I Map, Therefore I Am

Humans have spent collective centuries mastering the art of mapmaking.

There are maps of the body, maps of national borders, maps of roads, and maps of topography. There are maps of the imagination, and maps of the stars. A map appears to be an objective spatial diagram, charting a location for the use of all of its inhabitants alike. While maps certainly can be objective in their structure, the more maps observed, the more this objectivity is thrown into question.

When Native Americans drew maps for explorers they often intentionally left out the sites of hunting grounds and sacred spots. When European kingdoms were racing out into the ocean to discover the unknown world they kept their maps and notes in a locked iron box so that it could be thrown overboard and sunk should their ships fall into the wrong hands. Even today local gems are guarded with an almost religious fervor, so desperate are we to keep them out of the hands of outsiders who will not appreciate them as locals do.

Any map must be selective in that which it maps, as Jorge Luis Borges wryly demonstrates in A Universal History of Infamy:

In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.

A truly objective map would be the size of the world, and so any map must be subjectively parsed to the mapmaker’s needs or desires.

This subjectivity draws attention to another facet of cartography. To create a map is an act of exploration, and when the world is known the mind grows restless and bored. Often the most wonderful restaurant experiences are not those which we’ve found from a map (say a list of the top 10 eateries in NYC), but instead those which we discover and must add to a map ourselves. This is because just as central to being as being found, is the instinct of human curiosity to fill in blanks.

It would seem that every child goes through a phase of wanting to be an Indiana Jones-type explorer or a paleontologist, and it is only when the requirements of adulthood set in, that the need for survival overtakes the need for discovery. But not even adulthood can completely quench the nature of curiosity built into our being.

Look back upon ancient maps when the world was seemingly full of more blank spaces than it is today, and you will find them filled in with griffins, sea serpents, and other mystical beasts. Each blank space is a possibility. Yet, the mind is unable to leave the blank space blank, and so the map maker fills it with mythical creatures just to occupy the space. This impulse shows that a lack of concrete evidence does not stop humans from mapping. Thus, they filled the blank spaces with stories.

Mapmaking is often argued to be older than written language, and a 15,000 year old mammoth tusk found in Ukraine is often considered to be the oldest map left in the world. Yet, to suppose that mapping does not predate this mammoth tusk is to be caught in the world of concretes. To the modern human a map is the rolled up treasure map — or the blue line of Google Maps.

The oldest cave painting in the world is estimated at around 50,000 years old and depicts three human-like figures interacting with a wild boar. Perhaps this does not look like a map by any of our modern standards, but we must remember that a map is subjective.

The Aboriginals of Australia never developed any sort of written culture, and thus they have no written maps. Their maps take the form of stories. This should hardly be surprising. Ask a stranger on the street for directions and it is the rare individual who will pull out pen and paper and draw you a map. Instead, they will point you a direction and say “Take a left at the yellow house then keep going until you see the big oak tree, and your destination won’t be far.”

Instead, they tell a story.

While stories and maps are categorized as two entirely different things within our minds, a cursory glance reveals that a map is simply another medium of storytelling. Or perhaps it reveals that all stories are actually just maps. Maybe they are not always physical maps. Stories of history or memoirs can be understood as temporal maps. Folk tales or religious texts can be understood as cultural maps. Novels can be understood as maps of the imagination or maps of possibilities.

There are few who disagree that humans are a storytelling species. It is stories that have allowed us to survive and to share knowledge through history building upon the wisdom and learning from the mistakes of the past. Yet, perhaps it is just as accurate to define humans as a map-making species. It is seemingly instinctual for us to go out into the world and seek to fill in the blank spaces. If we are able to physically explore them, then the blank space will become a charted map. If not, then it will become a story of speculation. Further still, if there is not space left to explore, we will create new blank spaces just to have one.

Perhaps it is this irrepressible urge — to map, to story — that makes us human. If you don’t know where you are, it becomes impossible to know where you’re going. Once, this was a matter of survival in space; now, in a world where satellites show our every step, the danger is not being lost in space but being lost in time. New maps are needed. Not of streets, but of stories — maps that let us flip through the pages of our own lives and mark, with confidence: I am here.