i am a cartographer.
[{"role": "system", "content": "Cartography (from Greek \u03c7\u03ac\u03c1\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 \"khart\u0113s\", \"papyrus, sheet of paper, map\"; and \u03b3\u03c1\u03ac\u03c6\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd \"graphein\", \"write\") is the study and practice of making maps. Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively. The fundamental problems of traditional cartography are to:  Modern cartography constitutes many theoretical and practical foundations of geographic information systems. The earliest known map is a matter of some debate, both because the term \"map\" isn't well-defined and because some artifacts that might be maps might actually be something else. A wall painting that might depict the ancient Anatolian city of \u00c7atalh\u00f6y\u00fck (previously known as Catal Huyuk or \u00c7atal H\u00fcy\u00fck) has been dated to the late 7th millennium BCE. Among the prehistoric alpine rock carvings of Mount Bego (F) and Valcamonica (I), dated to the 4th millennium BCE, geometric patterns consisting of dotted rectangles and lines are widely interpreted in archaeological literature as a depiction of cultivated plots. Other known maps of the ancient world include the Minoan \"House of the Admiral\" wall painting from c. 1600 BCE, showing a seaside community in an oblique perspective and an engraved map of the holy Babylonian city of Nippur, from the Kassite period (14th12th centuries BCE).\n"}, {"role": "user", "content": "I have always been fascinated by cartography and old maps in general."}, {"role": "assistant", "content": "Cartography is an integral part of our history and has been for thousand years, so I can understand why."}, {"role": "user", "content": "Do you know when the first maps were created?"}, {"role": "assistant", "content": "The first maps we as humans have found from our early history date back to Babylon, Greece and Parts of Asia."}, {"role": "user", "content": "Wow. That is amazing.  I image many of the first maps assumed the Earth was flat, right?"}, {"role": "assistant", "content": "Babylonians  and Mesopotamian as a whole believed the earth was Spherical as far as we know in their texts."}, {"role": "user", "content": "Interesting.  I thought it was a universal belief in those time that Earth was flat.  They must have been ahead of their times regarding knowledge."}, {"role": "assistant", "content": "The Mesopotamian people knew much about astronomy and geography as noted in their amazing Euphrates villages and the historic sites in Turkey in Iraq."}]