0:00:09 > 0:00:13These are revolutionary times for maps.
0:00:15 > 0:00:21They're being transformed by 21st-century technology.
0:00:21 > 0:00:26In the past, it could take hundreds of years to make a map.
0:00:26 > 0:00:32Now photo-real digital images can be made in hours and updated every week to create a virtual world of maps.
0:00:35 > 0:00:39They seem to present a completely accurate, objective image of the world,
0:00:39 > 0:00:43the triumphant culmination of thousands of years of map-making.
0:00:46 > 0:00:49But from the Christian vision of the Middle Ages...
0:00:50 > 0:00:54..to the elaborate symbolism of the Aztecs...
0:00:55 > 0:00:58..and from the Victorian obsession with statistics
0:00:58 > 0:01:00to Nazi propaganda...
0:01:02 > 0:01:05..history reveals that maps are shaped by the beliefs,
0:01:05 > 0:01:10rituals and prejudices of the people who make them.
0:01:10 > 0:01:13Maps have always done more than just accurately represent the world.
0:01:13 > 0:01:16And that's what really excites me about them -
0:01:16 > 0:01:18they are unique windows onto past ages,
0:01:18 > 0:01:22full of passions and anxieties of the people that made them.
0:01:22 > 0:01:26And if we scratch beneath their surface, we begin to understand
0:01:26 > 0:01:30how different cultures, different societies, have used those maps to define their faith,
0:01:30 > 0:01:37to understand their environment, to impose order and structure on their teeming, chaotic worlds.
0:01:53 > 0:01:559th October, 1943.
0:01:55 > 0:01:59Allied bombers above Hanover destroy much of the city,
0:01:59 > 0:02:02including the state archives.
0:02:02 > 0:02:08In the basement was one of the world's most precious medieval treasures - the Ebsdorf map.
0:02:11 > 0:02:14The Nazis had just ordered its removal to safety.
0:02:14 > 0:02:16But it was too late.
0:02:16 > 0:02:21This rare insight into the medieval mind was lost in the rubble.
0:02:36 > 0:02:43The Ebsdorf map was made at the end of the 13th century by the nuns of Ebsdorf Abbey in northern Germany.
0:02:44 > 0:02:48Most medieval maps in Europe were made by religious orders.
0:02:48 > 0:02:54They were the intellectual elite, and they also had the resources to create these wonderful works of art.
0:02:57 > 0:03:00Fortunately, the nuns had photographs of the original Ebsdorf map.
0:03:00 > 0:03:06So, after the war, they were able to make a magnificent copy of their lost treasure.
0:03:07 > 0:03:09Wow!
0:03:11 > 0:03:18I have been looking at reproductions in books of this map for years.
0:03:18 > 0:03:24But to actually see it here, 10 feet tall, is absolutely breathtaking.
0:03:26 > 0:03:29It's a spectacular map.
0:03:29 > 0:03:34It's not really a map as we understand it in modern terms.
0:03:34 > 0:03:41It's a kind of vast encyclopaedia of everything that was known to 13th-century Europeans.
0:03:41 > 0:03:45It's totally unrecognisable to us as we look at it now,
0:03:45 > 0:03:50but if you start to dig a bit deeper, it starts to make some kind of sense.
0:03:50 > 0:03:54This is a map of three continents.
0:03:54 > 0:03:59Asia sits at the top, that entire top half of the map.
0:03:59 > 0:04:03Africa is right over here, running right down from here.
0:04:03 > 0:04:05There is Africa, right down the coast.
0:04:05 > 0:04:11And tucked in here, in the bottom left-hand corner, is Europa.
0:04:11 > 0:04:14There's Anglia, England, down here.
0:04:15 > 0:04:20But this is also a map of what is unknown to the 13th-century mind.
0:04:20 > 0:04:26Looking again at the edges of the map, you start to see these rather monstrous figures.
0:04:26 > 0:04:30Gog and Magog, these two fearful creatures.
0:04:30 > 0:04:33Cannibals, monstrous figures, eating human flesh.
0:04:35 > 0:04:41Also on the margins, the Massagets - children who eat their parents.
0:04:41 > 0:04:48And if you go back over to this side into Africa again, the limits of the map, more monstrous races.
0:04:48 > 0:04:53It starts with animals, griffin-like figures, snakes,
0:04:53 > 0:05:00strange half-human, half-animal creatures here.
0:05:00 > 0:05:03Figures with no eyes, with no heads. Creatures with no arms.
0:05:03 > 0:05:08It becomes more and more monstrous as you run up the African coast.
0:05:11 > 0:05:15But there are also more familiar, local features on the map.
0:05:15 > 0:05:19Northern Germany is shown with its rivers and towns.
0:05:19 > 0:05:22And the Ebsdorf Abbey is clearly marked, too.
0:05:23 > 0:05:27TRANSLATION: The map comes from, and was created, in Ebsdorf
0:05:27 > 0:05:29and it belongs here.
0:05:29 > 0:05:34It's ours, and it's something we're very proud of.
0:05:34 > 0:05:36What are your favourite images on the map?
0:05:36 > 0:05:42I particularly love the representation of paradise, right next to the head of Jesus Christ.
0:05:42 > 0:05:47It's an enchanting depiction.
0:05:47 > 0:05:49Adam and Eve have both got an apple.
0:05:49 > 0:05:51That is a sign for equal rights.
0:05:53 > 0:05:55And a snake winds down.
0:05:55 > 0:06:01The snake is fantastic, because it is not a feminine snake but a masculine one with a beard!
0:06:04 > 0:06:09In the 13th century, the majority of people were illiterate.
0:06:09 > 0:06:12They had to rely on pictures.
0:06:12 > 0:06:19I think our map used to be of great importance to communicate to people and to confirm ideas.
0:06:22 > 0:06:26The Ebsdorf map is a magnificent display of knowledge.
0:06:26 > 0:06:31It was used by the nuns as a spiritual guide to present the Christian vision of the world.
0:06:33 > 0:06:36This is clearly not about geography in the modern sense of the term.
0:06:36 > 0:06:44This is a map about faith, and if you look at the centre of the map, all its locations are biblical ones.
0:06:44 > 0:06:47You can see Galilee here.
0:06:47 > 0:06:51You have Bethlehem with its little star there.
0:06:51 > 0:06:54You can see Noah's Ark up here.
0:06:56 > 0:06:59You can see the Tower of Babel rising up there.
0:07:00 > 0:07:06It's telling a very specific story about the Christian faith and its forms of belief.
0:07:06 > 0:07:10And right at the centre of the map is Jerusalem.
0:07:10 > 0:07:13It's at the absolute heart of the map,
0:07:13 > 0:07:18and within its walled city, an image of the resurrected Christ.
0:07:18 > 0:07:25This is an image that puts Christianity right at the heart of the entire known world.
0:07:27 > 0:07:31But there's also a hidden message lying at the heart of this map.
0:07:31 > 0:07:35The viewer is being asked to think beyond earthly delights
0:07:35 > 0:07:40and think about heaven, think about the next world that they're heading to.
0:07:40 > 0:07:44And you can see this in the whole sweep of the map.
0:07:44 > 0:07:46At the top, the head of Christ.
0:07:46 > 0:07:52To the right and the left, his hands, and at the bottom, his little feet poking out.
0:07:54 > 0:07:57This is a world defined by Christ.
0:07:57 > 0:08:03Christ is the world and he's embracing it in a big theological bear hug.
0:08:11 > 0:08:16While the Ebsdorf nuns were celebrating Christ's protective embrace of the world,
0:08:16 > 0:08:22Benedictine monks in England were using a much more detailed religious map to find their way to heaven.
0:08:22 > 0:08:28It was made 700 years ago by one of the most important historians in the country...
0:08:30 > 0:08:34..a Benedictine monk called Matthew Paris.
0:08:34 > 0:08:37And it looks much more like a map to be used on the road.
0:08:44 > 0:08:48These beautiful pages are a pilgrim's guide.
0:08:48 > 0:08:51They show a route map all the way from England
0:08:51 > 0:08:55to the Holy City of Jerusalem.
0:08:55 > 0:08:59It starts down here, with London depicted very precisely,
0:08:59 > 0:09:02the city walls, you can even see St Paul's.
0:09:02 > 0:09:06Then the roads go outwards down towards the Channel,
0:09:06 > 0:09:09jump on board a ship, get to France.
0:09:13 > 0:09:20Off you go down through Paris, passing important religious shrines,
0:09:20 > 0:09:22powerful abbeys as you go.
0:09:22 > 0:09:25The space between each town represented here
0:09:25 > 0:09:29is one day's ride, so you know exactly how far you're travelling.
0:09:39 > 0:09:44And you go down through Italy, passing... There's Rome.
0:09:44 > 0:09:51Then you jump on another boat, go via Sicily, which is on a lovely little insert there, the flap.
0:09:51 > 0:09:54Off you go through the Eastern Mediterranean...
0:09:55 > 0:10:00..hit the Holy Land and your ultimate sacred destination of Jerusalem.
0:10:00 > 0:10:02There it is.
0:10:02 > 0:10:05But there's something very puzzling about this route map,
0:10:05 > 0:10:09because the monks of St Albans who were using it weren't going anywhere at all.
0:10:19 > 0:10:22Pilgrimage wasn't really on the cards for monks
0:10:22 > 0:10:26because their way of living was based on a particular place,
0:10:26 > 0:10:31and moving on elaborate journeys was not really part of their normal life.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38If they had gone to Jerusalem, they may have been a bit disillusioned
0:10:38 > 0:10:44when they saw the reality of it, because in their minds, Jerusalem was somewhere really special.
0:10:50 > 0:10:55For the monks of medieval Britain, the place of Christ's death
0:10:55 > 0:10:59and resurrection was tantalisingly out of reach.
0:11:00 > 0:11:04How do you think that the monks might have used the maps?
0:11:04 > 0:11:08They could have used them as part of their personal spiritual pilgrimage.
0:11:08 > 0:11:13A monk's life is a pilgrimage which is centred on the cloister,
0:11:13 > 0:11:17not on movement from one holy place to another.
0:11:17 > 0:11:21So this map from England right to Jerusalem is a spiritual journey.
0:11:21 > 0:11:23It's not a physical journey
0:11:23 > 0:11:27but that actually becomes more powerful in a sense, the fact that that's what it's about.
0:11:27 > 0:11:34I would say that, because I think medieval maps are about faith, knowledge.
0:11:34 > 0:11:37What's the resonance for you, when you look at this?
0:11:37 > 0:11:43Well, the personal resonance is a wonderful sense of place.
0:11:43 > 0:11:49And I think that fits in very much with the Benedictine idea of stability, because stability is about
0:11:49 > 0:11:57being rooted in a particular place, and there finding God, but also finding oneself.
0:11:57 > 0:12:04I think you can see Matthew Paris in these maps trying to find God, but also finding himself en route.
0:12:06 > 0:12:11Matthew Paris was making these maps to take Benedictine monks on a personal journey.
0:12:11 > 0:12:16The aim was to save the soul through meditation and prayer.
0:12:24 > 0:12:27Medieval Christian maps weren't really about defining territory.
0:12:27 > 0:12:30They weren't really even interested in getting from A to B.
0:12:30 > 0:12:34Their interest was getting people to focus on a higher spiritual realm,
0:12:34 > 0:12:38on rising up above the Earth and reaching up to heaven.
0:12:52 > 0:12:57200 years later, the ancient Aztecs were also using maps
0:12:57 > 0:13:00to convey information about their own rituals and beliefs.
0:13:04 > 0:13:09They give us a rare insight into one of the great empires of Central America.
0:13:10 > 0:13:17One of their maps is part of a book called the Codex Mendoza, which describes Aztec life and rituals.
0:13:17 > 0:13:21It was created by an Aztec artist in the 1540s.
0:13:21 > 0:13:25At first sight, it doesn't look like a map at all.
0:13:26 > 0:13:30To Western eyes, this image is almost completely alien.
0:13:30 > 0:13:31But that's because the Aztecs
0:13:31 > 0:13:34had a very different conception of space to us.
0:13:34 > 0:13:38This is in fact a city map.
0:13:38 > 0:13:41It shows the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan,
0:13:41 > 0:13:44on the current site of Mexico City.
0:13:44 > 0:13:50The city was built on a vast swamp, and you can see the canals
0:13:50 > 0:13:53which run in this big blue X right through its centre.
0:13:53 > 0:13:58And also, up here, you can see the main temple to the gods.
0:13:58 > 0:14:04But down here, there's also a rather chilling reminder of the Aztec's obsession with blood sacrifice.
0:14:04 > 0:14:10This is a skull rack, and sure enough, there is the skull of a defeated enemy.
0:14:14 > 0:14:17The map is full of symbolic information about Aztec society.
0:14:17 > 0:14:21The eagle sitting on a cactus on the rock
0:14:21 > 0:14:25is a reference to the city's foundation myth.
0:14:25 > 0:14:31It was said that the gods had sent the eagle to mark the spot where the Aztecs were to build their capital.
0:14:31 > 0:14:34It remains the national symbol of Mexico.
0:14:38 > 0:14:41Beneath the eagle is a shield with seven feathers
0:14:41 > 0:14:43and a bundle of spears,
0:14:43 > 0:14:46which symbolise the authority of the Aztec lords.
0:14:47 > 0:14:52And beneath the city are triumphal images of two Aztec military victories.
0:14:57 > 0:15:04But by the time this map was made, the Aztec empire had been conquered and colonised by the Spanish.
0:15:07 > 0:15:12The map was commissioned by the Spanish governor Antonio Mendoza as a gift for the King of Spain.
0:15:12 > 0:15:18Aztec artists were employed to create the map to show off the king's new territories and subjects.
0:15:22 > 0:15:26So what were the native artists trying to tell him?
0:15:30 > 0:15:37The key to understanding this map lies in these male figures all across the city.
0:15:37 > 0:15:40And what they represent is its rulers, its elders,
0:15:40 > 0:15:44and this incredibly important figure down here is the priest ruler.
0:15:44 > 0:15:47You can tell it's him because he's larger than everybody else.
0:15:47 > 0:15:50He's also painted in black body paint.
0:15:50 > 0:15:54But surrounding him are these other male figures
0:15:54 > 0:15:56who represent the rulers of particular zones
0:15:56 > 0:15:59or neighbourhoods of the city.
0:15:59 > 0:16:05Because this is a map about hierarchy, about a deeply structured society which wants to map its city
0:16:05 > 0:16:10around these kind of issues, rather than where the canals run
0:16:10 > 0:16:13or how the streets cut across the city.
0:16:13 > 0:16:19Because that's the nature of Aztec society - top down, deeply structured, utterly hierarchical.
0:16:21 > 0:16:27The native artists who drew this map were making a record of the glories of the old Aztec empire.
0:16:27 > 0:16:33It's a defiant celebration of its power structures, its rituals and its beliefs.
0:16:35 > 0:16:40The map is a record of a mighty empire conquered by the Spaniards,
0:16:40 > 0:16:46but it's also a really poignant image of everything that the Aztecs had lost.
0:16:50 > 0:16:55While the Aztecs were drawing symbolic images commemorating their own lost empire,
0:16:55 > 0:16:57Europeans were making ever more accurate maps
0:16:57 > 0:17:01to help them understand their newly conquered territories.
0:17:03 > 0:17:08And maps were starting to look more like the ones we use to navigate the world today.
0:17:12 > 0:17:14But even as they became more accurate,
0:17:14 > 0:17:19they were still revealing the beliefs and prejudices of the age.
0:17:23 > 0:17:29The British were increasingly curious about the inhabitants of Britain's far-flung dominions.
0:17:29 > 0:17:33And in the 19th century, maps were a popular source of information.
0:17:37 > 0:17:43Some of London's most fashionable maps were made by a prolific cartographer called James Wyld.
0:17:46 > 0:17:49Wyld specialised in world atlases,
0:17:49 > 0:17:55and in 1815, he made this elaborate map which he called a "Chart Of The World, Shewing The Religion,
0:17:55 > 0:17:58"Population and Civilization Of Each Country".
0:17:58 > 0:18:01It was an ambitious attempt to catalogue
0:18:01 > 0:18:05all the available statistics about the population of the world.
0:18:15 > 0:18:20Wyld even used a colour code to show the dominant religions in each part of the world.
0:18:22 > 0:18:28Protestantism was green, Catholicism was red,
0:18:28 > 0:18:30Jews were black,
0:18:30 > 0:18:37Atheism was brown and Idolatry was a rather sickly yellow.
0:18:37 > 0:18:38In the key to Wyld's map,
0:18:38 > 0:18:42he describes all the different religious denominations -
0:18:42 > 0:18:43Christians, Muslims...
0:18:43 > 0:18:48And then he gets into some rather wonderful descriptions of Idolatry,
0:18:48 > 0:18:52which he says is "absence, feigned or sincere, of religion",
0:18:52 > 0:18:56which is apparently 153 million people.
0:18:56 > 0:19:01He also has Atheism, which he describes as a state of "absolute ignorance".
0:19:01 > 0:19:05There are apparently 30 million people who subscribe to that belief.
0:19:05 > 0:19:10And you can see this being reproduced across the surface of the map.
0:19:10 > 0:19:13And down here in the South Seas,
0:19:13 > 0:19:18you get lovely descriptions of Fijians... "Cannibals".
0:19:18 > 0:19:20Down in New Zealand... "Cannibals".
0:19:21 > 0:19:25Cannibals, more cannibals and yet more cannibals.
0:19:25 > 0:19:27In the Atlantic Ocean...
0:19:28 > 0:19:31..a tribe called the Jagas.
0:19:31 > 0:19:36"Their chief worship consists in frequent sacrifices of human victims, particularly children."
0:19:38 > 0:19:41Wyld's map was made at a time when Britain's imperial forces
0:19:41 > 0:19:45were spreading through India, Sri Lanka and southern Africa.
0:19:47 > 0:19:52He used his map to satisfy his readers' curiosity
0:19:52 > 0:19:56and confirm their worst fears about these unfamiliar native peoples.
0:19:58 > 0:20:02There's even a scale to show how civilised each nation is,
0:20:02 > 0:20:04which is in Roman numerals from one to five.
0:20:04 > 0:20:08One is absolutely uncivilised and five is very civilised.
0:20:08 > 0:20:14No surprise England gets top marks, gets a five. So does France.
0:20:14 > 0:20:17But you look across the rest of the map,
0:20:17 > 0:20:21and sadly the Hare Indians up in Canada only score a miserable one,
0:20:21 > 0:20:25as do the Copper Indians, and so, sadly, do the cannibals
0:20:25 > 0:20:29down in the South Seas, only coming in with a miserable one.
0:20:36 > 0:20:40Wyld's map was an attempt to reassure his readers that Britain
0:20:40 > 0:20:43and the British were at the pinnacle of civilisation.
0:20:46 > 0:20:52It's really an expression of British fears, prejudices but also anxieties
0:20:52 > 0:20:59about how to govern non-Christian, alien peoples that were now coming into the sway of the Empire.
0:21:09 > 0:21:15In 19th-century Britain, the drive to gather statistics about the rapidly rising population at home
0:21:15 > 0:21:18was also gathering pace and efficiency.
0:21:18 > 0:21:23And maps were becoming powerful tools that could be used to identify social problems
0:21:23 > 0:21:26and even save lives.
0:21:29 > 0:21:35In 1831, a map-maker came to the rescue when thousands of people
0:21:35 > 0:21:40across the country suddenly started dying of a mysterious disease.
0:21:43 > 0:21:46Maybe you'd wake and 10% of your neighbours would be dead,
0:21:46 > 0:21:48and that would be horrific
0:21:48 > 0:21:51when you didn't have any idea what was going on.
0:21:51 > 0:21:53It meant that a lot of people would just move,
0:21:53 > 0:21:55pack up their stuff and leave,
0:21:55 > 0:21:58to try and get away from this very, very quick death.
0:22:04 > 0:22:09Victims writhed in agony, their muscles continuously spasming.
0:22:09 > 0:22:11Once infected, they could die within hours.
0:22:11 > 0:22:16Nobody knew what was causing the spread of the disease or how it could be stopped.
0:22:16 > 0:22:21Once the outbreak had ended, over 32,000 people had lost their lives.
0:22:21 > 0:22:24They called it the Blue Death.
0:22:26 > 0:22:30It was Britain's first cholera epidemic.
0:22:30 > 0:22:32As it swept across the country,
0:22:32 > 0:22:35an apprentice surgeon called John Snow
0:22:35 > 0:22:39was struggling to save the lives of infected patients.
0:22:40 > 0:22:44Snow felt helpless as he watched victim after victim die.
0:22:44 > 0:22:47But he was already beginning to develop an idea
0:22:47 > 0:22:50about what was causing the deadly disease.
0:22:52 > 0:22:54The scientists at the time were baffled.
0:22:54 > 0:22:59Most of them thought that the disease was spread by a miasma of infected air.
0:22:59 > 0:23:01But John Snow believed that it was caused
0:23:01 > 0:23:04by tiny microorganisms, invisible to the eye.
0:23:04 > 0:23:10He suspected that the sewers were contaminating the drinking water and spreading the disease.
0:23:11 > 0:23:14When another cholera epidemic hit Britain,
0:23:14 > 0:23:17Snow examined water samples from the drinking supply
0:23:17 > 0:23:19of a cluster of victims in south London.
0:23:19 > 0:23:23He found they were all contaminated by raw sewage.
0:23:25 > 0:23:28This was the breakthrough.
0:23:28 > 0:23:35In 1849, he published an outline of his theory to explain the transmission of the disease.
0:23:35 > 0:23:38But nobody took him seriously.
0:23:38 > 0:23:41Why didn't Snow manage to persuade people of his theory?
0:23:41 > 0:23:44Everyone believed that diseases were spread through bad air.
0:23:44 > 0:23:46And this was so strongly believed,
0:23:46 > 0:23:49I guess you could compare it to Darwin's theory of evolution.
0:23:49 > 0:23:56It was so radical, so ahead of its time, that people struggled to believe this was true.
0:24:00 > 0:24:06To prove his theory and convince people to take him seriously, the doctor turned into a map-maker.
0:24:13 > 0:24:15When cholera broke out again here in Soho,
0:24:15 > 0:24:19Snow seized the opportunity to prove his theories once and for all.
0:24:19 > 0:24:24He walked around, marking the deaths on a street map, house by house,
0:24:24 > 0:24:27and sure enough, a pattern quickly emerged.
0:24:27 > 0:24:33He realised that people who were drinking from the water pump on Broad Street were dying.
0:24:33 > 0:24:36Snow's map plotted the deadly progress of the epidemic.
0:24:36 > 0:24:42The cluster of deaths around the water pump seemed to confirm his theory.
0:24:42 > 0:24:45He was so excited by this extraordinary breakthrough
0:24:45 > 0:24:48that he rushed into a meeting of the parish guardians
0:24:48 > 0:24:52and demanded that they immediately take the handle off the water pump
0:24:52 > 0:24:55to stop the local residents from killing themselves.
0:24:59 > 0:25:04The parish guardians were unconvinced by the vital connection revealed by Snow's map.
0:25:06 > 0:25:09But after the deaths of 600 people in the parish,
0:25:09 > 0:25:11they were prepared to try anything.
0:25:14 > 0:25:17The handle of the pump was removed.
0:25:18 > 0:25:22How do you think that Snow exploits the power of the map?
0:25:22 > 0:25:29It was almost a PR technique of getting information, of getting a theory across.
0:25:29 > 0:25:34We still use that very much today in terms of talking to policy-makers,
0:25:34 > 0:25:36talking to people about what's going on
0:25:36 > 0:25:39and showing them it visually on a map is a very nice way,
0:25:39 > 0:25:42a very friendly, perhaps unthreatening way,
0:25:42 > 0:25:45of getting something that's quite scientific across.
0:25:46 > 0:25:49'Thanks to John Snow's pioneering work,
0:25:49 > 0:25:54'maps are now a powerful weapon in the battle against disease.'
0:25:54 > 0:25:58So what kind of things are epidemiologists looking at today?
0:25:58 > 0:26:03It's very similar through the entire history of public health mapping.
0:26:03 > 0:26:06It's whatever is the biggest public concern at the time.
0:26:06 > 0:26:09So, in Snow's time, cholera was the big issue.
0:26:09 > 0:26:13Now we're working on the things which are in the news of public interest.
0:26:13 > 0:26:17There's lots of public health studies looking around climate change.
0:26:17 > 0:26:19One of them would be looking at malaria
0:26:19 > 0:26:20and how malaria may spread
0:26:20 > 0:26:23if the climate changes as some predictions suggest.
0:26:23 > 0:26:27Would it come back into Europe, for instance?
0:26:38 > 0:26:41As the industrial cities of Britain expanded,
0:26:41 > 0:26:46wealthy Victorians felt threatened by the ever-growing ranks of the poor.
0:26:47 > 0:26:52Maps became tools for understanding poverty as well as disease.
0:26:58 > 0:27:01How did the Victorians view poverty in this period?
0:27:01 > 0:27:05They viewed it, I suppose, as one of the most major problems of the time.
0:27:05 > 0:27:08The poverty question -
0:27:08 > 0:27:10what do we do with the masses of urban poor
0:27:10 > 0:27:15that had arrived and settled in the city during the previous decades of the century?
0:27:15 > 0:27:18That was seen as a major concern for people.
0:27:22 > 0:27:27The poverty question inspired a wealthy industrialist
0:27:27 > 0:27:31to create one of the most sophisticated mapping projects of the Victorian age.
0:27:31 > 0:27:34His name was Charles Booth.
0:27:35 > 0:27:36Booth was inspired to act
0:27:36 > 0:27:41when he heard the claim that 25% of Londoners were living in poverty.
0:27:43 > 0:27:47Booth was sceptical, but he was also curious.
0:27:47 > 0:27:50He decided to fund a team of researchers
0:27:50 > 0:27:53to do a thorough assessment of levels of poverty throughout the city.
0:27:53 > 0:27:59All the information would be carefully charted in a series of street maps.
0:27:59 > 0:28:03The project would continue for 17 years.
0:28:05 > 0:28:09Charles Booth was an unlikely man to try and map London's poverty.
0:28:09 > 0:28:14He'd made a vast fortune in animal skins on the docks of Liverpool.
0:28:14 > 0:28:17But the tanneries were terrified by his visits,
0:28:17 > 0:28:21as he probed and catalogued every inch of his thriving empire,
0:28:21 > 0:28:25and it was a habit that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
0:28:27 > 0:28:32Booth's hunger for statistics was fed by a team of investigators.
0:28:32 > 0:28:36From hundreds of interviews and observations,
0:28:36 > 0:28:38his team created a series of colour-coded maps
0:28:38 > 0:28:43that showed the income levels and social classes of every street in London.
0:28:46 > 0:28:49This is one of Booth's maps and it shows Limehouse,
0:28:49 > 0:28:52one of the poorest districts in London at the time.
0:28:52 > 0:28:55Yellow on Booth's maps denoted wealthy areas.
0:28:55 > 0:28:58Pink and red were the middle classes.
0:28:58 > 0:29:00Blue and black were the poorest.
0:29:00 > 0:29:04And there's absolutely no yellow on this map whatsoever.
0:29:15 > 0:29:20Booth often joined his researchers as they spread out through the streets of London,
0:29:20 > 0:29:24gathering information on wages, working conditions
0:29:24 > 0:29:27and what Booth called "social and moral influences".
0:29:27 > 0:29:34This wouldn't be just a map. It would be an intimate social profile of the city.
0:29:34 > 0:29:37Booth even lived with some of the families himself,
0:29:37 > 0:29:40and he recorded his feelings in his notebooks.
0:29:40 > 0:29:43He wrote about those living just above the poverty line that,
0:29:43 > 0:29:46"The children have when young less chance of surviving
0:29:46 > 0:29:47"than those of the rich,
0:29:47 > 0:29:51"but I certainly think their lives are happier.
0:29:51 > 0:29:54"They are more likely to suffer from spoiling than harshness,
0:29:54 > 0:29:56"for they are made much of,
0:29:56 > 0:30:01"being commonly the pride of their mother and the delight of their father's heart."
0:30:03 > 0:30:08One interesting aspect of Booth's work is that prior to Booth,
0:30:08 > 0:30:12poverty was seen very much as a morality problem,
0:30:12 > 0:30:14and one of the things that he showed
0:30:14 > 0:30:19was that poverty was not so much a problem of drunkenness
0:30:19 > 0:30:21or unwillingness to work.
0:30:21 > 0:30:23That was a very, very small part.
0:30:23 > 0:30:26He saw poverty as being a complex problem,
0:30:26 > 0:30:28and needed to be, therefore,
0:30:28 > 0:30:31addressed through a whole variety of sources of information.
0:30:33 > 0:30:36Booth's researchers scoured these streets,
0:30:36 > 0:30:40making decisions about how they colour-coded the streets.
0:30:40 > 0:30:43The kind of information that they were feeding back into the maps
0:30:43 > 0:30:46were contained in these extraordinary notebooks,
0:30:46 > 0:30:50where they wrote down every encounter in every single street.
0:30:50 > 0:30:52They make for fascinating reading
0:30:52 > 0:30:56to discover not only who they were encountering and what they were seeing,
0:30:56 > 0:30:59but how that fed back into the maps.
0:30:59 > 0:31:01Here's one entry. It says "Rich Street,
0:31:01 > 0:31:03"Jamaica Place and Gill Street
0:31:03 > 0:31:08"are a nest of brothels frequented by common seamen of every nationality."
0:31:08 > 0:31:13Another - "This is a noted thieves' resort at Nightingale Lane.
0:31:13 > 0:31:17"I knocked at the door of 13 Jamaica Street.
0:31:17 > 0:31:21"They were a man and a wife and they kept an opium den."
0:31:21 > 0:31:26So what is it that Booth's maps reveal?
0:31:26 > 0:31:31For me, what's interesting is that it reveals that poverty is spread out throughout the city.
0:31:31 > 0:31:38So you have pockets of poverty very, very close to areas of great prosperity.
0:31:38 > 0:31:43It's showing that even if you were living in the West End of London, for example,
0:31:43 > 0:31:48you weren't that far away from situations of severe poverty.
0:31:48 > 0:31:52Poverty is just specks of black and dark blue
0:31:52 > 0:31:58within a sea of much warmer colours of relative prosperity.
0:31:58 > 0:32:02This is something that we can manage, that we can get to grips with, that we can handle.
0:32:05 > 0:32:09Booth's extraordinary project provided graphic evidence
0:32:09 > 0:32:11that helped prompt housing legislation
0:32:11 > 0:32:14to improve living conditions in Victorian Britain.
0:32:14 > 0:32:19It also fuelled a campaign to introduce an old age pension to alleviate poverty.
0:32:22 > 0:32:26Booth's maps reveal that more than a third of all Londoners
0:32:26 > 0:32:29were living in poverty - an awful statistic.
0:32:29 > 0:32:33But somehow, by putting the problem on a map, Booth made it more manageable.
0:32:33 > 0:32:36It seemed less terrifying.
0:32:36 > 0:32:42And his maps also convinced Victorian society that something had to be done to help the poor.
0:32:57 > 0:32:59By the end of the 19th century,
0:32:59 > 0:33:01statistical maps were firmly established
0:33:01 > 0:33:05as powerful tools to tackle the social problems of the age.
0:33:07 > 0:33:12But maps, like statistics, could also be manipulated.
0:33:14 > 0:33:19In the 1890s, Jewish immigration was a source of growing tension in the East End of London.
0:33:19 > 0:33:21There was a housing shortage,
0:33:21 > 0:33:25and families were often crammed into damp, vermin-infested houses.
0:33:36 > 0:33:39Thank you. Cheers.
0:33:39 > 0:33:43Thousands of Jews were arriving here in the East End every year.
0:33:43 > 0:33:47Many of them were escaping really vicious persecution under the Russian empire,
0:33:47 > 0:33:51but others were simply coming to make a better life for their families.
0:33:51 > 0:33:54But at a time of high unemployment in this area,
0:33:54 > 0:33:58the Jewish immigrants also created huge anxiety and quite a lot of anger.
0:33:58 > 0:34:03They were seen as a burden on the state and also accused of taking local jobs.
0:34:07 > 0:34:11A group of Liberal activists in the East End decided to do something to help.
0:34:11 > 0:34:16First, they wanted to make a map to establish the true size of the Jewish community.
0:34:19 > 0:34:22So they hired one of Charles Booth's researchers,
0:34:22 > 0:34:24the son of a London cabbie, called George Arkell.
0:34:24 > 0:34:28Once again, he began knocking on doors all over the East End.
0:34:31 > 0:34:34George Arkell walked around these streets
0:34:34 > 0:34:36trying to describe each and every Jewish household,
0:34:36 > 0:34:38and this is the map that he produced.
0:34:38 > 0:34:41It's a very simple, colour-coded image
0:34:41 > 0:34:46that shows the exact percentage of Jews living in each and every street.
0:34:53 > 0:34:58Arkell's map was published in 1900 as part of a book called The Jew In London.
0:34:58 > 0:35:02It described the hard-working nature of the Jewish immigrants
0:35:02 > 0:35:05and argued against any attempt to stop further immigration.
0:35:10 > 0:35:12At the same time, the Conservative MP
0:35:12 > 0:35:17for the East End constituency of Stepney was campaigning against the Jews.
0:35:17 > 0:35:21He argued that they were bringing disease and crime to the city
0:35:21 > 0:35:26and he compared them to grains of arsenic, poisoning the British family.
0:35:29 > 0:35:32Arkell's map used bold, dark blue colour-coding
0:35:32 > 0:35:37to mark out those streets where over 95% of the population was Jewish.
0:35:37 > 0:35:39But by drawing attention to these streets,
0:35:39 > 0:35:44it gave the impression that the Jewish community was larger than it really was.
0:35:47 > 0:35:50And that wasn't the only problem with the map.
0:35:52 > 0:35:57Arkell has coloured the heavily Jewish areas in heavy dark blue
0:35:57 > 0:36:03and all the rest in red, as if to give the impression
0:36:03 > 0:36:06that all the rest were somehow an indigenous population,
0:36:06 > 0:36:09but it wasn't.
0:36:09 > 0:36:13Yes, sure, we had Jews here, we had Irish here,
0:36:13 > 0:36:17we had Protestants north of the railway lines.
0:36:17 > 0:36:21Just a little bit further out, we had Italians.
0:36:21 > 0:36:24There was an important German community.
0:36:24 > 0:36:28So, this was an extraordinarily rich cosmopolitan area then,
0:36:28 > 0:36:32as it is now, but you don't get that impression from this map.
0:36:32 > 0:36:38- So, it's really inaccurate to label this Jewish East London? - Of course it's inaccurate.
0:36:38 > 0:36:41I think you've homed in on a very important point.
0:36:41 > 0:36:43This isn't Jewish East London.
0:36:43 > 0:36:45Most of this area...
0:36:45 > 0:36:51What, two-thirds of it, three-quarters of it, is not Jewish at all.
0:36:51 > 0:36:53It's the Jews within East London.
0:36:53 > 0:36:59Sure, in a few streets, there was heavy density of Jewish population.
0:36:59 > 0:37:03But over Arkell's East London as a whole,
0:37:03 > 0:37:06the Jews formed a minority.
0:37:07 > 0:37:11Arkell's map would have unintended consequences.
0:37:11 > 0:37:13The year after it was published,
0:37:13 > 0:37:17a fascist movement called the British Brothers League was set up in the East End.
0:37:17 > 0:37:20They seized on this map.
0:37:20 > 0:37:26It was quite often quoted in speeches by demagogues in the East End of London
0:37:26 > 0:37:29speaking on behalf of the British Brothers League and so on.
0:37:29 > 0:37:34"This is the proof that we have an alien community in our midst".
0:37:34 > 0:37:40One of them said, if you go down Whitechapel High Street, he said, this is Jerusalem.
0:37:40 > 0:37:45He actually used that phrase. And he drew attention to Jewish smells.
0:37:45 > 0:37:50He said the smells in Whitechapel High Street were not English smells, they were Jewish smells.
0:37:55 > 0:37:58Far from helping the Jews of the East End,
0:37:58 > 0:38:03Arkell's map unwittingly became a powerful weapon in the hands of their enemies,
0:38:03 > 0:38:10and within just five years, political pressure led to the passage of the 1905 Aliens Act.
0:38:10 > 0:38:12It was the first peacetime legislation
0:38:12 > 0:38:17to place limits and controls on immigration into this country.
0:38:26 > 0:38:33In the 20th century, statistical mapping was firmly established as a powerful tool of government.
0:38:37 > 0:38:42In 1940, these ordinary American citizens had no idea they were being watched.
0:38:46 > 0:38:48Over 4,000 miles away,
0:38:48 > 0:38:53someone was counting them and plotting them on a statistical map.
0:38:53 > 0:38:55This was the result -
0:38:55 > 0:38:59a map of America, seemingly rather innocuous,
0:38:59 > 0:39:01with neat little pie charts
0:39:01 > 0:39:04showing the percentage of European immigrants in each state,
0:39:04 > 0:39:06and the countries down here
0:39:06 > 0:39:09that they came from, but this is also a classified map.
0:39:09 > 0:39:13It says up here in the corner, "For official eyes only".
0:39:13 > 0:39:17This was a map that was made by the Nazis.
0:39:18 > 0:39:23The map was part of a secret mission to flood America with Nazi propaganda.
0:39:25 > 0:39:29By 1940, Hitler had already invaded much of Europe.
0:39:29 > 0:39:31Britain was next on the list.
0:39:33 > 0:39:38The British were trying to persuade the Americans to join the war against Nazi Germany,
0:39:38 > 0:39:41but President Roosevelt was reluctant to act.
0:39:43 > 0:39:50There is no demand for sending an American expeditionary force outside our own border.
0:39:50 > 0:39:57There is no intention by any member of your government
0:39:57 > 0:39:59to send such a force.
0:39:59 > 0:40:04You can therefore nail any talk
0:40:04 > 0:40:10about sending armies to Europe as deliberate untruth.
0:40:12 > 0:40:18The Nazis were determined to bolster Roosevelt's resolve to remain neutral
0:40:18 > 0:40:22and they were leaving nothing to chance.
0:40:22 > 0:40:26Using statistics from the latest American census, they were drawing up a map
0:40:26 > 0:40:32that pinpointed the biggest communities of German immigrants living in the United States.
0:40:32 > 0:40:38The large red segments in these little pie charts identified the best targets for propaganda.
0:40:38 > 0:40:44The map revealed that the Nazis should focus their efforts in the rural communities of Missouri...
0:40:46 > 0:40:47..Wisconsin,
0:40:47 > 0:40:50Nebraska and Texas.
0:40:50 > 0:40:57This was where public opinion could be most easily manipulated to oppose American intervention in Europe.
0:40:57 > 0:41:02In 1940, this dry statistical map was actually a weapon of war.
0:41:02 > 0:41:04Maps are incredibly powerful objects.
0:41:04 > 0:41:07They touch the mind, but they also touch the soul.
0:41:07 > 0:41:10They magically conjure up places that we've never even seen.
0:41:10 > 0:41:14It's that power which leads them to being exploited or even perverted.
0:41:18 > 0:41:20Sieg heil.
0:41:20 > 0:41:21Heil. Heil. Heil.
0:41:21 > 0:41:23Sieg heil.
0:41:27 > 0:41:31The Nazis were masters of mass manipulation.
0:41:31 > 0:41:35But they weren't just using statistical maps as weapons of propaganda.
0:41:35 > 0:41:40In occupied Europe, they were also using them as tools of terror.
0:41:43 > 0:41:48This is a map of Slovakia from the Second World War,
0:41:48 > 0:41:54showing the population figures for the local towns and villages.
0:41:54 > 0:41:55But this is also a sinister map,
0:41:55 > 0:42:01because the Zs marked here show Romany Gypsy communities
0:42:01 > 0:42:05and the black dots here, here, here and here
0:42:05 > 0:42:08show the local Jewish population.
0:42:15 > 0:42:20The maps were drawn up in 1941 by a Nazi expert in ethnography.
0:42:21 > 0:42:27The Nazis passed them on to the president of the Slovakian puppet government, Jozef Tiso.
0:42:30 > 0:42:34Under the Nazis, Tiso had already introduced anti-Semitic legislation
0:42:34 > 0:42:39to prevent Jews from holding public jobs, attending schools or owning property.
0:42:39 > 0:42:42Now he was under pressure to go further.
0:42:45 > 0:42:49For the Nazis, these maps were blueprints for subsequent policy.
0:42:49 > 0:42:52They allowed them at a glance to look at the dots
0:42:52 > 0:42:57and see where the Jewish communities lived in this area.
0:42:57 > 0:43:03And just a year later in March 1942, they started rounding them up from the towns and villages here.
0:43:03 > 0:43:08The Slovakian Jews were sent to their deaths in the concentration camps.
0:43:16 > 0:43:22Within six months, 58,000 men, women and children had been taken.
0:43:31 > 0:43:38This neat statistical map of Slovakia was being used to drive the so-called "Final Solution".
0:43:43 > 0:43:47In the hands of the Nazis, maps had become tools for genocide.
0:44:14 > 0:44:17After the Second World War, revelations about Nazi atrocities
0:44:17 > 0:44:23and the ideological tensions of the Cold War created a generation suspicious of government.
0:44:23 > 0:44:27The authority of maps also came under scrutiny.
0:44:30 > 0:44:37In May 1973, a German historian called Arno Peters confronted the map-making establishment.
0:44:37 > 0:44:40He denounced the most famous map of the world
0:44:40 > 0:44:43and said it was distorted by political and cultural prejudice.
0:44:47 > 0:44:50This is the map generations of schoolkids have grown up with.
0:44:50 > 0:44:52It's the famous Mercator projection.
0:44:52 > 0:44:57But Peters shocked the world when he announced that this map was quite simply wrong.
0:44:57 > 0:45:03He pointed out that Mercator was distorting the size of countries in an attempt to retain their shape.
0:45:03 > 0:45:08As a result, Europe looks far more prominent, whereas the developing countries are being downplayed.
0:45:08 > 0:45:12If we look at Africa and Greenland, they look about the same size.
0:45:12 > 0:45:15But Africa is actually 14 times bigger.
0:45:15 > 0:45:19Peters condemned this map as being imperialist and racist.
0:45:21 > 0:45:25Peters was no cartographer, but he thought he had the solution.
0:45:30 > 0:45:33Taking account of the relative size of each country,
0:45:33 > 0:45:37he came up with a new formula for representing the globe on a map,
0:45:37 > 0:45:39and he called it the Peters projection.
0:45:44 > 0:45:48Peters claimed his map showed the true size of countries for the first time ever.
0:45:48 > 0:45:51He dramatically reduced the size of Europe
0:45:51 > 0:45:57whilst expanding the size of Africa, elongating South America,
0:45:57 > 0:46:00and it's still something of a shock to look at this map
0:46:00 > 0:46:05and see how large these two continents loom on the Peters projection.
0:46:05 > 0:46:10Peters regarded himself as a champion of what he called the "non-white peoples",
0:46:10 > 0:46:14and he saw this map as part of a wider project
0:46:14 > 0:46:17to right the wrongs that he saw as being perpetrated
0:46:17 > 0:46:21against those people living in the developing world.
0:46:33 > 0:46:37Arno Peters invited nearly 300 members of the international press
0:46:37 > 0:46:40to the unveiling of his new world map.
0:46:40 > 0:46:42The media embraced it with enthusiasm
0:46:42 > 0:46:47but professional cartographers were furious at what they saw as the cheek of this outsider.
0:46:47 > 0:46:51They called the map deceptive, absurd, illogical.
0:46:51 > 0:46:53They were clearly really annoyed at what they saw
0:46:53 > 0:46:56as an untrained cartographer trying to map the world,
0:46:56 > 0:47:00and they accused Peters of making a map that was full of errors.
0:47:02 > 0:47:08TRANSLATION: The reaction was very disappointing for Arno Peters.
0:47:08 > 0:47:11It was in sharp contrast to the great enthusiasm
0:47:11 > 0:47:15of the international press.
0:47:15 > 0:47:22The map-making establishment saw it as a fundamental criticism of their profession.
0:47:24 > 0:47:27Peters was disappointed, even shocked.
0:47:30 > 0:47:37But he stayed optimistic, and said, "This map will prevail, because it will succeed internationally".
0:47:41 > 0:47:46And the Peters projection DID become an international mapping phenomenon.
0:47:46 > 0:47:51Anyone who wanted to display their liberal credentials pulled down their Mercators,
0:47:51 > 0:47:55and proudly replaced them with the Peters projection.
0:47:55 > 0:48:00It was championed by Oxfam, the United Nations and the Catholic Church,
0:48:00 > 0:48:03and it's sold more than 80 million copies across the world.
0:48:05 > 0:48:10But the Peters projection did have distortions of its own.
0:48:10 > 0:48:14Despite all the success and adulation, the critics did have a point.
0:48:14 > 0:48:18The Peters projection WAS flawed, and it wasn't even accurate on its own terms.
0:48:18 > 0:48:21Peters had made some basic miscalculations
0:48:21 > 0:48:26which meant that countries like Chad and Nigeria were twice their actual length.
0:48:26 > 0:48:30Did Peters ever accept that there were inaccuracies on the map?
0:48:30 > 0:48:37He was certainly prepared to accept mistakes.
0:48:37 > 0:48:40But no argument convinced him,
0:48:40 > 0:48:45because everything had been calculated.
0:48:45 > 0:48:50Every point had even been recalculated to a specific formula
0:48:50 > 0:48:53developed by experts.
0:48:53 > 0:48:58He kept on checking, and no mistakes were found.
0:49:00 > 0:49:03Arno Peters was attacking other maps for being biased,
0:49:03 > 0:49:06yet he was blind to the fact that the Peters projection
0:49:06 > 0:49:10was just as distorted by his own political assumptions.
0:49:12 > 0:49:16But the Peters projection did do something quite extraordinary.
0:49:16 > 0:49:20It finally exploded the myth that maps can ever be 100% accurate,
0:49:20 > 0:49:23scientific, objective representations of the world.
0:49:23 > 0:49:27It showed that maps always have social and political agendas.
0:49:35 > 0:49:40Arno Peters not only transformed the way we look at the world.
0:49:40 > 0:49:45He also changed the way we look at maps.
0:49:45 > 0:49:47There is no such thing as a neutral map.
0:49:47 > 0:49:50You're kidding yourself if you think you're a neutral cartographer.
0:49:50 > 0:49:52Since the 1970s,
0:49:52 > 0:49:55radical map-makers have been building on Arno Peters' legacy,
0:49:55 > 0:50:00deliberately using maps to promote alternative views of the world.
0:50:03 > 0:50:08If you think the Peters projection was strange, what about these maps?
0:50:08 > 0:50:10These images are so distorted
0:50:10 > 0:50:14that you can hardly tell that they represent the outlines of countries.
0:50:14 > 0:50:19They look more like peculiar pieces of abstract art.
0:50:19 > 0:50:22But they represent a very special kind of map
0:50:22 > 0:50:27and it's a map with an urgent and very powerful political agenda.
0:50:27 > 0:50:33These images are part of the Worldmapper project, launched in 2005.
0:50:33 > 0:50:39They use statistics compiled by the United Nations to redraw the map of the world.
0:50:39 > 0:50:45These images draw attention to some of the greatest problems facing humanity in developing countries.
0:50:46 > 0:50:51This map shows HIV infection across the globe.
0:50:51 > 0:50:55Tragically, Africa dominates the entire map.
0:50:55 > 0:51:02India and Southeast Asia are also large, Europe reduced very small up there.
0:51:02 > 0:51:07This one shows refugee destinations, and the shape changes again.
0:51:07 > 0:51:14This time, places like Sri Lanka become massively distorted, as does South America.
0:51:14 > 0:51:18And rather interestingly, so does the Middle East.
0:51:18 > 0:51:21Here, teenage pregnancies.
0:51:21 > 0:51:25India, now, is the most dominant figure,
0:51:25 > 0:51:28with the highest number of teenage pregnancies,
0:51:28 > 0:51:30in contrast to Japan, which is only a speck,
0:51:30 > 0:51:32with the lowest rates.
0:51:32 > 0:51:36And finally, this map.
0:51:36 > 0:51:38Infant mortality rates.
0:51:38 > 0:51:41Again, India and Southeast Asia loom large,
0:51:41 > 0:51:45but the map is once again dominated by Africa,
0:51:45 > 0:51:51with the largest number of babies dying under the age of one in the entire world.
0:51:54 > 0:51:57What was your aim in making these maps?
0:51:57 > 0:52:00I thought that now we had all this information
0:52:00 > 0:52:01about almost everybody in the world,
0:52:01 > 0:52:04it should be made much more widely available.
0:52:04 > 0:52:06I mean not just the numbers being available,
0:52:06 > 0:52:10but the actual picture of what it was showing being made available,
0:52:10 > 0:52:11so that people around the world
0:52:11 > 0:52:16could see what was being counted about them, what was known about their lives,
0:52:16 > 0:52:20then you could decide for yourselves what you felt about it and what you wanted to do about it.
0:52:20 > 0:52:22And that's the power of the map.
0:52:22 > 0:52:25I'm fascinated by how you see that importance
0:52:25 > 0:52:28that the map does something that text can't do.
0:52:28 > 0:52:30What is it that the map can give us?
0:52:30 > 0:52:32What does the map give us?
0:52:32 > 0:52:38The map taps into a whole part of our brain and our imaginations which text doesn't do.
0:52:38 > 0:52:41It's like looking at a face or looking at a picture.
0:52:41 > 0:52:44You first of all see the kind of eyeline of the map
0:52:44 > 0:52:47and it taps into different emotions.
0:52:47 > 0:52:52You can't take a ratio of numbers and become that concerned about it
0:52:52 > 0:52:55but when you see a picture, it appears to be real.
0:52:55 > 0:52:57It's very different.
0:53:04 > 0:53:09These maps, with their swollen and shrunken countries, are a dramatic call to action.
0:53:09 > 0:53:13They take a mountain of statistics which are usually so easy to ignore,
0:53:13 > 0:53:16and provide shocking clarity,
0:53:16 > 0:53:22a profound understanding of the most pressing problems that face our world today.
0:53:41 > 0:53:46The Worldmapper project captures the spirit of the digital age -
0:53:46 > 0:53:50globally aware, visually sophisticated and technically innovative.
0:53:50 > 0:53:55And when it comes to navigating our way around the planet,
0:53:55 > 0:53:59today's photo-real online maps from companies like Microsoft and Google
0:53:59 > 0:54:02can take us anywhere in the world at the click of a mouse.
0:54:07 > 0:54:10From their corporate playground here in Zurich,
0:54:10 > 0:54:15Google Earth routinely sends out cars with mounted cameras to map our roads...
0:54:16 > 0:54:20..cameras on tricycles to get into heritage sites,
0:54:20 > 0:54:23and aerial teams to capture the big picture.
0:54:23 > 0:54:27These images are combined with satellite photographs
0:54:27 > 0:54:29and then wrapped around a 3D model of the Earth
0:54:29 > 0:54:33to create an instantly accessible virtual world.
0:54:33 > 0:54:37It's the technology that only a few years ago would have been impossible
0:54:37 > 0:54:41outside of defence departments or, you know, the CIA.
0:54:41 > 0:54:44And now you have access to that information
0:54:44 > 0:54:49and you can fly around the world with very high rates of frame update -
0:54:49 > 0:54:51ie, it looks very smooth -
0:54:51 > 0:54:55and there's a massive amount of very clever technology going on behind the scenes.
0:54:55 > 0:54:59You can explore as if you were flying over the Alps
0:54:59 > 0:55:03in a jet fighter from your home, and that's amazing.
0:55:05 > 0:55:10Google Earth has been downloaded by over half a billion people worldwide, and it's no surprise,
0:55:10 > 0:55:13because there's something incredibly exhilarating
0:55:13 > 0:55:16about seeing our planet suspended there in space,
0:55:16 > 0:55:20hurtling down through the layers and coming to rest in your own street,
0:55:20 > 0:55:24which is what most people do when they usually log on to Google Earth.
0:55:24 > 0:55:27And this is Oxford. This is where I live.
0:55:27 > 0:55:29That's my own street
0:55:29 > 0:55:32and that's where I get my coffee in the morning.
0:55:32 > 0:55:36This is a miniature version of the Earth at our fingertips.
0:55:36 > 0:55:39The world now seems open and accessible to all.
0:55:41 > 0:55:44Digital maps produced by online companies all over the world
0:55:44 > 0:55:47are helping to redefine the relationships
0:55:47 > 0:55:49between global corporations,
0:55:49 > 0:55:52national governments and individual citizens.
0:55:52 > 0:55:53One of the things that surprised us
0:55:53 > 0:55:57was how quickly Google Earth became a tool for people,
0:55:57 > 0:56:01individuals, organisations to communicate their idea,
0:56:01 > 0:56:03whatever they had a concern over.
0:56:03 > 0:56:07In the Amazon, there was a tribe that we got to know
0:56:07 > 0:56:11who had, for many years, avoided civilization,
0:56:11 > 0:56:16so they didn't have a culture of writing reports or creating maps.
0:56:16 > 0:56:18But nevertheless, they were in an area
0:56:18 > 0:56:22that was under environmental pressure from logging and so on.
0:56:22 > 0:56:25Because they could recognise their local area from images,
0:56:25 > 0:56:27they were able to use Google Earth
0:56:27 > 0:56:31as a tool to delineate their tribal areas
0:56:31 > 0:56:33and then use that information
0:56:33 > 0:56:35to fight their case.
0:56:38 > 0:56:44Maps have also been used to mobilise international public opinion.
0:56:44 > 0:56:49In places like Darfur, the mapping has taken on even more political resonance, hasn't it?
0:56:49 > 0:56:52Yeah. A few years ago, when the atrocities were happening in Darfur,
0:56:52 > 0:56:57we worked with an organisation in the United States
0:56:57 > 0:57:01to actually show people pictures of villages that had been burnt.
0:57:01 > 0:57:04You could actually see the circles that were people's huts
0:57:04 > 0:57:06that had been burnt.
0:57:06 > 0:57:08That had a huge human impact.
0:57:13 > 0:57:16For hundreds of years, maps have been used
0:57:16 > 0:57:21to do so much more than help us navigate around the globe.
0:57:21 > 0:57:25From the spiritual meditations of the medieval Catholic Church
0:57:25 > 0:57:29to Victorian anxieties about immigration, poverty and disease,
0:57:29 > 0:57:35maps have been used to help us carve up, manipulate and make sense of the world.
0:57:37 > 0:57:40Digital maps are now being used in the same way.
0:57:40 > 0:57:43They feed our hunger for instant information
0:57:43 > 0:57:48and define our fears for the future of the world in the 21st century.
0:57:50 > 0:57:55Human beings have been making maps of one sort or another ever since we first walked the Earth,
0:57:55 > 0:57:59and what I've always loved about them is the fact that they define our world
0:57:59 > 0:58:01rather than simply reflecting it,
0:58:01 > 0:58:07and they'll continue to shape who we are and what we do as humans, whatever our future.
0:58:09 > 0:58:14In the next programme, maps inspire an age of discovery,
0:58:14 > 0:58:16the naming of America,
0:58:16 > 0:58:19and an international treasure hunt.
0:58:40 > 0:58:43Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:43 > 0:58:45E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk