Cartography has absolutely nothing to do with cars or with toggling. Instead, it is an art in more ways than one. Cartography is ancient and has become somewhat obsolete in the face of modern technology and the Internet. It's the practice and study of mapmaking.

Now when you think about maps, the first thing that likely pops into your head is a treasure map, like those used by swashbuckling pirates in search of buried goods or J.R.R. Tolkien's intrepid Bilbo Baggins inThe Hobbit. Many movies and novels use the notion of treasure maps in their plots.

They certainly make for compelling narrative devices. Unfortunately, there is scant historical evidence to suggest pirates regularly buried treasure or drew up maps to find their booty.

Related: 6 Fascinating, Mythical Places That Most Likely Never Existed

In fact, the man largely responsible for the birth of the pirate treasure map device was also the author of one of the greatest pirate adventures. A tattered map features prominently in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. And Stevenson was not just an author; he was also an amateur cartographer. After spending a summer with his wife and stepson in Napa Valley at an abandoned mine, Stevenson began creating maps depicting fictional lands. It was this engrossing pastime which led to the making of his famed novel of Long John Silver and other pirates.

But how old is cartography, the art of making maps? Very old–so old that no one is exactly certain when the first map was made. The word "cartography" itself comes from two Greek words meaning "papyrus" and "write." In fact, the ancient Greeks are considered to be the people who made geographical cartography more mathematical and less artistic. The oldest Greek known to have made a world map was a man named Anaximander. In the sixth century BC, Anaximander made a map of the whole world known to the ancients that showed the earth as a cylinder.

How Cartography Shaped Our History and the World

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