The Tabula Peutingeriana is a medieval copy of a late Roman route map: a strip nearly seven metres long and about a third of a metre tall, covering the empire from Britain to India. Coastlines are squeezed flat and the Mediterranean is a thin channel, because the map records distances and stopping points rather than geography. It was made to be read the way you read a road, not a landscape.
Why this oneUseful maps have never been required to look like the land.