Days of Yore: Navigation

For millennia, humans have suffered from, or reveled in, wanderlust, that tantalizing pull from the cosmos to travel and see the world. Back in the day (long before my time), it was mainly on foot, sometimes riding horses, camels, chariots, boats and other animals and vehicles. Over the years, people have used a variety of ways to keep track of where they were and how they planned to get where they were going.

Image by Pavel Timofeev on Adobe Stock

The Bible tells of wise men who came from the east to visit the infant Jesus following a star. For centuries before that (and since), people studied the stars, and they used stars and constellations to keep track of where they were. The star the wise men followed led them to Bethlehem. I don't know how they found it with such precision based on the star, but they were the experts. I do know they studied prior to leaving, and asked around during the journey, as the experts on prophecies advised them on the general vicinity, and King Herod tried to get them to rat on Jesus.

As the years went on, explorers set out on ships, camels, horses, wagons and other means to learn more about the planet and find what was out there beyond the horizon. As they learned more, they made maps. Astronomers mapped out the stars as well. Leif Ericson and other Vikings landed in present-day Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland. Columbus tried to find the Indies and landed in the Caribbean (and did some horrible things in the process). Magellan set out from Spain and made it to the what is now the Philippines, where he was killed. His crew was among the first to make it all the way around the globe. Cortez and Pizarro landed in the Americas and caused mayhem and destruction among some of the great peoples there, who themselves had made great strides in astronomy, timekeeping, and other fields. Lewis and Clark made it across the North American continent with the help of Sacajawea and others. Explorers drew up maps and kept journals, and even though those journals often reveal unspeakable things that they did to the people who already lived there, they also included observations on the landscape, the vegetation, the animals, and a lot more. They also often followed the stars. Eventually, the Wright Brothers would invent a plane, and later others got rockets into space, bringing a whole new view of the earth we live on, from above. Neil Armstrong and his crew would land on the moon. More recently, unmanned rovers have landed on Mars and shown us some of the sights there.

In their explorations and travels, people used a variety of kinds of equipment:

• Compass. This was generally based on the magnetic pull of the earth's poles, and the needle pointed toward the north. It helped people to keep track of which direction they were going, or needed to go. The down side was if there was a strong magnet nearby, it could throw the compass off.
• Sextant. This was a device that was used on ships to determine the angle between the earth and the stars or other celestial bodies, which helped to determine latitude and longitude. That's a sextant on the right side of the picture at the top of this post.
• Telescope. This was a long tube with a magnification lens that allowed people to see things at a distance. They were sometimes on stands, but could also be held in the hand (depending on the size...some of the more powerful ones were too massive to hold). They were used both to examine stars, planets and other things in the sky, and to see things that were more earthbound, such as a ship looking for land. Some modern telescopes also include cameras.
• Map. Over the years, these were on papyrus, parchment, stone, paper, and other materials, most recently electronically. They have been used for millennia in various ways.
• Globe. This is a spherical model of the earth, generally with countries, oceans, landmarks and other things marked, sometimes with mountains and such in relief. Though they vary in size, they are often around the size of a basketball. I have a smaller one.
• Atlas. This is a book full of maps. Our atlas when I was little was huge, and sometimes heavy. Named for the Greek titan doomed to hold up the sky and think about what he had done, atlases were a place we could look when researching a place, often arranged by country, state, or whatever the specific focus of that atlas was. [Side note: It seems the Greek gods were big on giving the epically torturous eternal time-outs...Prometheus very uncomfortably tied to a rock (understatement), Atlas with the world literally on his shoulders, Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill only to have it roll back down and have to push it back up, Tantalus being tantalized by the fruit in the tree that he could never quite reach...I mean, they often deserved their punishments, but still...]

Image by Freepik

Growing up, especially when we were in unfamiliar areas, we had to carry a map. They folded up, but once you opened them, they were much larger. Sometimes folding them back up was a challenge! A car trip sometimes looked like the above picture. Best to pull off the road if you needed to consult the map. Of course, the person in the passenger seat could look at the map (partially folded so as not to take up the whole cabin of the car) and tell the driver where to turn next. Sometimes it helped to draw the route in pencil. When asking for directions, people sometimes drew more crude maps on a piece of paper. Alternatively, some people just described how to get there, and hopefully you remember what they told you!

Eventually, GPS came along and (on the whole) simplified things, eliminating the need to pull out a massive map and then struggle to refold it. Of course, GPS (Global Positioning System) can be temperamental at times, and has been known to tell me to turn right onto a stairway (and then not be happy when I opted not to follow its advice that it thought was so sage). It has improved over the years, though. For a while we used GPS units, which were a bit larger than your average cell phone and were relatively expensive. Now I have apps on my phone, and I also have GPS in my car.

Many planes have maps either in their app or on any screens available in the seat backs or ceilings (which are becoming less common). That way you can tell where you are as you fly over. Of course, if it's on the app or website, that generally only works when you aren't ascending or descending and have to have your phone in airplane mode. Friends and family can also sometimes follow your progress on a map on the airline's website if they know the flight number and airline. Air traffic controllers help pilots take off and land safely, and pilots can communicate with each other.

Navigation has changed a lot over the years, and advances in modes of transportation have sped up the process considerably. A journey that once took months or years by boat now takes a few hours by plane. Shorter trips that took hours or days on foot or horseback can take minutes or hours by car. As with so much else, a lot of the navigation part of the journey can now be done on a phone or as an electronic feature in vehicles.