The fifth region, due north, lay in complete darkness, a land 'where one sees nothing,' and 'the sun is not visible.'.on the fourth region 'the light is brighter than that of sunset or stars': it lay in the northwest, and after sunset in summer was practically in semi-obscurity.the third region is where 'the winged bird ends not his flight,' i.e., cannot reach.The descriptions of five of them have survived: The accompanying text mentions a distance of seven beru between the outlying regions. The map as reconstructed by Eckhard Unger shows Babylon on the Euphrates, surrounded by a circular landmass including Assyria, Urartu ( Armenia) and several cities, in turn surrounded by a 'bitter river' ( Oceanus), with eight outlying regions ( nagu) arranged around it in the shape of triangles, so as to form a star. Now in the British Museum.Ī Babylonian world map, known as the Imago Mundi, is commonly dated to the 6th century BCE. Main article: Babylonian Map of the World Imago Mundi Babylonian map, the oldest known world map, 6th century BCE Babylonia. According to the authors, the map probably wasn’t used for navigation, but rather to show the political power and territorial extent of a local ruler’s domain of the early Bronze age. This would make the Saint-Bélec slab the oldest known map of a territory in the world. A recent analysis, published in the Bulletin of the French Prehistoric Society, has shown that the slab is a three-dimensional representation of the River Odet valley in Finistère, France.

The Saint-Bélec slab discovered in 1900 by Paul du Châtellier, in Finistère, France, is dated to between 1900 BCE and 1640 BCE.

With the Age of Discovery, during the 15th to 18th centuries, world maps became increasingly accurate exploration of Antarctica, Australia, and the interior of Africa by western mapmakers was left to the 19th and early 20th century.Īntiquity Bronze Age 'Saint-Bélec slab' Since Ptolemy, knowledge of the approximate size of the Earth allowed cartographers to estimate the extent of their geographical knowledge, and to indicate parts of the planet known to exist but not yet explored as terra incognita. The developments of Greek geography during this time, notably by Eratosthenes and Posidonius culminated in the Roman era, with Ptolemy's world map (2nd century CE), which would remain authoritative throughout the Middle Ages. World maps assuming a spherical Earth first appear in the Hellenistic period.

The earliest known world maps date to classical antiquity, the oldest examples of the 6th to 5th centuries BCE still based on the flat Earth paradigm. Further information: List of historical maps and history of cartography

World map 1570