2011, Vol.11, No.2

Journal of the Korean Cartographic Association 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.34

pISSN : 1598-6160
https://journal.kci.go.kr/jkca

This study shows that the first map of human history is Çatalhöyük map from Antolia, Turkey. Therefore, this study intends to swipe off controversy about the first map and identifies the geographical value and characteristics of the map. Found in the excavation procedure of prehistoric settlement, Çatalhöyük map turned out to be the first settlement planning map using bird’s-eye view. In the map, Mount Hasan(Hasan Dağı), located near the settlement, was described as leopard pattern. Seeing that a leopard was fearful threat for nomadic Çatalhöyük residents who raised livestocks, Mount Hasan was recognized as threats like leopard for its potential volcanic explosion.Çatalhöyük map is considered to reflects the residents of Çatalhöyük’s mind.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the mountain hierarchy system of Philippe Buache in order to find some implication for the naming of “East Sea”. For this, we surveyed the old maps and old manuscripts possessed by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Firstly, Philippe Buache became the first Royal geographer as a member of the Academie des Sciences. He introduced general system theory in geography to find the worldly order by the hierarchies of the mountains and oceans. Secondly, Buache’s used maps as a mean of geovisualiazation for a new discovery. Thirdly, the Earth is marked by chains of mountains which join together from one end of the continents to the other. These mountain ranges divide the three ocean basins. Each ocean basin is divided into maritime basins which are separated from each other by marine mountain ranges. East Sea is a particular maritime basin of the Pacific Ocean. Fourth, Buache always labelled East sea as ‘Mer de Corée’. A possible precursor of this labelling was Robert Dudley’s Asia map of 1647 and Guillauime Delisle’s Asia map of 1720. Fifth, the meaning of Buache’s toponomic choice in relation to the naming of East Sea is discussed.

This study focuses on the naming of the East Sea area and principles on maps produced by the map publishers of the United States and the United Kingdom since 2000. Most map publishers having their own policies regarding place names, the sea between Korea and Japan is represented as the pattern of ‘Sea of Japan(East Sea)’; however, in some cases, the single use of ‘Sea of Japan.’ Meanwhile, the various formats are used in naming the East Sea in geography textbooks because geographic naming of textbook publishers tends to be determined by each author. For the dissemination of the name ‘East Sea’ in the international arena, it is essential to give wider publicity on the legitimacy of the name ‘East Sea’ especially to authors of both map and textbook publishers.