Miletus: city of Mapmakers
Miletus, a major trading destination located in Asia Minor, was in prime position to absorb Babylonian influences as well as Greek literature and Mediterranean culture. As a result, the earliest ancient Greeks were ideally positioned to construct the first world maps.

The first of these was Anaximander. Born around 611 BC, he believed Earth was like a stone pillar suspended in space. Many believe him to be the world’s first proper mapmaker.

Fifty years later another native son of Miletus called Hecataeus produced an 'improved version' of Anaximander's. Hecataeus’s map describes the earth as a circular plate - with Greece at its centre. Distance was measured in 'days of sailing' on the encircling ocean and 'days of marching' on dry land.

Ptolemy: setting the standard
The Greeks later used astronomy and mathematics to prove Earth could be mapped very accurately. Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek living in Roman Egypt during the 2 AD revolutionised maps by introducing lines of longitude and latitude.

It’s also fair to say that his eight-book atlas 'Geographia' was a prototype for modern mapping. It included an index of place names and the positioning of north at the top and east to the right – still a universal custom.

Islamic mapmaking
The next major evolutionary stage in the history of mapmaking came from the east. During the Middle Ages, Muslim scholars combined Ptolemy's mathematical methods with knowledge gleaned from explorers and merchants in their travels across the Muslim world, from Spain to India to Africa, and to China and Russia.

In 1,154 AD, a significant Islamic cartographer, Abu Abdullah Ibn Idrisi, published a medieval atlas with the catchy title 'The Recreation for Him Who Wishes to Travel Through the Countries'. In compiling this work, Idrisi actually paid draftsmen to make journeys and map their routes.