Just by sailing or navigating the land, how were maps drawn with any accuracy or to any scale?
In: Planetary Science
They would separately calculate their latitude and longitude.
Latitude can be done relatively easy with some basic astronomy tools at night. You look at the angle on the horizon to known stars and can calculate your position accordingly.
Calculating longitude required knowing the time and using that to compare the time that particular stars appeared at their highest in the sky (or even the time of the sunrise).
They also just had a decent estimate for the speed of their ships and could make a decent estimate at where they probably were based on their previous calculated position.
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