The principles of land surveying date back almost as far as the thought of land ownership. Since ancient man determined that certain parcel would belong to one group, and the other piece to some other group, there is a have to mediate between land disputes. That's where land surveying came in, although today surveys may also be used for a great many other purposes.
Since that time, every major civilization in the history of the world has used some form of land surveying, although they will have certainly become more sophisticated over time both with changing laws and improved technologies. Learn more here , GPS and other technologies allow for a much more exact survey than was possible only a few short decades ago. As you can imagine, ancient maps and land surveys were even less accurate.
Among the first examples of a land survey using mathematical means was in ancient Egypt. The Great 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 back, to record the owners of varied pieces of land and their locations. These early surveying efforts by the Egyptians were years before other civilizations, as was true in lots of other areas of Egyptian technology as well. These surveys were predicated 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 to the first 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, some of these ditches still exist for this day.
In eleventh century England, William the Conqueror wrote his now-famous Domesday Book. This book, covering all of England, meticulously covered the names of most land owners, the product quality and amount of this land, and home elevators individuals and resources in each area. Even though amount of information contained in this book was quite impressive, this was not just a technical survey, and the maps weren't attracted to scale and weren't very accurate.
Napoleon Bonaparte was the first ever to mandate a cadastre, in 1808. At times, Napoleon even thought that the cadastre will be his greatest contribution to civil law. The cadastre is a thorough register of the house in confirmed county. The information it includes includes ownership details, location (as precisely measured as possible given then-current technology), so when much information about the value and usage of the land as was available. This cadastre included scale maps at both 1:2500 and 1:1250. Cadastre use spread quickly, and even it was the origin of today's cadastral surveys. However, it was difficult to produce a cadastre in rural areas or those where land was in dispute.
Today's surveys are much more accurate than those done in decades or centuries past thanks to sophisticated opportinity for measuring and recording boundaries and land features. There are many more applications of land surveys than simply recording land ownership