Ancient Anatolian Grids

Abstract. For as long as humans have existed, they have created specific legal structures and technical means of representation in order to situate themselves within the geographical space where they live, to find the right direction, to measure time and distance, to define property and to calculate gradients. With the progress of civilisation, maps came to be used as an instrument for controlling society, siting architectural structures, establishing towns and determining trade axes and property rights. As social structures and the needs and relationships embedded in them changed, and technical and technological methods became more advanced, cartography developed too, and the uses of maps increased. From their earliest discovery, the basic characteristics of maps were grids, isohypses (contours) and physical data. The geography and settlements of Anatolia provide some clues as to the types of grid that were used in ancient times. There are invisible grids compatible with Euclidean geometry. These can only be detected from the clues given by the settlement locations. These grids, which have determined the locations of settlements, the pattern of roads, the geostamps® and the division of the land in Anatolia, are an unknown aspect of the ancient era. In response to the obscurity of the topic, this paper sets out to make a preliminary appraisal of the grids of the ancient era. With the aid of a multi-disciplinary approach, an inter-disciplinary methodology and the Google Earth software, it outlines some of the types of grid that it has been possible to identify from analyses and drawings of the geography of Anatolia, together with their measures and origins. The paper aims to make a contribution to the disciplines of cartography and spatial planning by presenting the invisible grids of the Anatolia.