The world’s oldest surviving globe was made in Nuremberg in 1492, before Columbus reached the Americas. Martin Behaim’s Erdapfel shows Earth measuring 29,000 km around instead of the actual 40,075 km. That’s 11,000 km missing, and two entire continents nowhere to be found.
Read more: The World’s Oldest Globe: Made in 1492 Without the Americas
Romans controlled the Mediterranean and traded with India, but had zero clue that two massive continents existed across the Atlantic. Even in 1811, during Napoleon’s reign, Antarctica was completely unknown. This 1856 atlas shows when we discovered each part of the world.
Read more: How Long Did It Take Western Civilization to Map the World?
Written around 150 CE, Ptolemy’s Geographia listed about 8,000 places with coordinates. The European entries show us how ancient geographers understood their world—a window into early efforts to map and organize geographical knowledge.
Read more: Mapping Europe with Ptolemy’s Geographia
Howard Burke’s unusual propaganda map from 1940 depicted a split China ruled by the Soviet Union and Japan. History changed course decades later, completely reversing the balance of power.
Read more: “Japan and Russia Will Divide China” (1940 Propaganda Map)
Discover how Nazi educational materials used pseudoscientific maps to promote the myth of Germanic origins for all major civilizations.
Read more: Nazi School Map: How Nazis Claimed Germany as the Source of Civilization
This 1957 Times Atlas map centers on the Atlantic Ocean to highlight NATO countries, revealing Cold War alliances through unconventional projection and strategic coloring.
Read more: The 1957 Times Atlas Map: A Strategic View of Cold War Alliances
Long before Monopoly became a household name, an innovative board game from 1822 invited players to explore a young America using a detailed United States map…
Read more: Mapping America’s Past: The Fascinating Story of the First U.S. Board GameFamous British mapmaker James Reynolds, who earlier created the magnificent world map dedicated to the distribution of human races, created another amazing map in 1850 – the Panoramic plan of the principal rivers and lakes.
Read more: Historical infographic maps comparing the world’s rivers and lakes
Fra Mauro, the Venetian cartographer-monk from the late Middle Ages crafted the most objective and detailed world map of his time.
Read more: The Google Earth of the 1450sThe map published by Richard Edes Harrison for Fortune Magazine in 1941 shows the world divided amid World War II. The American cartographer uses different colors to group all the powers based on their alignment with the two existing sides.
Read more: The World Divided (1941)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) was an Italian genius who is generally acknowledged as one of the most diversely talented individuals ever to have existed. He became known for his sketches and notes on science and invention, including cartography, anatomy, botany, paleontology, astronomy.
Read more: Leonardo Da Vinci’s maps
In the 1960s, American urban planner David A. Jokinen proposed a controversial plan to modernize Amsterdam. This car-centric vision, known as the Jokinen Plan, would have dramatically altered the city’s landscape. Discover how Amsterdam narrowly avoided this fate and instead became the bicycle-friendly city we know today.
Read more: The Jokinen Plan: A 1960s American Vision for Amsterdam’s Future
Maps have been one of the most significant human creativity for millenary. People have invented and used maps to describe, clarify, and navigate their route within the world. Here is an atlas of the most famous maps, from the prehistoric period to modern times.
Read more: How the World was Imagined: First Maps and Atlases