Although today land surveying often makes use of GPS, computer models, and other recent technical developments, the profession of surveying actually dates back centuries. Evidence of surveying techniques can be found throughout much of recorded history. In fact, land surveying principles date back nearly as far as the idea of land ownership. As soon as individuals or groups owned specified areas of land, there was a need to describe or delineate who owned what, particularly to solve land disputes. This is where land surveying came in, although of course today land surveying is utilized for many other purposes too.
Ancient Egyptian surveying activities were particularly modern for their time period. When the Nile River overflowed its banks, washing out the existing boundaries between farms, these boundaries were re-established through the use of simple geometrical concepts by a surveyor. In this time, surveyors were known as rope stretchers because the measuring device they used was a knotted rope. Continue reading ‘Land Surveying in Ancient Times – Egypt, Greece and Rome’ »