四大古代地图绘制方式：中国、伊斯兰、中世纪欧洲、波利尼西亚

English

A map selects what to show, what to place at the center, and what to leave at the edge. Translating the spherical Earth onto a flat surface, modern cartography uses mathematical projection — a process that inevitably introduces distortion. Ancient cartographic approaches, however, adopted different methods: some emphasized mathematical relations, some symbolic meaning, and some navigational needs. Four approaches — Chinese, Islamic, medieval European, and Polynesian — represent four distinct ways of drawing the world, each shaped by its own purposes, materials, and ways of understanding space.

中文

地图选择展示什么、把什么放在中心、把什么留在边缘。将球形的地球转化为平面图像，现代制图学使用投影方法——这一过程必然包含变形。而古代不同文明的地图绘制方式则采用了各自不同的方法：有的注重数学关系，有的注重象征意义，有的服务于导航需要。四大古代地图绘制方式——中国、伊斯兰、中世纪欧洲、波利尼西亚——代表了绘制世界的四种不同方式，每一种都受到其自身目的、材料和空间理解方式的塑造。

Chinese Cartography: Landscapes and Governance

中国地图绘制：山水与治理

English
Early Chinese cartographic records can be found in the Tribute of Yu chapter of the Book of Documents (c. 5th century BCE), which describes the legendary division of the realm into Nine Provinces following the mythical Yu’s flood-control work. These early maps reflected a vision of “all under heaven” and served the conceptualization of governance, linking geography, administration, and tribute systems.

Pei Xiu (224–271 CE) formulated the “Six Principles of Cartography”: scale, orientation, distance, elevation, gradient, and route straightness. This is among the earliest systematic cartographic theories in any civilization. A distinctive feature of many Chinese maps from earlier periods is their integration with landscape painting. Mountains are drawn as mountain shapes, rivers as flowing lines, and cities as stylized walled enclosures — not as abstract symbols or contour lines. This fusion reflects a conceptual connection between geography and landscape aesthetics. The Zheng He Navigation Charts (c. 15th century) recorded sea routes from Nanjing to the East African coast using “landmark view” representations with compass bearings and distances.

中文
中国早期地图的记载可见于《尚书·禹贡》（约公元前5世纪），其中描述了大禹治水后将天下划分为九州的传说。这些早期地图体现了对“天下”的治理构想，将地理空间、行政与贡赋制度联系起来。

裴秀（224-271年）提出了“制图六体”：分率、准望、道里、高下、方邪、迂直。这是各文明中最早的系统性地图制图学理论之一。许多中国古代地图的一个显著特征是与山水画的融合。山脉被画成山的形状，河流被画成流动的线条，城市被画成程式化的城墙——而不是抽象的符号或等高线。这种融合反映了地理与山水审美之间的概念联系。《郑和航海图》（约15世纪）以“对景图”方式记录了从南京到东非沿岸的航线，标注了罗盘方向与航程。

Islamic Cartography: Science and Sacred Direction

伊斯兰地图绘制：科学与朝向

English
Islamic cartography flourished during the Abbasid period (8th–13th centuries CE), inheriting and developing Greek geographical knowledge, particularly Ptolemy’s Geography. A distinctive requirement of Islamic practice — determining the direction of Mecca (qibla) for daily prayers — stimulated advances in spherical trigonometry and mathematical geography.

Al-Idrisi (1100–1165 CE), working at the Norman court of King Roger II of Sicily, produced the Tabula Rogeriana (1154), a world map that synthesized Islamic, Byzantine, and Norman navigational knowledge. This map, like much Islamic cartography, is oriented with south at the top and north at the bottom — the opposite of modern convention. Another branch of Islamic cartography, the “Balkhi school” world maps, presents land and sea in highly abstracted, geometrically regular patterns, often with Mecca at or near the center. These maps served not as navigational tools but as visual expressions of the Islamic world’s spatial self-understanding.

中文
伊斯兰地图绘制在阿拔斯王朝时期（公元8-13世纪）繁荣，继承并发展了希腊地理学知识，特别是托勒密的《地理学》。伊斯兰实践中的一个特殊需求——确定每日祈祷面向麦加的方向——推动了球面三角学和数学地理学的发展。

阿尔-伊德里西（1100-1165年）在西西里诺曼国王罗杰二世的宫廷中完成了《云游者的娱乐》（1154年），这幅世界地图综合了伊斯兰、拜占庭与诺曼航海者的地理知识。与许多伊斯兰地图一样，这幅图的方向是南在上、北在下——与现代惯例相反。伊斯兰地图绘制的另一个分支——“巴尔希学派”世界地图——以高度抽象化、几何化的规整图案呈现陆地与海洋，麦加常被置于中心或附近。这些地图的功能不是导航，而是伊斯兰世界空间自我理解的视觉表达。

Medieval European Mappa Mundi: Faith in Space

中世纪欧洲地图：空间中的信仰

English
The medieval European mappa mundi (Latin for “cloth of the world”) is best exemplified by the Hereford Mappa Mundi (c. 1300 CE), the largest surviving medieval world map, measuring approximately 1.58 by 1.33 meters. On these maps, Jerusalem is typically placed at the center, and the edges depict biblical scenes such as the Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel, Noah’s Ark, and the Last Judgment. The Earth is often rendered in a T-O form: a T-shaped ocean divides an O-shaped landmass into three continents, traditionally associated with the three sons of Noah.

From a modern geographic accuracy perspective, the Hereford map contains distortions and inaccuracies: continental shapes are simplified, distances are inconsistent, and much information derives from scripture rather than direct observation. However, the map was not intended for navigation. Its purpose was to present a Christian worldview — space, history, and religious narrative unified on a single surface. The center of the map is a center of faith, not a geographic one.

中文
中世纪欧洲世界地图（mappa mundi，拉丁语“世界之布”）以赫里福德地图（约1300年）为最著名的代表，是现存最大的中世纪世界地图，约1.58×1.33米。在这些地图上，耶路撒冷通常被置于中心，边缘或角落绘有伊甸园、巴别塔、诺亚方舟、最后的审判等《圣经》场景。地球常被绘成T-O形：T形的海洋将O形的陆地区域分为三大洲，传统上对应诺亚的三个儿子。

从现代地理精确度的标准来看，赫里福德地图存在失真和不准确之处：大陆形状被简化，距离比例不一致，许多信息来源于经书而非直接观察。然而，这幅地图的本意并非用于导航。它的目的是呈现一种基督教世界观——空间、历史与宗教叙事在同一张表面上被统一呈现。地图的中心是信仰的中心，而非地理的中心。

Polynesian Navigation: Maps in Memory

波利尼西亚航海图：记忆中的地图

English
Polynesian navigators accomplished one of the largest-scale oceanic migrations in human history: from approximately 1500 BCE to 1200 CE, they settled the Polynesian Triangle from the southeastern coast of China to Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island, covering roughly 25 million square kilometers. They did this without writing, without compasses, and without metal tools.

The Marshallese stick chart — a lattice of palm ribs and cowrie shells representing wave refraction and interference patterns between islands — is the most recognizable artifact of this approach, but it served primarily as a teaching tool, not as a map carried on voyages. Actual navigation relied on the navigator’s embodied knowledge stored in memory: memorized rising and setting positions of navigational stars; the direction and rhythm of ocean swells (each island group produces recognizable wave patterns); seasonal wind patterns; and the flight behavior of seabirds returning to land at dusk, indicating the nearest landfall.

This is a map that exists not on paper but in the trained memory of the navigator. In 1976, the Hawaiian double-hulled canoe Hokule’a, navigated using traditional methods under Micronesian master navigator Mau Piailug, successfully sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti without instruments — demonstrating that this non-instrumental navigation is effective under modern observation.

中文
波利尼西亚航海者完成了人类历史上最大规模的海洋迁徙之一：从约公元前1500年至公元1200年，他们逐步定居了从中国东南沿海附近到夏威夷、新西兰、复活节岛的整个波利尼西亚三角区域，跨越约2500万平方公里的海域。他们没有文字、没有指南针、没有任何金属工具。

马绍尔群岛的“棒图”——由椰子叶肋与贝壳制成的网格结构，表示岛屿之间海浪的折射与干涉模式——是这一绘制方式中最知名的实物，但它主要用作教学工具，而非实际航行中携带的地图。真正的导航依赖于航海者存储在记忆中的身体化知识：记忆中的导航星辰升落位置、海浪的方向与节奏（不同岛屿群产生可识别的波浪模式）、季节性的风向规律，以及海鸟在黄昏时返回陆地的飞行行为，指示最近陆地的方向。

这是一种不存在于纸上、而存在于航海者训练有素的记忆中的地图。1976年，夏威夷双体船“霍库雷阿”号使用传统波利尼西亚导航技术（由密克罗尼西亚导航师毛皮艾乌格指导），成功完成了从夏威夷到塔希提的无仪器远航——证明了这种无工具导航在现代观测下依然真实有效。

Four Approaches, Different Paths to Orientation

四种绘制方式，不同的指引路径

English
Placing these four approaches together reveals that, despite arising from different civilizations and different periods, using different materials and symbolic systems, they all served a common purpose: to orient human beings in space and to help them understand their relationship with the world. In the Chinese approach, early maps such as the Tribute of Yu‘s nine provinces reflected a vision of “all under heaven” and its administrative imagination; later maps sometimes merged with landscape painting aesthetics. Islamic maps developed mathematical methods to determine sacred direction and expressed a religious community’s spatial imagination. Medieval European maps embedded geographic knowledge within religious narratives. Polynesian navigation internalized spatial knowledge as memorized practice, dispensing with a physical map altogether.

Modern maps, relying on satellites and GPS, provide precision far beyond any historical map, yet they too embody choices: the projection used, the default convention of north-at-top, and differing interpretations of certain regional divisions. A map is never a pure reflection of the world — it is always a selection, a translation, a construction shaped by the specific needs it was intended to address and the cultural context of its makers.

中文
将这四种绘制方式并置可以看到，尽管它们来自不同的文明、不同的时期，使用不同的材料和符号体系，但它们共同服务于一个目的：为人类在空间中指引方向，帮助他们理解自己与世界的关系。在中国古代绘制方式中，早期地图——如《禹贡》所描述的九州——体现了对“天下”的认知与治理想象；后世地图有时与山水画审美相融合。伊斯兰地图以数学方法确定神圣方向，表达信仰共同体的空间想象。中世纪欧洲地图将地理知识融入宗教叙事。波利尼西亚航海将空间知识化为记忆中的实践，完全摆脱了物理地图。

现代地图依靠卫星和GPS，精度远超任何历史地图，但同样体现着选择：所用的投影方式、默认的“北方在上”惯例，以及对某些地区划分的不同认识。地图从来不是世界的纯粹镜像——它始终是一种选择、一种翻译，一种服务于特定需要、由制作者文化背景塑造的构造。

Four Ancient Mapping Approaches – Chinese, Islamic, Medieval European, Polynesian 四大古代地图绘制方式：中国、伊斯兰、中世纪欧洲、波利尼西亚