History of Land Surveys

Ever since ancient man decided that certain piece of land would participate in one tribe and another piece of land to another, there has been a dependence on land surveys. While the technology and method of mediation have definitely become more sophisticated over the years, the basic have to define our boundaries remains. Every major civilization in the annals of the planet utilized land surveying, some with an increase of sophisticated and accurate results than others.

One of the first examples of surveying by mathematical means was by the Egyptians. The Great Pyramid at Giza, build around 2700 BC, demonstrates their prowess and understanding of surveying techniques. When the Nile overflowed its banks and flooded the plains, the ancient Egyptians redrew boundary lines through the use of basic geometry. Also, an Egyptian Land register existed as soon as 3000 BC. Though miles before other civilizations of their time when it comes to their surveying and irrigation techniques, nowadays we prefer a more scientific approach to marking boundaries instead of declaring "I swear by the fantastic god that is in heaven that the proper boundary stone has been setup," when the boundary stones were replaced following 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. These were called agrimensores, collectively known 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 might create a furrow or a shallow ditch to represent the lines. Texts have already been found which date dating back to the first century AD, and some furrows created by them still exist today.

In https://castlesurveys.co.uk/ in 1086, William the Conqueror wrote the Domesday Book, which covered all of England and contained the names of the land owners, the number of land they owned, the caliber of said land, and specific information about each area's resources and peoples. As the breadth of information was impressive for enough time, the technical surveying skills were lacking. The maps were not designed to scale and did not accurately show locations.

It should not surprise anyone to learn that Napoleon Bonaparte was thinking about proper surveying. When you're trying to conquer the known world, it helps to possess accurate maps. In 1908 he founded the cadastre, a comprehensive register of the house of a county, including ownership details, location as precisely as possible, and as much information about the value and using 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 and every time anything changed. Napoleon felt that the establishment of the cadastre would be his greatest accomplishment in civil law.

Land surveying has a lot more applications today than in those of our predecessors. As our method of recording and preserving our history becomes more sophisticated, so do the means where we measure and record our boundaries and land.

Edit
Pub: 27 Nov 2023 07:39 UTC
Views: 95