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FEATURE Ñ Map makers put planet in perspective

Lyndsay Griffiths

LONDON: Armed with shells and satellites, silk and skins, map makers have spent 2,000 years trying to turn a flat page into a 3-D picture of the world.

Now theyÕve done it Ñ and the results are breath-taking.

Mountains jump from the page.

Ridges slice the air.

Valleys sink deep into the soil and volcanoes all but explode before your eyes.

So accurate they are used by the U.S. government, the revolutionary maps are a culmination of work that began with a simple clay tablet in 2300 BC.

The tablet was discovered at Nuzi, in todayÕs Iraq, and depicts a stream cutting through a valley nestled between two mountain ranges. The mountains appear to be viewed from the land below Ñ a crude start perhaps, but nonetheless the worldÕs first known three-dimensional map.

"Whether from military necessity or unbrat charts the map makerÕs endeavours.

TAKE SOME SHELLS, ADD A COCONUT Ñ AND NAVIGATE

"Infinite Perspectives: Two Thousand Years of Three-Dimensional Mapmaking" was written by brothers Brian and Jeffrey Ambroziak, whose dazzling computer-based technology is now used by the U.S. Defence Department and NASA.

Early maps had focussed on distance and direction without regard to elevation. Then human ingenuity kicked in.

Native Americans helped U.S. explorers map the wildest corners of the Wild West with crude drawings on animal skin; stick scratches snaked in the dirt like rivers and small mounds of earth piled up for mountains.

Marshall islanders made their primitive charts with shells, representing the scattered islands of their Pacific neighbourhood, tied together with coconut fibre.

The fibres represented swells and wave masses, or measured distances between islands, and once spread flat upon boat decks, allowed for navigation.

"The charts of the primitive Marshall Islanders are without parallel in the entire history of cartography," said the Ambroziaks in their book, due for publication later this month.

TURN LEFT FOR PARADISE

But exploration was not the only force and by the Middle Ages, it was theology that dictated mapping.

"The late mediaeval mind viewed the highest elevations as either boundaries between the physical and the spiritual or places of enlightenment," said the Ambroziaks.

Maps were routinely divided into three sectors to reflect the biblical division of the world into three parts, one for each son of Noah. Europe lived in the bottom left, Africa took the lower right, the East sat on high and Paradise always stood at the centre top.

Monks, for they were the cartographers of the day, depicted mountains as crude molehills: regular domes that poke out of the page like individual humps rather than huge mountain ranges.

MAPS TURN ARTY AS DA VINCI GETS TO WORK

Indeed, it wasnÕt until the Renaissance that map makers established what would become an enduring link between art and cartography, when "for the first time, form became an indispensable part of geographic delineation".

Coarse molehills gave way to evocative renditions of the landscape, as Renaissance greats such as Leonardo da Vinci created "a synthesis of science and imagination".

Yet it was military men, not painters or monks, who mapped new frontiers Ñ U.S. Army men invented contours Ñ with many of historyÕs greatest relief maps created by armed forces.

Take a 1775 map of the U.S. East Coast, the earliest battle plan of the revolutionary war, that depicts the road from Boston to Concord along with key battle sites.

MAP MAKERS TRAIN THEIR MOUSE ON MARS

Yet the old military maps are like doodles when compared to the brothersÕ dazzling new computer creations.

The "Ambroziak Infinite Perspective Projection (AIPP)" combines the binocular processing power of the human mind with the capabilities of modern computers to create true 3-D images.

The maps, which come to life only through 3-D glasses, guide readers over the craggy volcanoes on Mars, down the deep ravines of the Grand Canyon and up the steep slopes of San Francisco.

To the eye, the landscape juts out like a living object Ñ and then flattens instantly under touch.

"Whether planning transportation routes, studying geological formations, allowing pilots to view unfamiliar terrain or prepping search-and-rescue teams, the AIPP is yielding dividends undreamed of even a year ago," say the brothers in conclusion. "With each new application, we find ourselves confronting challenges and pushing the envelopes of both art and science."