How do people make accurate maps even before airplanes were made?

Question

How did people know that America looks this way, South Africa looks this way, and etc although they haven't invented any flying inventions that could see the entire world at space yet.

Answer 1

Experienced mapmakers were very good at analyzing coastlines. You do what you have to. Very early maps of the regions show an understandable lack of information about the coastlines. As passage became more common, and mapmakers were brought to the new world, the quality improved.

Maps from the 1800's benefitted from surveying techniques and sextant/octant measurements. Older maps suffer in quality. Check out this site of old maps. In 1785, this person had NO CLUE what Canada looked like, even though that knowledge existed among Russian seal traders.

http://www.geographicus.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?page=G/PROD/AMER2/Amerique-clouet-1785

Or this map of South America, dated 1733.

http://www.geographicus.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?page=G/PROD/SA/Peru-hmhr-1733

Answer 2

Maps were made by measuring the latitude and estimating the longitude of varoius points on the coastline of continents and islands. Longitudes were not easy to measure until accurate clocks were developed.

Answer 3

Surveyors measured the earth.

Answer 4

experienced surveyors mapped the land

Answer 5

They used ships and did the geographical survey much slower than we do now.