<P> The Polynesian peoples who explored and settled the Pacific islands in the first two millennia AD used maps to navigate across large distances . A surviving map from the Marshall Islands uses sticks tied in a grid with palm strips representing wave and wind patterns, with shells attached to show the location of islands . Other maps were created as needed using temporary arrangements of stones or shells . </P> <P> Medieval maps of the world in Europe were mainly symbolic in form along the lines of the much earlier Babylonian World Map . Known as Mappa Mundi (clothes of the world) these maps were circular or symmetrical cosmological diagrams representing the Earth's single land mass as disk - shaped and surrounded by ocean . </P> <P> Roger Bacon's investigations of map projections and the appearance of portolano and then portolan charts for plying the European trade routes were rare innovations of the period . The Majorcan school is contrasted with the contemporary Italian cartography school . The Carta Pisana portolan chart, made at the end of the 13th century (1275--1300), is the oldest surviving nautical chart (that is, not simply a map but a document showing accurate navigational directions). </P> <P> The Majorcan cartographic school was a predominantly Jewish cooperation of cartographers, cosmographers and navigational instrument - makers in late 13th to the 14th and 15th Century Majorca . With their multicultural heritage unstressed by fundamentalistic academic Christian traditions, the Majorcan cartographic school experimented and developed unique cartographic techniques, as it can be seen in the Catalan Atlas . The Majorcan school was (co -) responsible for the invention (c. 1300) of the "Normal Portolan chart". It was a contemporary superior, detailed nautical model chart, gridded by compass lines . </P>

Who made the first map in the world