Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon (Map Based Questions) – July 12, 2020

Early in the 19th century, the British were enjoying significant power in the India subcontinent, working with and often against the scattered royal kingdoms that ruled over patches of land, small and large.

• They had grown from just traders at the ports of southern India to a military power with influence all the way up to the plains fed by the great Ganges.
• But Tibet, located beyond the towering Himalayas, was still a mystic land for them. That’s when they recruited three brothers: Dolpa, Mani Singh and Nain Singh Rawat.
• Three brothers (mainly Nain Singh) explored the Himalayan region for the British. He received a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society in the year 1876 for his contributions.

A map is a representation of a selection of real features on the Earth.

• It is designed to record the relationships between features and to allow these relationships to be analyzed.
• A map may be very simple (e.g. a sketch showing the location of plants in your garden) or very complex (e.g. a topographic map of the Australian Alps).

General Maps: These are simple maps showing important physical (natural and man–made) features in an area.

• Their main purpose is to summarize the landscape to aid discovery of locations.
• They are usually easy to read and understand.  Most of the early mapping of the Earth falls into this group.

Thematic Maps: These are maps which depict information on a particular topic or theme.

• The detail portrayed on a thematic map may be physical, statistical, measured, or interpreted, and sometimes requires specialist knowledge by the map user.
• Weather, population density and geology maps are examples of thematic maps.

Topographic Maps: Like General Reference Maps, Topographic Maps are a summary of the landscape and show important physical (natural and man-made) features in an area. The primary difference is that they show elevation in detail.

Cadastral Maps: The cadastre of a country is its register of property titles and is usually managed by government agencies.

• The information recorded includes an accurate description of the location of a parcel of land and who owns it.
• It may also record what the land can be used for (e.g. residential or not, national park etc) and may also show the location and shape of buildings.

A datum is a system which allows the location of latitudes and longitudes (and heights) to be identified onto the surface of the Earth – i.e. onto the surface of a ’round’ object.

A projection is a process which uses the latitude and longitude which has already been ‘drawn’ on the surface of the Earth using a datum, to then be ‘drawn’ onto a ‘flat piece of paper’ – called a map.

After the overthrow of the White Huns no supreme power existed in India until the beginning of the 7th century.

• The decline of the Gupta Empire was followed by a period of political disorder and disunity in North India.
• It was only in the beginning of the seventh century AD that Harshvardhana (606-647 or 648) succeeded in establishing a larger kingdom in north India.
• Harsha, originally king of Thaneswar, after a thirty-five years’ war, became the lord paramount of the north, while Pulikesin II, the greatest of the Chalukya dynasty, was the leading sovereign in the south.
  

Finance Minister has announced to develop five archaeological sites while presenting the budget 2020-21. These places are Rakhigarhi (Haryana), Hastinapur (Uttar Pradesh), Sivasagar (Assam), Dholavira (Gujarat) and Adichanallur (Tamil Nadu).

Manganese is not found as a free element in nature. It is often found in combination with iron. The most important manganese ore is pyrolusite. Manganese is primarily used in iron and steel industry.

Andhra Pradesh: 13% of India’s manganese production comes from this state. Cuddapah, Vijayanagaram and Guntur are other manganese producing districts.

Karnataka: 6 per cent of India’s manganese comes from this state. Uttara Kannada, Shimoga, Bellary, Chitradurg and Tumkur districts are manganese producing districts.

Madhya Pradesh: It produces about 27.59 per cent of India’s manganese ore. The main belt extends in Balaghat and Chhindwara districts. It is just an extension of the Nagpur Bhandara belt of Maharashtra.

Lateritic is a soil and rock type rich in iron and aluminum and is commonly considered to have formed in hot and wet tropical areas.

• Nearly all lateritics are of rusty-red coloration, because of high iron oxide content.
• They develop by intensive and prolonged weathering of the underlying parent rock.
• The lateritic soils are commonly found in Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and the hilly areas of Orissa and Assam.