Artistic or useful?

Old maps, they can be priceless commodities people steal to make money as what has happened countless times, and is very lucrative for those who get away with it. A great example of old map theft is portrayed in Miles Harvey’s The Island of Lost Maps: A true storey of Cartographic Time. What this tells me about ancient maps is that well done historical maps have become priceless commodities to history buffs and appreciators of fine art. Old, historical, good maps are hand drawn, and incredibly detailed; this is what makes them so artistic. This is not to say all old maps are perfect, in fact, most old maps are outdated and are worthless for reference. Old maps are useful to historians who wish to research what happened, but if you have a historical map of a place, you will indubitably get lost.

The map to the right is a hand-drawn mercator projection from 1820. This map demonstrates artistic design in antique maps and how precise (if not accurate) the cartography was

Some new maps are of old things. This is also very useful for researchers; it can show visually what happened in a clear concise way. Historical cartographers and historical geographers specialize in this area of study.

New maps, as compared to old maps, are very much less valuable to art critics, but are intensely useful to those wishing to drive from Beeville, Texas to Wells, Nevada. New mapping programs like Google Maps are very useful and very easy to find and use for the every day person. New maps are used to display information visually, but most historians have no interest in them.

National Geographic, or Rand McNally both have atlases to show the populous information, the National Geographic atlas shows useful information about the whole world and is incredibly detailed, whereas Rand McNally’s road atlas is more for people who wish to hit the road and travel across the U.S. It focuses more on the major road systems and towns on them then the smaller rural areas which most people on a road trip will not even notice.

Old Map Links:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/history_world.html

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.helmink.com/Antique_Map_van_Schagen_World_thumb.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.helmink.com/&h=140&w=163&sz=34&hl=en&start=6&tbnid=JG-7OANGDoiRmM:&tbnh=84&tbnw=98&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dold%2Bmaps%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

New Map Links:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

http://www.randmcnally.com/