THE SHAPE OF THINGS

A quick overview of the history of maps and of mapmakers’ tools from stone chisels to GPS satellites.

Less a factual history than a meditation on our innate need to record where the woods end and where streams or trails go, this survey begins with a prehistoric couple daubing marks on a cave wall and carving lines into a mammoth tusk, then zips in a vaguely chronological way around the world and to the present. Robbins delivers nods to old styles of maps from North America, Polynesia, China, Egypt, and Babylonia before ending with modern surveyors and a view of our planet from orbit. The author frames his terse commentary in broad, impersonal generalities (not always accurate ones: The world was probably “proved” to be round long before European explorers made their journeys), leaving it to the closing timeline to sprinkle specific names and dates next to a highly select set of historical artifacts and highlights. Conversely, Tavares focuses on the human element in his illustrations, depicting one figure in Renaissance clothing delightedly peering through a theodolite and elsewhere an individually drawn, racially diverse cast directly creating or using maps in various locales and successive eras. Along with this disconnect between the visual and textual approaches, huge swathes of topical territory go unexamined, from techniques of undersea mapping to basics such as map projections and common symbols.

A superficial, less-than-informative sketch.