The ancient Greek thinker Anaximander lent his prodigious talents to pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, geography, geometry, and cosmology.

This story appears in the July 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine ... He decided that a magnificent gift—a lavish map of the world—might maneuver him into the new king’s good ...

which evolved into today’s National Geographic Maps. As in the past, our cartographers continue to illustrate the world around us through the art and science of mapmaking. We adhere to this long ...

Maps could show us the world in all new ways ... the way to create the golden era of what we now call “geographic information systems” (GIS), was what better could get us.