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Medieval maps in Europe were mainly symbolic in form along the lines of the much earlier Babylonian World Map. Known as Mappa Mundi (cloth of the world) these maps were circular or symmetrical cosmological diagrams representing the earth's single land mass as disk-shaped and surrounded by ocean.
Roger Bacon's investigations of map projections and the appearance of portolano and then portolan charts for plying the European trade routes were rare innovations of the period.
In the Renaissance, with the rediscovery of classical works, maps became more like surveys once again, while the discovery of the Americas by Europeans and the subsequent effort to control and divide those lands revived interest in scientific mapping methods. Peter Whitfield, the author of several books on the history of maps, credits European mapmaking as a factor in the global spread of western power.
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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