The principles of land surveying date back almost so far as the thought of land ownership. Ever since ancient man determined that certain piece of land would belong to one group, and another piece to some other group, there was a need to mediate between land disputes. That's where land surveying came in, although today surveys are also used for 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 much more exact survey than was possible just a couple 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' understanding 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 early as 3000 BC, or five thousand years ago, to record the owners of various bits of land and their locations. These early surveying efforts by the Egyptians were years ahead of other civilizations, as was true in lots of the areas of Egyptian technology as well. https://castlesurveys.co.uk/ were based on geometry along with simple declarations they believed these boundaries to be correct.

In the Roman Empire., the Romans actually established 'land surveyor' as an official position. They 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, many of these ditches still exist for this 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 most land owners, the product quality and level of this land, and information on the people and resources in each area. Although the amount of information within this book was quite impressive, this was not a technical survey, and the maps were not attracted to scale and were not very accurate.

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

Today's surveys are a lot more accurate than those done in decades or centuries past thanks to sophisticated means for measuring and recording boundaries and land features. There are plenty of more applications of land surveys than recording land ownership