Origins of Land Surveying

· 2 min read
Origins of Land Surveying

The principles of land surveying date back almost as far as the idea of land ownership. Since ancient man determined that certain parcel would participate in one group, and another piece to some other group, there was a need to mediate between land disputes. This is where land surveying came in, although today surveys may also be used for a great many other purposes.

Since that time, every major civilization in the annals of the planet has used some type of land surveying, although they will have certainly are more sophisticated over time both with changing laws and improved technologies. Today, GPS along with other technologies allow for a more exact survey than was possible only a few short decades ago. As you can imagine, ancient maps and land surveys were even less accurate.

Among the first types of a land survey using mathematical means was in ancient Egypt. THE FANTASTIC Pyramid, built around 2700 BC at Giza, demonstrates Egyptians' knowledge of surveying techniques. Ancient Egyptians also redrew boundary lines using basic geometry after the Nile River flooded the plains. An Egyptian land register existed as soon as 3000 BC, or five thousand years back, to record the owners of varied pieces of land and their locations. These early surveying efforts by the Egyptians were years before other civilizations, as was true in many other areas of Egyptian technology as well. These surveys were predicated on geometry in addition to simple declarations they believed these boundaries to be correct.



In the Roman Empire., the Romans actually established 'land surveyor' being an official position. These were called agrimensores. Texts describing their actions date back again to the initial century AD. Thorough and precise, these were known for creating impeccably straight lines and right angles using simple tools. After measuring these lines, they would dig a shallow ditch to represent the lines. Amazingly, a few of these ditches still exist to the present day.

In eleventh century England, William the Conqueror wrote his now-famous Domesday Book. This book, covering most of England, meticulously covered the names of all land owners, the product quality and amount of this land, and information on the people and resources in each area. Even though amount of information within this book was quite impressive, this was not just a technical survey, and the maps weren't attracted to scale and were not very accurate.

Napoleon Bonaparte was the first to mandate a cadastre, in 1808. At times, Napoleon even thought that the cadastre would be his greatest contribution to civil law. The cadastre is a thorough register of the house in a given county. The information it contains includes ownership details, location (as precisely measured as possible given then-current technology), and as much information about the value and using the land as was available. This cadastre included scale maps at both 1:2500 and 1:1250. Cadastre use spread quickly, and even it was the foundation of today's cadastral surveys. However,  BIM Surveys Sheffield  had been difficult to produce a cadastre in rural areas or those where land was in dispute.

Today's surveys are much more accurate than those done in decades or centuries past because of sophisticated opportinity for measuring and recording boundaries and land features. There are plenty of more applications of land surveys than simply recording land ownership