the.com/cartographer
The person who decided what shape your entire world is.
means A person who makes maps, charting the shapes of land, sea, and the spaces between.
from From the French 'cartographe', stitched together from Latin 'charta' — a leaf of papyrus, hence a sheet, a chart — and Greek '-graphos', a writer or drawer. So a cartographer is literally a 'chart-writer'. 'Charta' itself travelled from Greek 'khartes', the papyrus sheet, and lurks behind 'card', 'chart', and 'charter' too.
- sea monsters
- Old maps drew dragons where data ran out
- north up
- Putting north on top was an arbitrary choice
- the projection
- Every flat map lies about size or shape
- paper towns
- They plant fake places to catch copycats
- power move
- Whoever maps the border often wins it
gerardus mercator — flemish cartographer who created the mercator projection in 1569, still used for navigation maps today
zheng he — chinese admiral who commissioned detailed maps during 7 voyages across the indian ocean 1405-1433
joan blaeu — dutch cartographer whose atlas 'atlas maior' 1662 was the largest atlas ever created at that time