Aerial View Maps

how did they do map making back in early times?

before they had aerial views, I'm curious how did they draw a map of an island for example, everything @ sea level sort of look the same.... thx in advance

Public Comments

1. they drew the map on their butts
2. mostly by using triangulation, which means making triangles out of everything because they have useful properties. for example, by observing a point on shore from a ship, and then measuring how far up the coast you travel, and then observing that same point again and measuring the angle between the two observations, explorers could determine the distances between far away objects and then plug in these coordinates into maps. it was complicated and time consuming, and early maps clearly show how difficult it could be. the first maps of north and south america look distorted and awful, because explorers used techniques like this to draw them, and they couldn't be 100% accurate.