History of Land Surveys
Ever since ancient man decided that certain parcel would participate in one tribe and another parcel to another, there's been a need for land surveys. As the technology and method of mediation have definitely are more sophisticated through the years, the basic have to define our boundaries remains. Every major civilization 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 Great Pyramid at Giza, build around 2700 BC, demonstrates their prowess and understanding of surveying techniques. Once 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 Visit this link before other civilizations of their time when it comes to their surveying and irrigation techniques, nowadays we prefer a much more scientific approach to marking boundaries rather than 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 as an official position within the Roman Empire. Daylight Analysis London were called agrimensores, collectively known as Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum and they performed various tasks through the entire 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 a shallow ditch to represent the lines. Texts have been found which date dating back to the first century AD, and some furrows created 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 amount of land they owned, the quality of said land, and specific information regarding each area's resources and peoples. As the breadth of information was impressive for the time, the technical surveying skills were lacking. The maps were not designed to scale and didn't accurately show locations.
It should not surprise one to learn that Napoleon Bonaparte was thinking about proper surveying. When you're attempting to conquer the known world, it helps to possess accurate maps. In 1908 he founded the cadastre, a thorough register of the house of a county, which included ownership details, location as precisely as you possibly can, and as much information regarding the value and usage of the land. In addition, it included maps drawn 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 even 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 by which we measure and record our boundaries and land.
