(originally developed in cooperation with J. M. Blaut)

David Stea

U. S. International University - Mexico, and

Centro Internacional para la Cultura y el Ambiente

This position statement revolves about the hypothesis that mapping behavior, the making of map-like models, is a cultural universal, an important component of ecological behavior. "Universal mapping" involves a distinct theoretical framework and three categories of supporting evidence -- developmental, prehistoric, and cross-cultural.

Humans must visualize, analyze, describe, and communicate the nature of large environments perceived atomistically, and therefore create material representations depicting environments as if seen as a whole, from overhead. The result is an organized sign system with certain linguistic properties: two syntactic transformations (rotation/projection and scale reduction), and the semantic representation of landscape features as iconic or abstract signs. This concept of maps yields criteria for the identification of maps in culture, history, and behavior.

Many examples of prehistoric imagery, extending to periods earlier than the Neolithic (of both Eastern and Western hemispheres), appear map-like, giving evidence of rotated, scale-reduced, and abstracted depiction of the environment and suggesting that mapping may have represented a form of adaptive behavior among humans for thousands -even tens of thousands- years. While evidence is till more suggestive than definitive, in a few cases, early map-like representations have been identified as depicting real local landscapes. Ethnographic studies, while for the most part not concerned with mapping, have provided evidence that mapping occurs in many contemporary cultures.

Studies of the behavior of very young children, finally, indicate that mapping abilities may play an important role in early development, appearing earlier in the developmental sequence than generally supposed.

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That mapping of the macro environment may be a behavioral or cultural universal suggests, specifically, that (1) humans from early in life -- as soon as they begin to acquire some competence in manipulating the material world of objects and surfaces -- engage in mapping behavior and make maps; (2) maps have been made since very early times, at least since the Upper Paleolithic, and (3) cultures, everywhere -- even those with limited material culture -- make maps in one form or another.

The concept of "map" discussed here is categorically broader than the conventional cartographic product. What is termed a "map" is a 2- or 3-dimensional model of a macro environment (landscape, place), reduced in scale, rotated to an overhead perspective, and semantically marked with meaningful iconic or noniconic signs. Thus the focus goes beyond cognitive maps to a consideration of material maps and of maps as spatio-temporal products, not just spatial abstractions.

The multidisciplinary nature of the research underlying the theoretical aspects of "universal mapping" derives from bringing together highly varied lines of evidence derived from both "basic" and "applied" research. These include:

(1) ontogenetic or developmental data concerning the origins and early development of maplike behavior in very young children; phylogenetic -- that is, historic and prehistoric -- data, about the earliest appearance and early evolution of maplike representations in cultural evolution;

(2) ethnographic or cross-cultural data about mapmaking and map use in the ethnographic present;

(3) possible relationships between natural language acquisition and the acquisition of mapping ability;

(4) and, finally, the application of results obtained in related empirical study to very young learners in the classroom and to grassroots participants in the process of international development. The latter extension of the study of universal mapping includes the interactive effects of gender and social class on demonstrated environmental knowledge and the application of environmental modeling to the process of public participation in various aspects of physical planning.

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The theoretical framework underlying "universal mapping" is fundamentally cultural-ecological. What will be called macro environmental behavior (roughly synonymous with "geographical behavior") forms the starting point for elaborating theory about mapping behavior. macro environmental behavior, markedly though not entirely different from other categories of human behavior, calls in mapping as a specific adaptive mechanism and, crucially, a specific kind of sign behavior.

The human being interacts with an environment that poses three dissimilar situations of action. This is not simply an arbitrary classification of parts of a single continuum; the three situations are quite distinct and the human response pattern to each of the situations is also distinct.

First, there is a marked difference between situations which are essentially social, involving interactions with other human beings, and those which present themselves as essentially material or, broadly speaking, as environmental. Although the categories "social" and "non-social" are not fully separable, and while there is as much a value element in interaction with inert things as there is a material element in interaction with other people, humans behave differently and confront different problems when they act toward or with other humans rather that with material things, large or small.

Second, there is a difference between macro environmental and micro environmental actions. The difference is partly a matter of environmental scale, of the size of the human participants, and of the situations dealt with. Macro-environmental behavior and learning can be termed "place behavior" and "place learning," with micro-environmental behavior and learning termed "object behavior" and "object learning."

Third, in human macro environmental behavior, it is necessary to visualize, analyze, describe, and communicate the complex characteristics of the varied and vast environment within which all humans live, an environment too large and diverse to be perceived from any single terrestrial viewpoint: in cognizing it, learning about it or describing it, humans must "map" it. To produce a map of this kind, a product conveying meaningful ecological information to others, three very specific mapping operations must be performed.

Of these three operations, the first two are syntactic: the environment must be reduced in scale and rotated or projected in perspective to a virtual position more or less overhead. The third is the semantic representation of landscape features and forms as iconic or noniconic signs. The map is thus an organized sign system, a specialized language for ecological behavior.

A map is a two-dimensional depiction or a three-dimensional model of a large environment, in which the environment is seen rotated, reduced, and semantically abstracted. One familiar example is a standard road map. Another less obvious example is the product of children's play on the floor or ground -- individually or cooperatively -- with landscape-like toys.

Emphasizing the role of mapping in ecological behavior yields the following "strong" hypothesis: in all cultures, people make maps. In all cultures, situations must surely arise in which map-making is called for. There is not a prior reason to believe that people of some cultures -- in the ethnographic present or many millennia in the past -- lack or lacked the mental or behavioral abilities required in making, reading, and using maps.

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Instead of starting with "maps" as artifacts, as independent variables with related characteristics of human communities as dependent variable, we propose deriving maps and mapping from the universal needs of human communities. These needs, appearing in early childhood and increasing with maturation, are extremely basic: where food and water are, safe and dangerous places, holy sites, etc. More that just a part of religious ritual, early maps are likely to have been the very substance of survival.

The evidence thus far collected suggests that mapping characterizes a wide range of contemporary cultures -- extending back to perhaps long before the Neolithic. Mapping, then, is not just an historical phenomenon, nor simply the product of literate societies, it is an inherent component of "naive geographies". This position statement suggests that while modes of mapping are themselves learned, mapping has occurred across time, space, and cultures, and that the ability to map, to express cognition of large scale environments in material form from largely aerial perspectives, is indeed a cultural universal.