Chapter 11 Section 4 The Earliest Historical Atlas——Pei Xiu's "Regional Map of Yugong"

When Pei Xiu became Sikong in the fourth year of Taishi (268 A.D.), after the wars in the late Eastern Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period, the maps left by the Han Dynasty were quite limited, and the quality was not high enough to meet daily needs.On the other hand, in the process of eliminating Shu and Wu, Wei State authorities paid great attention to collecting maps of the two countries.Especially during the pacification of the Shu Kingdom, special personnel were dispatched to investigate the terrain, terrain, mountains, rivers, and roads along the way with the army, and then check and modify them on the map.Therefore, a lot of geographical data and original maps had been accumulated at that time, which created conditions for compiling new high-quality maps.

As the map contained more and more content and did not use proper scales, the national map became bigger and bigger. At that time, a "big map of the world" used 80 horses [jianjian] (double silk) fine silk), not only inconvenient to consult, but also imprecise.Pei Xiu used the scale of "one is divided into ten miles, one inch is a hundred miles" to reduce this huge map to a "abbot's map" of one foot square.However, the content of the picture is still quite rich, "prepared for famous mountains and cities".Due to the adoption of an appropriate scale, the sense of reality is very strong, so that people who consult "can know the world without going to the classroom".

Pei Xiu considered that since the pre-Qin period, due to the long history, the names of mountains, rivers and places recorded in the ancient geography book "Yu Gong" have changed a lot. The more chaotic, full of mistakes, so he made a rigorous research based on the literature.In line with the principle of rather lack than excess, no questionable locations will be accepted, and all ancient place names that no longer existed at that time are also noted in the corresponding positions.In this way, Pei Xiu drew 18 "Map of Yugong Region". "Yugong Territory Map" is a historical atlas focusing on territorial and administrative regions, and it is also the first historical atlas of China known so far.The period covered by the atlas starts from the era of "Yu Gong" to the early years of the Western Jin Dynasty, and the content includes from the ancient Kyushu to the sixteen states of the Western Jin Dynasty, the prefectures, countries, counties, and towns below the prefectures and the boundaries between them, Ancient countries and places where major political activities took place in history, water and land transportation routes, etc., also include natural geographical elements such as mountains, mountains, oceans, rivers, plains, lakes, and swamps.Judging from the arrangement of the atlas into 18 chapters and subsequent historical atlases, this atlas is likely to adopt two methods of framing by period and framing by theme, that is, drawing the territories of different periods in time order The evolution map of the political districts is also drawn into different thematic maps according to mountains, rivers or other types.

As the unification of the Western Jin Dynasty came to an end soon, and the long-term divisions and wars between the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Southern and Northern Dynasties made it difficult to preserve and spread the map, so the "Yugong Area Map" was lost soon.However, Yu Wenkai, an architect of the Sui Dynasty in the early 7th century, mentioned that Pei Xiu's "map" used a scale of "two inches is a thousand miles" (approximately 1:9 million). "Fragmented volumes.But since then, there is no record about the circulation of "Yugong Area Map".