Ancient maps placed political and religious centers at the world's middle, not accurate geography

Brotton opens with ancient and medieval maps that put a specific city or holy site at the literal center of the known world, not because mapmakers were ignorant of geography but because centering that place made a cosmological or political statement about its importance. A Babylonian world map places Babylon at the center of a symbolic universe; later medieval Christian maps, called mappae mundi, place Jerusalem at the center, reflecting its status as the spiritual axis of creation rather than its actual geographic position.

These maps weren't primarily navigational tools; they were theological and philosophical diagrams meant to explain humanity's place in a divinely ordered cosmos, with geography arranged to support that meaning rather than to help someone travel accurately from one place to another.

Brotton uses this to establish his book's throughline early: mapmaking has rarely been a neutral technical exercise, and the earliest surviving maps already show makers bending geography to fit a worldview. Takeaway: what a map puts at its center reveals what its maker considered most important, not necessarily what's most central geographically.