Making Sense of Maps and Mapping



Making Sense of Maps and Mapping

Introduction

Maps play a vital role in complete understanding of the geography of the country or other areas. These geographical distributions reveal the political distribution as well. This introduced the concept of geopolitics as defined by Klaus Dodds (2010). It provides detailed analysis of the demographics and boundaries of the area and it is very important to understand that the maps must be appropriate. Another important factor about mapping is that it is very important in providing the historical background. There are various examples and uses of maps, for example road maps are very important to understand the correct location and guidance, and this provides that it is very important to plot the map correctly. It is also an important feature that these mps not only explains about the geography but about the climate and other information as well. There are various maps available in the atlas that can provide information about the countries all over the world.

Discussion

 Peter Haggett emphasized the fact that, 'No geography series would be complete without maps' (Haggett, 2002, p.16). This emphasized the need of using the map in the study of geography, but the maps not only serves for geography but also about various other topics and concerns. The use of maps for different purposes is varied and it is very effective in complete understanding of the context. This requires that it very important to provide correct information about the facts and maps must provide complete information required. The importance of using maps in different resources is very clear as it is the most general concept all over the world that people use the maps and other illustrations to provide complete detail about the information. This adds the visual quality to the source and provides more assistance for the reader to clearly understand what is explained. Various books journals and article use maps to provide the literary authenticity to the information with real and geographical presentation of the information. It is also very common that newspapers also use maps to provide more authenticity to the article and to provide the historical, geographical and demographic information about the study and article provided. Newspaper editors and other staff also added the task of providing more and more information by incorporating charts and graphs (Monmonier, 1989, p.20 ).

Map from a book

Abominable Snowmen, by Ivan T. Sanderson

Map VII. Africa , Image retrieved from: http://www.sacred-texts.com/lcr/abs/img/map07.jpg

Key Object of the Map

This map is extracted from the internet source of the book Abominable Snowmen, written by Ivan T. Sanderson (www.sacred-texts.com). This book provides the historical evolution of mankind and this map is provided to explain the geographical distribution of the mankind in history in the African continent. This method of using map reveals the fact that maps not only serves to explain the history of the states but the history of evolution of human beings as well. There are various examples in which maps are used to define the historical evolution of ...