They neither
had computer nor paper.
They did have clay..
 Eskimos of the Canadian
Arctic to the Bedwin tribesmen of the Arabian desert had
an almost inborn skill to produce rough but quite
accurate sketches on pieces of skin or in the sand,
indicating the positions and distances of the localities
known to them. From Assyria, a clay tablet with a map of
part of northern Mesopotamia (c. 500 B.C.) and from
Babylonia, a much later presentation of the known world
shown as a circle surrounded by the sea and heavenly
bodies were discovered. In the 6th century B. C., the
construction of the first Greek map is ascribed to
Anaximander.
 The
idea that the earth was a sphere, and not a flat disc,
was first advanced by philosophers of Pythagoras’
school, and brought to general attention through the
writings of Plato. The first reference inWestern
literature to a map occurs in Herodotus’ account of the
interview between Aristagorous, tyrant of Miletus, and
the Spartans. Eratosthenes established an initial
meridian to provide a fixed frame work for the world
map. M.Vipsanius Agrippa, son-in-law of Emperor
Augustus, executed the most famous Roman map, the ‘Orbis
terrarum’, or ‘survey of the world’ in 12 B.C.
In South Asia, the role of old documents,
especially literature had its significant contribution
in providing themes on mapping. The thematic maps,
presenting various historical incidents such as the
expansion of empires etc. consisted of definite thematic
sources. In ‘A Historical Atlas of India’, edited by
Joseph E. Scwartzberg a number of such historical
thematic sources of mapping are mentioned. The reference
to the ‘Madhyama Dis’ (middle region) in the literatures
of the pre-Mauryan age (8th-6th century B.C.) proves the
development of geography in South Asia. Panini (5th-4th
century B.C.), in his illustrations of grammatical
rules, referred to identifiable people as places which
should not be construed as demonstrating his full
knowledge of South Asian geography. Kautilya in his
‘Arthasastra’ (4th century B.C.) mentioned his concept
about the earth which, as translated by R. P. Kangle,
states: ‘Place means the earth’. In that, the region of
the sovereign ruler extends northwards between the
Himavat and the sea: ‘1000 yojanas in extent across’.
Strabo, Pliny, Arrian et al. compiled a map of India as
known to the early Greeks, based on ‘Indika’ of
Megasthenes (4th century B.C.), where the boundaries and
extent of India were mentioned.
The
‘Mahabharata’ is the first among the Sanskrit literary
sources that has a separate section devoted to the
geography of the Indian subcontinent and its adjacent
countries in central Asia. This section, the
‘Jambukhandanirmana-Parva’, begins with the major
mountain systems of India, followed by a catalogue of
rivers and concludes with a more detailed enumeration of
the ‘janapadas’ (people’s domains). Probable ethnic
distribution and geographic knowledge are derivable from
the generally scanty references in the Vedic texts,
which apply to a period from about the middle of the
second millennium B.C. to roughly 600 B.C. In the Rig
Veda, ‘Nadi Stuti’ (River Hymn) enumerates most of the
31 rivers of South Asia. Religious and spiritual ferment
persisted throughout the lives and teachings of the
Buddha, of Mahavira and of the other teachers of the 6th
century B.C. In the process, it moulded cosmological
theories and consequently, geographical thinking. The
chart postulating a symmetrical four-continental earth
(Catur-Dvipa Vasumati) probably represents the oldest
formal cosmography in India, formulated in ancient
Brahmanical times and enduring into the Buddhist period.
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