What is the world to us? Dennis Cosgrove demystifies the many definitions and perspectives of the world in his essay “mapping the world”. It is made clear from early on that there is an important distinction between the words “world”, “globe” and “earth”. Cosgrove identifies that in our modern day, these terms are interchanged with often no regard to their true meaning. The essay works in chronology to help the reader understand these definitions, their important roles and why they are so easily interchanged today. Cosgrove paints a big picture covering many points of history and aspects of mapping leading to an overall compelling essay.
Once Cosgrove has presented the proper definitions of the terms, he proceeds to seminal maps that shaped human understanding of these terms. It is interesting to see that just like with early writing and symbol making, humans distinguished the difference between their person and the other. In Symbol making, this allowed early humans to alter their surroundings and to “create”. In map making this is taken a step further as the “person” and the “other” are generalized to collectives of people. Through Cosgrove’s studies we can understand that early mapping placed an importance of spirituality. It helped humans visualize what they deemed important, and what they deemed to be …show more content…
This feature is of course more pronounced in religious maps, with their appearances almost resembling mandalas. However even in modern maps depict one sort of centrism or another. Today it is often found as Eurocentric, with the European continent appearing in the middle top of maps. Not only has it become an issue of positioning, but an issue of distortion and delineation. Distortion has altered our perspective of the sizes of our continents, which can change the way cultures feel about themselves and