In Mesopotamia, in modern day Iraq, ancient clay tablets dating back as far as the 3rd century BC have been found depicting estates and, at times, cities such as Nippur, south of Babylon, with marking for irrigation channels, a river and estate boundaries. These tablets are title deeds for an urbanizing world. A clay tablet dated about 600 BC has a world map with Babylon and the Euphrates near its centre. The Nazca lines in Peru in South America have also been variously associated with irrigation and celestial maps. By contrast, there are few maps from Ancient Egypt with those that relate to the maintenance of the boundaries of properties after the annual Nile floods. However, the Turin papyrus map dating from about the 12th century BC was used for those on quarrying expeditions and contains topographical features such as mountains, wells and road networks.

At a much later date, in The Middle Ages, remarkably accurate sea charts, called ortolans, were used with the magnetic compass, which was not invented in Europe until the latter part of the 12th century. These sea charts were all created in the same way from vellum from goats or sheep skin. Further, they were rectangular with the neck skin of the animal still attached. They also all had line drawings in coloured ink. The charts basically consisted of a network of line drawings, with the cartographer drawing a hidden circle around a central point and then vertical and horizontal lines through the centre.