A map is a simplified depiction of a space, a navigational aid which highlights relations between objects within that space. Most usually a map is a two-dimensional, geometrically accurate representation of a three-dimensional space. The science and art of map-making is cartography; see that page for further discussion of the history of maps and map-making.

Map-making dates back to the Stone Age and appears to predate written language by several millennia. One of the oldest surviving maps is painted on a wall of the Catal Huyuk settlement in south-central Anatolia (now Turkey); it dates from about 6200 BC. href="http://articles.gourt.com/en/#References">Harvey 2000, p. 142.

While we tend to think of maps today as products of a rationalistic, scientific world-view, maps also have a mythic quality. Pre-modern maps, and mapping traditions outside the Western tradition, often merge geography with non-scientific cosmography, showing the relationship of the viewer to the universe. Medieval "T-O" maps, for example, show Jerusalem at the centre of the world, and in some cases related the "body" of the Earth to the body of Christ. By contrast, navigational (or "Portolan") charts of the Mediterranean from the same period are remarkably accurate. Even today, maps can be powerful rhetorical tools beyond their purely practical value, and this has been the source of much fruitful map criticism over the last twenty years, notably in the works of J.B. Harley, Mark Monmonier, and Denis Wood.