Exploring our Planet Through the History of Maps

0:00Today on State of the World, exploring our planet through the history of maps.

0:08You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories, up close, where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. Physical maps might feel out of date in our world of smartphones and GPS, but maps aren't just for navigation. They say something about our history, culture, and how we view the world. NPR's Jackie Northam takes us to a library in Maine to explore their collection of old maps. There's something special about a map that the GPS in your car or phone just can't provide. When laid out, a map can provide a greater sense of scale and place, hints at the allure of far-off lands.

0:49It's a reminder that we're a small part of a big world with a complex history.

0:57That's something the Osher Map Library at the University of Southern Maine in Portland reveals to students most days of the week. On this day, it's a group of energetic fourth graders. London, France, Paris, Australia, Arctic Ocean. All right, friends, can I please come back over here? The kids can view maps and globes, both modern and going back hundreds of years from all over the world. So this globe is over 400 years old. It is older than me. It is older than the United States. It is older than George Washington. Many of the maps and globes put Europe as the focal point before America was mapped, giving the students a different perspective and orientation.

1:45And if you actually go to Australia, they flip the map upside down so that Australia is on the top versus, like, you know, North America. Maps are customized for each class. Up to 13 ,000 students go through the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education every year. The founding donors wanted the maps open to all. They wanted a second grader to be able to come in and see the oldest map. They wanted maps infused into every aspect of the curriculum. Libby Bishop, the executive director, says a lot of institutions have archives and collections that sit in vaults protected. But the point here is to get them out and to use them and to make a new generation really excited about historic objects and historic materials.

2:35Bischoff says the Osher Map Library is one of the largest in the country in terms of a collection that's open and accessible to the public. We have about half a million maps, cartographic items, globes, atlases, books, dating back to 1475. So this is the 1575 edition of the first systematic modern atlas called the Theatre of the World. Dr. Matthew Edney is the faculty scholar at the Osher Map Library, teaching a university course on global history. He relies on the library's vast collection of rare and unusual maps for the course. I tell it through the lens of how have different cultures mapped their worlds, thinking of world as a cultural phenomenon, not just a physical thing.

3:23Maps also reflect religious or geographical beliefs, power, ambition and goals of various peoples and governments. Think Gulf of Mexico versus Gulf of America. One map at the Osher Library, titled Uprooted People of the USA, was produced in 1945 by Louise Jefferson, a black graphic designer and cartographer. It's a bright, colorful illustration of the widespread displacement in the U.S. at that time, says Bischoff. You have refugees from Europe. You have all sorts of men and women going to fight and serve in the Army and Navy, being moved to train. She also maps Japanese internment. The Osher Library has a very broad view of what defines a map.

4:09One, titled Willard's Temple of Time, charts the concept of time going back to the creation. There are celestial maps and books like the Nuremberg Chronicle, a complete and intact leather-bound tome from 1493 that's a history of the world. The pages are thick, you're allowed to touch it without gloves, and feel the paper made hundreds of years ago. It's made out of rags. It's quite thick, isn't it? Yes, it's thick paper, right? Louis Miller, a librarian at the Osher, says the Nuremberg Chronicle contains more than 1 ,800 woodcut illustrations of cities. My question is, how is this a map, though?

4:49So I don't think that the entire book is a map, right? But those views of cities are definitely maps. The illustrations are finely detailed views of buildings within the cities. Miller says a forerunner, if you like, for what we use now. Anything that Google is doing now with Street View, things like that, is borrowing off of a convention that maps have been using for hundreds and hundreds of years. One of the newest maps at the library is a funeral shroud from India that belonged to a member of the Jain religion. It's a pale blue and saffron-colored cosmological map of the entirety of creation and human-divine relationships.

5:31It shows land and rivers and mountains. Edney again. It is stunning. I literally just saw this two minutes after you walked in. We just bought this. We literally just bought it. We just bought this. The Osher Map Library actively searches for and buys maps to add to their teaching collection. And there are some unexpected finds. Edney says he had long coveted one of the Yagi Celestial maps from the late 1900s, but the library was always outbid. Then, one day it showed up. A woman was cleaning out her uncle's house in central North Maine, and it was in the rafters of the breezeway. And she went to the Maine Historical Society, and they said, oh, no, we don't really want this, but you should go to the Ocean Map Library, and voila, we have it.

6:20How did it feel when you saw it? It was gorgeous. It really is. Bishop says you never know when a map is going to appear, from a map dealer, the corner of an attic, a forgotten box. But when it does, it becomes more than a piece of paper. It's an insight into history and cultures, and a glimpse at how people have seen and imagined their world. Jackie Northam, NPR News, Portland.

6:49That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.