While thinking in maps may first bring to mind the idea of cartography, a map does not need to be geographic—it can be any symbolic depiction of the relationship between elements of some physical or mental space, such as themes, objects, or areas.

The Venetian Atlas is a recently rediscovered work of the 14th-century Genoese cartographer Petrus Vesconte, thought to have been completed towards the end of his Venetian period (c. 1330). Though the geographer has long been renowned for the accuracy of his nautical maps of the Mediterranean and Black seas, this long-lost portolan chart is particu... See more

The maps of the world drawn by the medieval cartographers were so hopelessly inaccurate, so filled with factual error, that they elicit condescending smiles today when almost the entire surface of the earth has been charted. Yet the great explorers could never have discovered the New World without them. Nor could the better, more accurate maps of t

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And within a century of 1433, it was the gunboats of Spain, Portugal, and other European powers that were plying the waters of the Indian Ocean and circumnavigating the Earth. China gradually ceded its technological leadership and fell behind Europe in the sciences, engineering, and mathematics. By the nineteenth century, the gap in technological c

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