The Mercator Map 1569

Questions:

1. Who created this map?

2. Why was it created? What was its purpose? What would it have been used for?

3. What are the problems with mapping the globe like this?

4. What is the name given to a person who creates maps?

The World as we know it today

What is the same/different?

What differences can you see between the two maps? Why is this? What similarities are there?

Difference and why

Similarities and why

To show how difficult it is to create maps without Satellites and technology, I would like you to travel around your house and garden’s perimeter once. Return to this page and draw what your house and garden looks like from a birds-eye-view, just like a map would. Concentrate on the shapes of the buildings and gardens. If you wish to include nearby houses and roads as a challenge, you can. Once completed, use Google Maps to zoom in on your house from above to see how accurate you were. I think after this you will impressed by cartographers’ skills from this time period in history as maps were created from travellers and explorers’ reports of what they had seen on their journeys. Can you add a compass with 8 points onto the map pointing in the correct directions?