicts, maps are a crucial tool.
The map that went viral.
Sukhmani Mantel
Maps can show “the big picture” to lots and lots of people in an engaging and colourful way.
Africa Studio/Shutterstock.com
Can happiness really be mapped?
FotoYakov/Shutterstock.com
Economists try to create and use maps to navigate the world of human choices. But in some ways, these maps are limited.
“The earth is our mother. We should look after and respect her. This territory is where the peccary passed. Under the authority of Karodaybi [the first Munduruku warrior]
Mauricio Torres
They are contesting the maps that deny them territorial rights.
Interior Design / Shutterstock
Areas of the brain are being mapped, much like the towns, cities and countries represented in a typical atlas.
Worldmapper.org / Sasi Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan).
Nothing is where you think it is.