History of Land Surveys

· 2 min read
History of Land Surveys

Ever since ancient man decided that certain piece of land would participate in one tribe and another parcel to another, there has been a dependence on land surveys. As the technology and method of mediation have definitely become more sophisticated through the years, the basic have to define our boundaries remains.  Click for more info  in the history of the world utilized land surveying, some with an increase of sophisticated and accurate results than others.

One of the first types of surveying by mathematical means was by the Egyptians. THE FANTASTIC Pyramid at Giza, build around 2700 BC, demonstrates their prowess and knowledge of surveying techniques. When the Nile overflowed its banks and flooded the plains, the ancient Egyptians redrew boundary lines by using basic geometry. Also, an Egyptian Land register existed as soon as 3000 BC. Though miles ahead of other civilizations of their time in regards to their surveying and irrigation techniques, nowadays we prefer a much more scientific method of marking boundaries instead of declaring "I swear by the fantastic god that's in heaven that the right boundary stone has been setup," when the boundary stones were replaced after the flooding waters of the Nile had receded.

Building upon the example of the Egyptians, the Romans went one step further and established Land Surveyor being an official position within the Roman Empire. They were called agrimensores, collectively referred to as Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum plus they performed various tasks throughout the Empire. These were remarkably thorough and precise in their methodology; they might create straight lines and right angles using simple tools. Once the lines were measured, they would create a furrow or perhaps a shallow ditch to represent the lines. Texts have already been found which date dating back to the initial century AD, and some furrows developed by them still exist today.

In England in 1086, William the Conqueror wrote the Domesday Book, which covered all of England and contained the names of the land owners, the volume of land they owned, the quality of said land, and specific information about each area's resources and peoples. While the breadth of information was impressive for the time, the technical surveying skills were lacking. The maps were not made to scale and did not accurately show locations.

It should not surprise anyone to learn that Napoleon Bonaparte was thinking about proper surveying. If you are attempting to conquer the known world, it helps to have accurate maps. In 1908 he founded the cadastre, a comprehensive register of the house of a county, including ownership details, location as precisely as you possibly can, and as much information about the value and usage of the land. In addition, it included maps attracted to scale both at 1:2500 and 1:1250. The usage of the cadastre spread quickly, but ran into problems in the more sparsely populated and disputed areas, since it needed to be updated each time anything changed. Napoleon felt that the establishment of the cadastre will be his greatest accomplishment in civil law.



Land surveying has even more applications today than in those of our predecessors. As  https://anotepad.com/notes/4q7dbkpa  of recording and preserving our history becomes more sophisticated, so do the means by which we measure and record our boundaries and land.