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00:00I'm going left to my favorite coffee shop, which is the best coffee on the street, then I come
00:10straight back out and I'll call into the paper shop because my friend Casey runs it and we
00:16always have a joke and I come out there, go left, curve down here, big new build place here. I'm
00:23intrigued at what it's going to do to the house prices in the area so I'm always looking to see
00:27how that's going on and then I keep left, cross a bridge which goes over the canal and I'm going
00:33right along here, passing all the boats and then I'm going up right here, go left and there I am,
00:41I'm out into Oxford station and they're in ten minutes and then I'm on my way.
00:45Map making is a basic human instinct. It's one of the ways we make sense of the world around us.
00:53I've been studying and writing about maps for most of my working life. I'm fascinated by the
01:01way they're like windows onto different times and different cultures. The map that I've produced
01:08is absolutely unique to me, it's totally subjective. I'm not interested in what's going on over here,
01:14I haven't filled any of this area out. It's dead to me, I've edited out what I don't want. I'm doing
01:20what map makers tend to do. They offer a specific perspective from their own subjective experience
01:26and the map reflects that. In this series I'm going to explore how maps give an insight into the
01:34political and cultural forces that drive society. Wow. I'm going to dig beneath the surface of some
01:46extraordinary maps to reveal stories of power, plunder and possession.
01:56In this program I'm going back to where map making began. I'll find out what first drove people to create maps
02:05even before they could write and how they then evolved not just to depict the world but also to exert power and authority over it.
02:13I'll discover some of the great scientific advances that made this possible.
02:18And I'll explore how the style of modern maps, which we take for granted as objective, even natural, is nothing of the sort.
02:26Valka Monica in Northern Italy, home to one of the oldest settlements in Europe.
02:45For a map fanatic like me, it's most famous for being the cradle of map making.
03:02The map created here is considered one of the oldest in the world. This is cartography's year zero and it gives us some vital clues as to why people were compelled to make maps before they even learnt how to write.
03:21The map is located high in the eastern Alps near the small village of Bedelina. It has survived for nearly 3,000 years and was only identified by archaeologists 80 years ago.
03:38So here it is. It's extraordinary. And as I look at it, what's really interesting,
04:07is that there's clearly a structure, there's a kind of code, there's a system about what's being represented here.
04:14You can see these rectangles with dots in them represent fields and throughout these lines which appear to represent some notion of the landscape.
04:26There's timber framed houses down here. There's timber framed houses down here. There's the roof and the main body of the house there.
04:34There are stick figures, these warriors. Down here you can see a deer with four clearly marked legs.
04:41And for me it's actually incredibly moving because this is where it all began. This is the beginning of map making.
04:48This is the origin of what I've been thinking about for all this time. It's absolutely breathtaking.
04:54The origins and purpose of the Bedelina map have mystified archaeologists for years.
05:10This is not a geographically accurate map of the area. You couldn't use it to get from A to B. So what was it for?
05:17After analysing rock drawings and using comparative dating techniques, archaeologists now believe it was created by an ancient tribe, the Komuni, at a critical moment in their history.
05:323,000 years ago, the Komuni were pioneering a whole new way of life.
05:353,000 years ago, the Komuni were pioneering a whole new way of life.
05:38Agriculture was replacing the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and creating a more complex social structure.
05:45Archaeologist Alberto Moretta thinks this is the key to unlocking the map's secrets.
05:53We have evidence from rock art and from the archaeology that in Valcamonica there were aristocracies here, some sort of small groups of people controlling the small communities and probably controlling the land.
06:12And do you think that that's important in terms of how they used the map?
06:15I think that this group of people, these aristocracies, are symbolising through the map the possession of the landscape that they had in this part of the valley.
06:34It seems that the tribal elites were using the map to celebrate their ownership of the land.
06:39They draw the map probably to represent not a real landscape but to represent an ideal landscape.
06:52It was some sort of supernatural representation of the landscape as it should be after you and after your sons and after your time has passed on.
07:06So it's a very symbolic image?
07:07Yeah, in some sense it is highly symbolic.
07:12Alberto believes these images of well-ordered fields and plentiful crops were a vision of future prosperity.
07:19The map was designed to bolster the power of the ruling elite by reassuring the community people that life would improve under their leadership.
07:28The map is a fascinating window into an ancient culture.
07:33And it reveals that map-making was bound up with power and politics right from the start.
07:45As ancient societies became more complex, so too did their maps.
07:51Within the next 1,000 years, the Romans were using maps to help them build the greatest empire in the world.
08:00They created maps of their towns, regions, and colonies.
08:09Many have been lost.
08:10This is a copy of one of the few to have survived, and it's quite spectacular.
08:20This is a map of the world in Roman times.
08:32It's the longest map I've ever seen in my entire life.
08:35It stretches all the way from Sri Lanka and India down here in the east.
08:43Right along here to the furthest western point, which shows the southern coast of Great Britain.
08:49It's an absolutely extraordinary map. It's six and a half metres in length.
08:58Scholars actually believe that it was longer and that it's lost about two metres,
09:03which rather tantalising would have given us a much better picture of the British Isles.
09:07Here's Germany, labelled Alemannia, just squeezed into a few centimetres up here on the north coast of Europe.
09:26There's the River Rhine running right along there.
09:29And here's the Mediterranean, like a long, snaky river, running right down there.
09:46And probably the most prominent landmass on the entire map, not surprisingly, is Italy, stretching right down here.
09:54There's Rome, it goes all the way down, you can see the boot, and there's Sicily.
09:59But nothing like we understand it today.
10:05Now what's really striking about looking at this map, with the depiction of Europe, North Africa and Asia,
10:12in this shape, there's no way that this can be an accurate representation of how the Romans saw the world.
10:21The geography is obviously way out, and yet there are some details of astonishing accuracy.
10:27These red lines that crisscross the map are the famous straight Roman roads running across its surface.
10:36And above them are symbols exhibiting the distance between places, in terms of leagues or miles, depending on where you are.
10:44There's a good example of it here, there's Rome, on the red Roman road, the Vatican.
10:51A symbol just above it shows that it's just one mile.
10:55But the map is covered with these kind of symbols.
10:58You have another one here, which shows the distance from Strasbourg, which is shown there, to Mainz there.
11:07And what happens is that the Roman numeral tells you how far you're going from Strasbourg to the next town or village, which is labelled with seven.
11:15The distance here is 18, all the way to Mainz, which is 74 leagues altogether.
11:25Route markings, distances clearly annotated, towns where people could stop off for the night.
11:32These details led to the belief that the map was the equivalent of a modern road atlas.
11:36But just look at this map, it's hardly pocket size, is it?
11:43Can you imagine strapping this to the back of your horse and then hauling it out every time you lost your way?
11:49As a route finder, it's completely impractical.
11:56To understand the purpose of this map, we need to look back to the time when it was created, around 300 AD.
12:02By then, the empire had already been under attack from invading barbarians.
12:09To meet the threat, Rome's armies had expanded and citizens lived in the grip of authoritarian rule.
12:19But the map shows only peace and harmony.
12:23Spa and bath towns are clearly marked all over the map.
12:26So where are the fortifications and garrisons?
12:32And where are the divisions between regions?
12:36This seems to be a land without borders.
12:39In reality, the empire was divided and ruled by four competing leaders.
12:45It's been suggested that this map of the Roman world may have hung behind one of their thrones.
12:50With its remarkable details of roads and distances, this map was designed to give the impression of order and control.
12:59So while the Bedellina map in the Alps promised the people a better world to come,
13:06this map is trying to hide the fact that the power and riches of empire are under threat.
13:11This map glosses over the messy, complex reality of internal tensions and external threats.
13:24Its main message is one of unity, and that made it an incredibly powerful political tool.
13:29By the 12th century, sophisticated map making was an essential tool of imperial power.
13:44And Chinese maps were among the most sophisticated on earth.
13:48I'm going to Pembroke College in Oxford to have a look at one.
13:52It's called the UG2, and it was carved onto a metre-wide stone that was erected in a Chinese schoolyard in 1136.
14:06Remarkably, it has all the hallmarks of a modern map.
14:10It shows the whole empire from an aerial perspective, and the grid lines suggest it's drawn to scale.
14:15But just how accurate is it?
14:20Historian Hilde de Wiert is using a special technique to compare it with a 21st century map.
14:32So we start out by picking a few points on the historical map to map onto the modern map.
14:41So in effect, you're going to overlay an early 12th century map onto the modern map?
14:46That's correct.
14:48We'll pick some places along the coast to start out with.
14:52Typically, we want to pick a place that we know hasn't changed too much.
14:57The first point we'll pick is a prefecture called Taizhou.
15:01We see it here on the historical map.
15:06One by one, Hilde picks out some of the towns and locations that are marked on the historical map.
15:11She then enters their modern coordinates, allowing the map to be positioned against a satellite image.
15:24First of all, it allows you to place a historical map very accurately.
15:32The similarity between the maps is immediately obvious.
15:35You can tell the coastline, the modern coastline, correlates to the coastline as it is depicted on the historical map.
15:46But the really astonishing thing is that the 37 locations chosen by Hilde are remarkably close to their position on the modern map.
15:54Wow, that's extraordinary. So that's an incredibly close fit between the contemporary modern coordinates and the 12th century coordinates.
16:07It is indeed quite striking and we wouldn't be able to do that for a lot of other historical maps.
16:23That's amazing.
16:24We have no record of the surveying techniques used to make this astonishingly accurate map.
16:34And there's a mystery here. For all its accuracy, the UG2 contains a number of glaring geographical errors.
16:41The source of the Yellow River is marked hundreds of kilometres away from its real location.
16:50And here's a river which doesn't even exist.
16:54So what's really going on here?
16:57The answer to this map making mystery can be found in the pages of this historical text.
17:06It's called the Yu Gong. It's a description of the landscape of China during the lifetime of King Yu, a legendary leader from the 21st century BC.
17:16The great Yu was said to have possessed comprehensive knowledge of all of China and it was this book that formed the basis of all Chinese geography.
17:28These writings were greatly revered by the Chinese. It was almost a sacred text.
17:32The name of the 12th century map, Yu Ji Tu, translates as the map of the tracks of Yu.
17:51This reveals its connection with the text of the Yu Gong.
17:54The positioning of the source of the Yellow River isn't the result of a 12th century survey.
17:59It's been mapped according to the words of the Yu Gong.
18:04That's why it's in the wrong place.
18:10And that extra river over here, the Hei Shui or Black River, is referred to in the Yu Gong.
18:16So it was drawn on the map even though it didn't exist.
18:20The map seems to be an attempt to portray an up-to-date image of China without undermining Yu's ancient vision of the Empire.
18:29The 12th century map makers must have known that this information was inaccurate, but the important thing was fidelity to you, not geographical realism or accuracy.
18:43Creating maps with this level of detail required huge resources, and it would be another 400 years before the means were available to fund a national mapping project in England.
19:01In 1539, Henry VIII commissioned a survey of the entire English coastline.
19:16But Henry didn't just want an impressive image of his kingdom, he wanted to defend it.
19:26Local artists were ordered to make sketch maps of the coast.
19:32Their drawings were sent to London, where they were compiled into master maps for the king.
19:37This is one of Henry's maps. It's a giant bird's eye view of the coast, all the way from Exeter, right down to Land's End and Cornwall.
19:55It's a beautiful map and it's a really, really important step in the move towards geographical representation.
20:06You see places in a level of realism that the English had never seen before.
20:12You've got Exeter in bird's eye view, which is quite clear.
20:19You have Plymouth represented here in a way that was completely new.
20:25It's absolutely extraordinary, the colouring, the whole detail.
20:30But this isn't just a beautiful map, it's also an extremely strategic map with a very specific end in mind.
20:37It's about coastal defence and it's about repelling invasions.
20:43And we can tell that by looking at the description of the forts that pepper the entire coastline.
20:49Saying, made, not made, or half made.
20:57So for instance here, we can see a fort which is labelled not made, but it's quite clearly been drawn over the coastal location at a later point.
21:11So probably over several years, Henry looks at the entire scene and he says, this is where I need my coastal fortifications.
21:19Divorce from his Spanish wife, Catherine of Aragon, had led Henry to fear a Spanish invasion.
21:28He wanted to build new forts like this to defend his realm.
21:34To help identify where these defences were needed, the map makers prioritised the most vulnerable places.
21:40Certain areas, particularly inlets and sandy bays, where invading forces could land, are mapped in absolutely minute detail.
21:55Other areas on the map, for instance rocky outlets or cliff tops, where you can't really land a ship, are not really mapped very accurately at all.
22:10It didn't matter to Henry that this map was not exactly to scale.
22:15What mattered to Henry was that he could now sit in London and he could survey this entire coastline and he could decide exactly what he wanted to do with it, where he wanted to put his fortifications.
22:33But the techniques used by Henry's surveyors were evolving rapidly.
22:36In 1544, Henry's forces laid siege to the French town of Boulogne and occupied it.
22:55Two years later, he commissioned a map that would be accurate enough for him to define the limits of his newly conquered territory.
23:02It's a forerunner to the Ordnance Survey maps and we can see that because of the way in which it uses an aerial perspective.
23:11It looks right down onto the land and it also has a detailed scale which we see down here, one inch to a thousand feet.
23:19This was one of the first times that Henry's surveyors attempted an accurate representation of scale on a strategic map.
23:38It's thought they measured distances by pacing them out.
23:41They also used lengths of rope and compasses to check their findings.
23:44It was one of the most accurate maps ever presented to the king.
23:51Henry himself is believed to have marked out in a red line the territory that he wanted for the English.
24:01And it's one of the first times that an English ruler has used a map to draw a political frontier.
24:06Henry had exploited his great power and resources to improve the technical precision and geographical accuracy of his maps.
24:17But there was still a huge obstacle to the accurate measurement and mapping of large areas.
24:26The earth isn't flat like a map. It's a sphere.
24:37Just over a hundred years later, King Louis XIV of France was looking for a way to overcome this problem.
24:43In 1663, he commissioned a map of the whole of France to help consolidate his power.
24:57This building, the Royal Observatory in Paris, was at the heart of his ambitious plans.
25:02When we think of a modern map, we tend to imagine an entirely accurate representation of the world on paper.
25:14The reason I've come here is because this is where that idea was born.
25:21And it happened here because of an extraordinary collision of power, politics and scientific progress.
25:28The Enlightenment.
25:29The leading astronomer at the observatory was Giovanni Domenico Cassini.
25:35He found the solution to the problem of accurately measuring distances across the globe in the science of astronomy.
25:46Mac-makers already knew how to measure latitude, the distance north or south of the equator, by observing the height of the sun.
25:54But a way to measure longitude, the distance east or west of a point, had still to be found.
26:04Thanks to a dramatic increase in the power of telescopic lenses, Cassini found the answer by observing the eclipses of Jupiter's moons.
26:15He timed the eclipses in Paris and then compared this with the time the same eclipses were seen in Brest, 600 kilometres to the west of the city.
26:29The apparent time difference between the two observations was then used to help calculate longitude.
26:37Cassini sent out teams of astronomers to record the timing of the eclipses as they occurred along the French coastline.
26:44This is just a sample of the voluminous correspondence that came back to Cassini here at the observatory by his surveyors spread right over France.
27:02Every location that they went to, they took detailed measurements, feeding those measurements back to Cassini to start to put together an accurate measurement of longitude right across France.
27:14This is a letter from Brest with one of his surveyors assessing the eclipses, giving an exact time at which they took place.
27:21And this kind of precision had never been applied to map making ever before.
27:27Finally, in May 1682, the King's surveyors were able to present him with the first true outline of France.
27:38The coastline was revealed to be astonishingly different from the way it appeared on earlier maps.
27:45France was shown to be 20% smaller than all previous estimates.
27:49Louis was horrified.
27:53Science, said Louis, had cost him more territory than any invading enemy.
28:10The shape of the coastline was now established.
28:14But there was an even greater task ahead,
28:16to map out the whole of the interior of France.
28:22In the mid-18th century,
28:23surveyors arrived here at Chateau de Champs-sur-Marne, just outside Paris.
28:30They'd come to calculate the smaller distances between a series of fixed points in the grounds.
28:35To do this, they used another scientific technique called triangulation.
28:39France was about to be divided into hundreds of carefully measured triangles.
28:43Historian of map making, Daniel Schellstrater, is about to show me how it was done.
28:57In order to create a triangle, first of all, they had to measure the distance of a straight line.
29:06The problem back then was that measuring it was very hard and took a long time.
29:11So they had to find ground that was totally flat, or work for several days stopping and levelling it, which was very difficult.
29:22And the rulers that were used were only four metres long.
29:26Despite these difficulties, a straight line would have to be measured between the two fixed points.
29:34It was called a baseline, and it formed the first side of a triangle.
29:39Standing at one end of the baseline, Daniel is demonstrating how they worked out the rest of the dimensions of the triangle.
29:46So, we want to look over there at the statue, which you can see is at the other end of the line.
30:00And if you look through the lens, you can see that the image is upside down.
30:04And then we look over to the pigeon house through the other lens.
30:07The pigeon house marks the third point of the triangle.
30:13And then the instrument shows you the angle of the corner of the triangle, 75 degrees.
30:21Now the task is repeated at the other end of the baseline, and a second angle is measured.
30:29From this information, the lengths of the other two sides of the triangle can be worked out using the laws of trigonometry.
30:38The operator would take the measurements and then write them down in a notebook.
30:46We're lucky to have an original notebook from these times,
30:50with the name of the operator and observations made on the plane of Paris and Meaux.
30:58So these are the measurements for this exact spot?
31:01Exactly, yes.
31:02So, here is the description. You have a chimney. Here's a reference to the pediment.
31:10And everything that was located would be written down.
31:14And when it was necessary, there are even a few sketches.
31:17Obviously, the secret, the impressiveness of creating these maps, lies in integrating all this information across a whole territory.
31:28It's all thanks to the principle of triangulation.
31:31The dimensions of one triangle were used to create another.
31:38Slowly, a network of triangles was used to calculate accurate distances between places all over France.
31:44This ambitious enterprise would transform the nation.
31:52At that time, France was a collection of diverse regions, each with its own identity.
31:58There were hundreds of French dialects, but now the whole country was slowly being brought together in one map.
32:07The Carte de Cassini was finally completed in 1789, by which time Louis XVI was on the throne.
32:22Over 120 years, four generations of the Cassini family had devoted their lives to mapping France.
32:32This is the Carte de Cassini, and it's the first time I've actually seen it.
32:36And what strikes me, of course, as I open it, is this isn't just a map, it's a book of maps.
32:42And this is the map of France.
32:45Down the left-hand side, table of longitude and latitude.
32:52You look at the map itself, and it's a series of squares created from the triangulation process.
33:01Here it is, the whole French nation, mapped in exact scientific detail.
33:11And if we turn to the map of Paris, we can see all the regions of Paris mapped.
33:18You can see the centre here, and that's where we are, down here on the observatory, just there.
33:27And it goes right through the entire country.
33:32Page after page are of different areas of France, but the way in which they're being portrayed is exactly the same.
33:40All the symbols, all the signs, are standardised.
33:47The symbols for forests.
33:51The symbols for rivers.
33:54The symbols for towns.
33:55The symbols for towns.
33:57And what's also significant here is the fact that the language is also being standardised.
34:15This is Parisian French.
34:17Page after page is using the same kind of language.
34:20Standardising the language, standardising the map.
34:24The scale is also exactly the same.
34:34Down here, the scale bar, which tells you exactly the scale that's being used on this map.
34:40It's actually 1 to 86,400.
34:43It is that precise.
34:45And it's staggering.
34:48To look at this is absolutely amazing.
34:51This is standardisation, but it's beautiful standardisation.
34:54These are maps for the king.
34:56It wants to look beautiful as well as being precise.
35:02But the map made to serve the king was about to become a tool of revolution.
35:06On the 14th of July, just as the finishing touches were being made to the map,
35:20the revolutionary mob was storming the Bastille.
35:25Two days later, they invaded the Paris Observatory.
35:28The new regime claimed the carte de Cassini as national property.
35:40They used it to help carry out their sweeping administrative reforms.
35:44This was the map on which the boundaries of the new departments were drawn,
35:48the regional administrative units still used today.
35:58The carte de Cassini would have an even greater legacy.
36:14It would help forge a powerful new national identity.
36:19For the very first time in history,
36:21here was a map which centralised and standardised an image of the nation, of France.
36:27It allowed all kinds of regional variations to be subsumed into one nation-state image,
36:33the map of Cassini.
36:35People could identify, despite their regional variations,
36:39right across this map, even with people that they'd never even meet.
36:42It was an image of a unified nation-state,
36:46even at the time that the country was being torn apart by the revolutionary terror.
36:57This triumph of science and enlightenment had become a potent political tool.
37:02This was France as these revolutionary nation-builders wanted it to be.
37:08One language, one nation, one map.
37:13While the French reuniting around their new national map,
37:30the British, with their expanding overseas empire, were charting the oceans.
37:35Captain James Cook was one of Britain's pioneering explorers and navigators.
37:43In August 1768, he embarked on an epic voyage bound for the Pacific.
37:48The latest scientific inventions gave Cook's maps a new kind of authority,
38:00and the power to lay claim to the territory they depicted.
38:03Cook's mastery of science and navigation confirmed him as a great hero and genius of the Age of Enlightenment.
38:13But on the island of Tahiti, Cook met his match in a local navigator called Topaya,
38:23who'd never even drawn a map in his life.
38:34Topaya could sail across the Pacific, a third of the Earth's surface,
38:38without the use of paper maps.
38:41This went against all Cook's training and experience.
38:44He was so intrigued that he asked Topaya to draw a chart of the ocean,
38:49showing the location of all the islands that he knew.
38:52This is a copy of the map Cook encouraged Topaya to create.
39:00The sheer scale of Topaya's knowledge shown on this map is absolutely astonishing.
39:0574 islands, half of which weren't actually even mapped by the Westerners,
39:10but here they are being shown by Topaya.
39:14Cook wrote in his journal that Topaya knew more of the geography of the islands
39:18situated in these seas than anyone he'd ever met.
39:22He said that any ship would be better off with Topaya aboard.
39:26Tahihari Pariente is one of Topaya's descendants.
39:32A Polynesian navigator himself, he studied the techniques used by his ancestors.
39:37The navigator had knowledge over the stars, had knowledge about climate,
39:42he had knowledge about how the time would go by in a year,
39:47so the difference between seasons.
39:49I mean, there is no Polynesian culture without navigation.
39:52We're islanders, so we hop from islands to islands.
39:56For 3,000 years, the Polynesians had been exploring and colonising the islands of the Pacific.
40:04They'd even reached America at least a century before Columbus.
40:08Topaya was drawing on ancestral knowledge passed down through countless generations.
40:15When you get out from an island until it disappears behind the horizon,
40:20you use the island as a bearing, so then you start using the stars.
40:25But then, you don't have stars all the time.
40:28You have clouds, you have rain.
40:29Then you use the wave patterns in the ocean.
40:32Then you pull out the certain fish.
40:34They know this fish only comes that far away from the islands, or that kind of birds.
40:40They know how far away they can fly.
40:43So you have to understand what's around you.
40:48When Topaya drew his map, he was encouraged to place his knowledge within a Western framework.
40:53But on closer inspection, it reveals a Polynesian perspective.
40:57Even the way of indicating direction is different.
41:00All the Western maps here are North-South.
41:07The one thing you see on every map is North.
41:10We didn't really care about the North.
41:12We only cared about the West, because that's where everything goes.
41:16That's where the sun goes down.
41:18That's where the stars go down.
41:19That's where the wind blows.
41:23This map is the result of the clash, isn't it, between two different ways of navigating.
41:27There's a Polynesian way of navigating, and there's the Western method that Cook uses.
41:32And they're, in a sense, colliding with each other.
41:34They both work, but you can't really put them together, can you?
41:38No.
41:39The Polynesian set of mine is totally opposite to the Western one.
41:44We don't go anywhere.
41:45We stay where we are, and the island comes to you, or your destination comes to you.
41:50So in Western navigation, we go to the island, but in Polynesian traditions, the island comes to you.
41:56You don't move.
41:57You don't move.
41:58The canoe don't move.
41:59It's your center.
42:00It's where you are.
42:01And if we look at this map, what's particularly significant about it?
42:06The scale, for example, on the map is not related maybe to the distance of the real scale of the geographic place,
42:14but maybe related to the importance of the place.
42:18Like Rotuma is drawn really big, but it does echo in a lot of legends and myths and stories.
42:26So it is big in history, not in width or height.
42:31It's like a code.
42:33If you don't have the key, you won't understand the message.
42:38Topaya's map is an extraordinary document.
42:41And not only for what it shows about Topaya's deeply ingrained knowledge of the Pacific Islands.
42:48Despite the great scientific leaps forward in the West,
42:51Topaya's map shows us that other cultures had different but equally effective ways
42:57of navigating their way across the Earth's surface.
43:17Back in England, the drive to make maps with greater scientific accuracy
43:20was proceeding with military efficiency.
43:26In 1784, here on Hounslow Heath,
43:29the army was taking up the challenge of mapping Britain
43:31under the leadership of Major General William Roy.
43:38Roy would use the same technique of triangulation as the French,
43:41so the accuracy of his map depended on the accurate measurement of a baseline.
43:45General Roy was on Hounslow Heath here, taking a measurement, a very precise measurement,
43:57which would be the basis of the survey that they would do to cover the whole of the country.
44:02So they only need the one line to begin with?
44:04Critically, yes, the distances which were calculated across the country were based on this one measurement at the start.
44:14To reduce the risk of error, Roy had to measure a straight line at least eight kilometres long.
44:20The line was actually roughly measured with a chain similar to this.
44:26This one is only a 20-metre chain. The one that Roy had was a 100-foot chain.
44:32It weighed about 18 pounds, and you had five men to actually use it.
44:37So five people will be dragging this out rather than just the two of us?
44:41Yes, pulling this 27,000 feet.
44:43OK.
44:44Let's see if we can unravel it without getting some kinks in it.
44:49OK. What do we do with kinks?
44:51We have to get rid of them.
44:53Oh, dear.
44:54So we'll have to... That's better. It's looking better.
44:56OK.
44:57That's right. Set your end of the chain against the marker point.
45:06Yeah.
45:07And then you would come to this point, and we would proceed along the baseline.
45:12OK.
45:13OK, Gerry.
45:14With the real chain, soldiers would have repeated the process nearly 300 times to establish the path of the baseline.
45:22OK, that's about right. I can see my point behind you.
45:26You are online, so if you could mark the spot, please.
45:29OK.
45:31Roy then used 20-foot wooden poles to make a more accurate measurement.
45:35But in the British climate, wood proved to be an unreliable tool.
45:39On wet days, it expanded. On dry days, it shrank.
45:45Roy came up with a new solution, a set of glass rods mounted on tripods.
45:51To advance across the base, they would have then set up another tripod, and they would have inserted another piece of glass and butted it to the end of this one here.
46:01And then they would have just kept moving across the base.
46:04So it's the same principle as with the chains, but it's just more accurate?
46:07That is correct, yes.
46:09The glass was much more stable than the wooden rods were.
46:14They didn't go out of true in the same way, and they could have confidence that their measurement across this base was much better,
46:22and the precision that they were looking for.
46:27The measurement of the all-important base line took over four months to complete.
46:32The same line formed the basis of the first British Ordnance Survey Map,
46:42which covered the area all the way from London to the south coast in Kent.
46:47A memorial to William Roy's work can still be found at the end of his historic line.
47:02It's rather weird to find this strange monument to our nation's mapping heritage, here at the end of a suburban cul-de-sac on the outskirts of London.
47:17The upended canon reminds us of the Ordnance Survey's origins in the military.
47:22And here is Platt commemorating the achievements of Major General William Roy.
47:29And it describes the fact that he conceived the idea of carrying out the triangulation of this country,
47:35and of constructing a complete and accurate map, and therefore laid the foundation of the Ordnance Survey.
47:43And it also describes the measurement of the base line between Kings Arbour and Hampton Poorhouse,
47:50as measured by Roy, 27,404.01 feet, which is just over eight kilometres.
47:58We now know that that's only about three inches out. Not bad going, really.
48:09Thanks to William Roy's vision and determination,
48:11the whole of Britain would be mapped using some of the most accurate measurements on Earth.
48:20By the early 20th century, the surveying of the rest of the world was underway.
48:36And just like Britain and France, each nation took a different approach to the task.
48:41As a result, there was a bewildering range of map-making styles using different scales, symbols and languages.
48:56But a bold new initiative set out to create a map that could be understood by everyone.
49:02It was called the International Map of the World.
49:08International because each country would create a map of its individual territory according to agreed standards.
49:15There would be two and a half thousand maps, and when they were all put together, they would depict the entire world.
49:21At a conference in Paris in 1913, 34 nations agreed to create a comprehensive series of regional maps on a universal scale of one to a million.
49:33They would be known as the millionth maps.
49:36This is the millionth map of the south coast of England.
49:42This one shows northwestern America around San Francisco.
49:49Both these maps look rather different, and that's mainly because of the varying terrain that they both show.
49:56But there are also many similarities.
49:58Greenwich is the prime meridian, and relief is marked by contour lines, whose height is all measured in metres.
50:06The colours are also completely standardised here, so the roads are all in red, the railways are in black.
50:14And of course, the scale on this map is one to a million.
50:19Each country would adopt the same set of standards in the spirit of international cooperation.
50:26The combined result would be a standardised map of the world that was intended to transcend national differences.
50:37But not every nation had the power and resources needed to send surveyors into the unmapped territories of the world.
50:47This shows the areas mapped according to the principles and the standards of the international map of the world by the mid-1920s.
50:54It's a fascinating snapshot of the world at that time, and not only because it shows where had been mapped, but also by whom.
51:02All these areas in Africa, which at the time are under French colonial rule, Morocco, Algeria, Niger, Chad, are all mapped by the French.
51:13Over in Indonesia, Dutch dominions here are mapped by the Dutch.
51:19The British Empire, marked on the map here as GB, is also mapping its own imperial territories.
51:27Most of India here is mapped by GB.
51:30Whole parts of East Africa, Southern Africa, and also parts of the Middle East.
51:36Despite the project's best intentions, the millionth maps were being used to further the imperial interests of the West.
51:49By the outbreak of World War One, the project's original spirit of international cooperation was fading away.
51:55Far from transcending national differences, the international map of the world became an extension of them.
52:04Up to 40% of all the developing world's national borders were defined and mapped by the British or the French.
52:25Flushed with victory after the First World War, they would use maps to consolidate their power in the Middle East.
52:37For centuries, the region between Mesopotamia and Saudi Arabia had been a land without fixed frontiers, as this British Army map from 1907 illustrates.
52:47This is a map without divisions and boundaries.
52:52What it shows is the movement of nomadic Arab tribespeople across this whole region.
52:58So if you look down here in the bottom left-hand corner, you have the Shemar.
53:01This is generally their region.
53:03But they're also described as wintering up here.
53:06So this is the movement of peoples being shown in a very fluid way, without any linear boundaries imposing restrictions upon them.
53:17I belong to the Shemar tribe, and the region of North Arabia was predominantly populated by nomadic tribes with their own territories.
53:34But these territories, we cannot describe them as rigid or fixed.
53:39They had fluctuating boundaries.
53:41These tribal groups would travel all the way up to the north in search of pasture,
53:46and water.
53:47But in the very, very hot months, they would actually retreat either near Oasis or go even further to a cooler climate.
53:56So migration in that part of the world was a common feature of life.
54:03Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, the victorious European powers decreed that a new nation-state was to be carved out of Mesopotamia.
54:14It would be called Iraq.
54:21The border between Iraq and Saudi Arabia was decided by two men at a conference in 1922.
54:31Sir Percy Cox of the British Colonial Office had an uncompromising approach.
54:36He wanted to draw lines straight through the desert.
54:39For Ibn Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia, this was an alien concept.
54:46Ibn Saud argued that to impose linear boundaries upon his tribe's people was completely unsuitable,
54:55because it didn't work for the way in which they moved and they transmigrated across this whole space.
55:01What he suggested instead was to keep the boundaries fluid and to keep them open.
55:07This idea of making a map to reflect fluidity and openness was mocked by the British.
55:14This is an eyewitness account written about the conference by one of the translators.
55:20At a private meeting at which only Sir Percy Ibn Saud and I were present,
55:26he lost all patience over what he called the childish attitude of Ibn Saud in his tribal boundary idea.
55:34It was astonishing to see Ibn Saud being reprimanded like a naughty schoolboy by His Majesty's High Commissioner,
55:41and being told sharply that he, Sir Percy Cox, would himself decide on the type and general line of the frontier.
55:50Sir Percy took a red pencil and very carefully drew in on the map of Arabia a boundary line.
56:04So from that moment, this local tribal population, brothers, lineages or clans would find themselves divided.
56:12Some of them would be part of Saudi Arabia, others would have become Iraqis,
56:16and yet another branch would have become Kuwaitis.
56:19And they could not continue as animal herders, and therefore the animal economy collapsed,
56:25because nomadism was definitely based on the seasonal migration.
56:29So economically, yes, the region was affected.
56:33But in addition, networks of hospitality, of trust and solidarity, all that had to vanish.
56:46The precision of Enlightenment science had combined with the rule of empire
56:50to make a map with the power to destroy an ancient way of life.
56:54Map makers throughout history have created wonderful windows on the world.
57:03And Western science has provided the tools to make modern maps more accurate than ever before.
57:10But the mapping of Iraq is a stark reminder that maps can also be devastating tools of political power.
57:16And we are still living with the consequences to this day.
57:20In the next programme, maps show the way to heaven, provoke prejudice, and bend the world out of shape.
57:34Maps, power, plunder, and possession continues next week at the later time of 11 o'clock.
57:45And we're examining the beauty of maps here on BBC HD this week, starting at half past eight tomorrow.
57:51Next tonight, off around the world with Simon Reeve and Tropic of Cancer.
57:56Onok