Ever since ancient man decided that one piece of land would belong to one tribe and another piece of land to another, there's been a need for land surveys. As the technology and means of mediation have definitely are more sophisticated over time, the basic need to define our boundaries remains. Every major civilization in the annals of the planet 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 understanding of surveying techniques. Once the Nile overflowed its banks and flooded the plains, the ancient Egyptians redrew boundary lines by using basic geometry. Also, an Egyptian Land register existed as soon as 3000 BC. Though miles ahead of other civilizations of their time when it comes to their surveying and irrigation techniques, nowadays we prefer a much more scientific approach to marking boundaries instead of declaring "I swear by the great god that is 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 being an official position within the Roman Empire. These were called agrimensores, collectively known as Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum plus they performed various tasks throughout the Empire. These were remarkably thorough and precise in their methodology; they would create straight lines and right angles using simple tools. After the lines were measured, they might create a furrow or a shallow ditch to represent the lines. Texts have already been found which date as far back as 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 most of England and contained the names of the land owners, the amount of land they owned, the quality of said land, and specific information about each area's resources and peoples. As the breadth of information was impressive for the time, the technical surveying skills were lacking. The maps weren't designed to scale and did not accurately show locations.
It should not surprise anyone to learn that Napoleon Bonaparte was thinking about proper surveying. When you're trying to conquer the known world, it helps to possess 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 regarding the value and using the land. In addition, it included maps attracted to scale both at 1:2500 and 1:1250. The usage of the cadastre spread quickly, but ran into problems in the more sparsely populated and disputed areas, since it would have to be updated every time anything changed. Napoleon felt that the establishment of the cadastre would be his greatest accomplishment in civil law.
Land surveying has even more applications today than in those of our predecessors. As local contractor of recording and preserving our history becomes more sophisticated, so do the means by which we measure and record our boundaries and land.