Ever since ancient man decided that one piece of land would participate in one tribe and another piece of land to another, there's been a need for land surveys. As Learn here and method of mediation have definitely become more sophisticated over the years, the basic need to define our boundaries remains. Every major civilization in the history of the world utilized land surveying, some with more sophisticated and accurate results than others.
One of the first examples of surveying by mathematical means was by the Egyptians. THE FANTASTIC Pyramid at Giza, build around 2700 BC, demonstrates their prowess and knowledge of surveying techniques. When the Nile overflowed its banks and flooded the plains, the ancient Egyptians redrew boundary lines through the use of basic geometry. Also, an Egyptian Land register existed as soon as 3000 BC. Though miles ahead of other civilizations of their own time in regards to their surveying and irrigation techniques, nowadays we prefer a much more scientific method of marking boundaries rather than declaring "I swear by the great god that's in heaven that the proper boundary stone has been set up," once the boundary stones were replaced after the flooding waters of the Nile had receded.
Building upon the example of the Egyptians, the Romans went one step further and established Land Surveyor as an official position within the Roman Empire. They were called agrimensores, collectively known as Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum and they performed various tasks throughout the Empire. They were remarkably thorough and precise in their methodology; they might create straight lines and right angles using simple tools. Once the lines were measured, they would create a furrow or perhaps a shallow ditch to represent the lines. Texts have been found which date dating back to the first century AD, plus some furrows created by them remain today.
In England in 1086, William the Conqueror wrote the Domesday Book, which covered all of England and contained the names of the land owners, the number of land they owned, the caliber of said land, and specific information regarding each area's resources and peoples. While the breadth of information was impressive for the time, the technical surveying skills were lacking. The maps were not made to scale and didn't accurately show locations.
It should not surprise one to learn that Napoleon Bonaparte was enthusiastic about proper surveying. When you're trying to conquer the known world, it helps to have accurate maps. In 1908 he founded the cadastre, a thorough register of the house of a county, which included ownership details, location as precisely as possible, and as much information about the value and usage of the land. In addition, it included maps attracted to scale both at 1:2500 and 1:1250. Using the cadastre spread quickly, but ran into problems in the more sparsely populated and disputed areas, as it needed to be updated each time anything changed. Napoleon felt that the establishment of the cadastre will be his greatest accomplishment in civil law.
Land surveying has even more applications today than in those of our predecessors. As our means of recording and preserving our history becomes more sophisticated, so do the means where we measure and record our boundaries and land.