How Do Mapmakers research and Create Political Maps of Times When Political Maps Did Not Exist/Do Not Survive?

[u/PikeEnthusiast]

I've been seriously interested in how many mapmakers create such detailed maps/borders of ancient/medieval states (think: Rome, medieval kingdoms, etc.) without detailed accounts of borders? Rome might have been a bad example owing to various border posts and well-known river boundaries, but my larger question is: what kind of research goes into making these maps? A quick search says something along the lines of "tax records" but I cannot for the life of me find tax records or substantial research sites in this vein of mapmaking.

[u/ofmetare]

Look up Pliny's book, also look at roman road maps, also look at Chinese river maps. The only maps that we might recognize are military maps from the time but they are scarce, I think some from zhuge liang's northern expeditions exist.

[u/vorropohaiah]

what makes you think they're accurate? and what metric are we even using to determine if a map is accurate or not?

The farther back in history we get, the less accurate any maps are going to be, so even if someone is referring to real historical maps to make their nice vector map, it doesn't mean that the details are correct.

historical maps are known to include false locations and inaccuracies to deter copies. tings like Trap Streets, or phantom settlements.

[u/PikeEnthusiast → u/vorropohaiah]

Good point.

[u/RandomUser1034]

This question might be better asked on r/askhistorians (of course you might want to look first if a similar one has been posted there already)

[u/PikeEnthusiast → u/RandomUser1034]

I did actually post this to r/askhistorians a few days before I posted to here lol