Man and the Center of the World: A Short History of the Map
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: The maps we use today, in navigation apps and on tourist plans of the cities we visit, appear at first sight to be purely utilitarian instruments. This essay argues that the map has never been a neutral representation of the world. From its first appearance it has been a cultural product that absorbs the beliefs, the political and social inclinations, the aspirations and the fears of the age that made it. The argument distinguishes the map from the plan, which is more than a millennium older and served clear practical ends, and then follows the map through four moments: the Babylonian world map and Ptolemy's *Geography*, understood as devices for compressing the created world into the reach of human understanding; the Roman turn toward technical, administrative cartography, with the *Tabula Peutingeriana* and the *Forma Urbis Romae* as instruments of Power; the medieval T-O diagrams and the Ebstorf map, in which the world is the body of Christ and Jerusalem is its center; and the Netherlandish workshops of the sixteenth century, where Mercator's rigor placed Europe at the center. The essay closes with the dynamic map of the smartphone, whose fixed point is the user as consumer. Working paper (preprint). English version of a text first written in Romanian by the author; translated and edited for this deposit, with corrected references. Not yet peer reviewed. Comments and citations welcome; a journal version may follow.
Author: Bădescu, Dalina
Language: English
Subfield: Geography, Planning and Development
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7214531783
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