In our modern day and age, when satellite imagery and GPS services like Google Maps, offer strikingly accurate images of the world, we can easily forget that for most of human history the world was an unknown tabula rasa on which cartographers, scientists, men of god, and kings imprinted their own dreams and ideals. This book explores changing perceptions of the world map through the centuries and across multiple vastly different cultures. We will juxtapose 18th century Buddhist cartography in Japan with European mercantile maps of the same period. We will travel with speculative cartographers and they argue in the scientific academies of Paris, London, and St. Petersburg over theories about what 'must' fill the great unknown. We will observe the emergence of the modern world view through the cartographic lens. We will see how, much like reading a long lost childhood diary, old maps are touching earnest reminders that our former selves' knowledge and perception of the world are rich and limited at the same time.
