Mapmaking, a very ancient craft, seeks to represent spaces in a proportional and rational manner. The representation parameters have evolved continuously in response to changing requirements. As a result, we have urban maps, road maps, regional maps, and geographic maps.

The expansion of maritime traffic—first in the Mediterranean basin, then across the oceans—stimulated the production of increasingly elaborate sea charts. It is impossible to apply to the history of cartography a paradigm that measures progress solely in terms of precision in measurement standards. For maps provide answers to questions that do not relate exclusively to practical concerns. The mystical cartography of the medieval Mappaemundi resonates with the fears and expectations of western societies of their age. But modern tourist maps and ancient road maps serve the same purposes, and their syntax has remained essentially unchanged to this day.

With the formation of modern States, cartography became an instrument of territorial control and a key component of war strategy. In the mid-sixteenth century, mapmakers began using rigorous geometric methods that culminated in the Age of Enlightenment. Meanwhile, new computation techniques were developed and conventional signs came into universal use.