Is It A Small World, After All? Mind-blowing Facts About The World

Way before any investments were made in things like submarines and cars, people already looked for ways to learn about the things around them. Thanks to that undying curiosity, we now have access to plenty of conveniences. For this article, though, we’ll be focusing on one particular item we almost always need when we go traveling.

Looking At Our Handy-dandy Map

For starters, the oldest map in the world is found in Sippar, Iraq, and is called Imago Mundi. According to Geography Realm, this was presumably used in the 5th Century BCE. Unlike the contemporary maps that many know today, where they are printed on paper and other canvas, this one is formed in a clay tablet. This ancient map shows the Babylonian perspective of our planet and the heavens through their own eyes, placing the Biblical city in the center of the map.

Babylonia was given credit for being the center of the known world then, so it was only natural that they put their geographical location at the center. This particular tablet was excavated at Sippar, which is about 60 kilometers north of historical Babylon. The British Museum acquired it in 1882. Efforts were then made to translate the text the following year. Cuneiform scripts were used inside the circular map. Note that even in olden times, they used maps that were circular, a manifestation of the spherical shape of the Earth, which mankind will discover later on.