Ever since ancient man decided that one piece of land would participate in one tribe and another piece of land to another, there's been a dependence on land surveys. While the technology and means of mediation have definitely become more sophisticated through the years, the basic have to define our boundaries remains. Every major civilization in the annals of the world utilized land surveying, some with an increase of sophisticated and accurate results than others.

One of the first examples of surveying by mathematical means was by the Egyptians. The Great Pyramid at Giza, build around 2700 BC, demonstrates their prowess and knowledge of surveying techniques. Once the Nile overflowed its banks and flooded the plains, the ancient Egyptians redrew boundary lines through the use of basic geometry. Also, an Egyptian Land register existed as early as 3000 BC. Though miles ahead of other civilizations of their time in regards to their surveying and irrigation techniques, nowadays we prefer a much more scientific approach to marking boundaries instead of declaring "I swear by the great god that is in heaven that the proper boundary stone has been create," when the boundary stones were replaced following the flooding waters of the Nile had receded.

Building upon the exemplory case of the Egyptians, the Romans went one step further and established Land Surveyor being an official position within the Roman Empire. They were called agrimensores, collectively known as Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum plus they performed various tasks throughout the Empire. These were remarkably thorough and precise within their methodology; they would create straight lines and right angles using simple tools. Once the lines were measured, they would create a furrow or perhaps a shallow ditch to represent the lines. Texts have been found which date dating back to the first century AD, and some furrows developed by them still exist today.


In England in 1086, William the Conqueror wrote the Domesday Book, which covered all of England and contained the names of the land owners, the quantity of land they owned, the standard of said land, and specific information regarding each area's resources and peoples. As the breadth of information was impressive for the time, the technical surveying skills were lacking. The maps were not designed to scale and did not accurately show locations.

It will not surprise anyone to learn that Napoleon Bonaparte was enthusiastic about proper surveying. If you are attempting to conquer the known world, it can help to possess accurate maps. In 1908 he founded the cadastre, a thorough register of the property of a county, which included ownership details, location as precisely as you possibly can, and as much information regarding the value and usage of the land. It also included maps drawn to scale both at 1:2500 and 1:1250. Using the cadastre spread quickly, but ran into problems in the more sparsely populated and disputed areas, since it would have to be updated each and every time anything changed. Napoleon felt that the establishment of the cadastre will be his greatest accomplishment in civil law.

Land surveying has even more applications today than in those of our predecessors. As read more of recording and preserving our history becomes more sophisticated, so do the means where we measure and record our boundaries and land.