Map-making is an ancient field dating from the first efforts by humans to create
pictorial representations of the world around them, by drawing on the walls or mud floors
of caves. Cartography, the modern discipline of map design, compilation,
and publication, is most often associated with the paper map, a flattened representation
of the curved surface of the Earth, but it may also refer to the creation of globes,
and increasingly it refers to the use of digital computers to manage the acquisition,
manipulation, and eventual display of geographic information on the screens of
computers. The advent of digital technology in the 1960s began a transition in the field
of cartography that continues today