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Cartography, or map-making is the study and, often, practice, of crafting representations of the Earth upon a flat surface, and one who makes maps is called a cartographer.
The oldest reference to a map in China comes from the 3rd century BC. This was the event of 227 BC where Crown Prince Dan of Yan had his assassin Jing Ke visit the court of the ruler of the State of Qin, who would become Qin Shi Huang (r. 221–210 BC). Jing Ke was to present the ruler of Qin with a district map painted on a silk scroll, rolled up and held in a case where he hid his assassin's dagger. Handing to him the map of the designated territory was the first diplomatic act of submitting that district to Qin rule. Instead he attempted to kill Qin, an assassination plot that failed. From then on maps are frequently mentioned in Chinese sources.
In 1986, seven ancient Chinese maps were found in an archeological excavation of a Qin State tomb in what is now Fangmatian, Dangchuan Xian, in the vicinity of Tianshui City, Gansu province.
The oldest extant picture that resembles a map was created in the late 7th millennium BC in Anatolia, modern Turkey. This wall painting represents a plan of an early urban area that prospered from trading obsidian.
Whoever visualized the that 'mental map' may have been encouraged by the fact that houses in Anatolia were clustered together and were entered via flat roofs. Therefore, it was normal for the inhabitants to view their city from a bird's eye view. Later civilizations followed the same convention; today, almost all maps are drawn as if we are looking down from the sky instead of from a horizontal or oblique perspective. There are exceptions: one of the ‘quasi-maps' of the Minoan civilization on Crete, the "House of the Admiral" wall painting dating from c. 1600 BC, shows a seaside community in an oblique perspective.
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