How would monsters map?

[rgcalsaverini]

I was pondering about it earlier today, and wanted to hear some ideas and opinions.
Take well organized, sociable and warmongering monsters, say Kobolds or Trolls. Should a more centralized power arise from the unification of a few tribes or clans, they will have mapping needs. Where are those yummy humans located? Where did we hid all those shinning things? I think that they would naturally try some mapping.

Direction
Maybe they don't know about compasses, and magnetism and such, and have to develop another way, more local, of achieving a sense of direction. One obvious way would be celestial features, such as the sun(s), moon(s) and stars. Maybe some visible geographical feature, such as a humongously big mountain.
Or maybe, and that's way more fun, they could assign some greater meaning or shape to their land, and use it to both naming and direction. For example, a troll tribe might believe that their land is shaped as the head of a troll, and use the facial features of a head as geographical references: "I see a pack of humans approaching the mouth, coming from the nose!"
Such thing has been done in antiquity and now and then is done again, apparently we find it easier to guide ourselves if we make analogies with well known objects.





Take those two maps above, its really easy to get a sense of direction from them. After 5 minutes memorizing that map, If you put your hands in the same way as the map shows, you can easily remember where the cities are and even guess some distances. And if you live somewhere at that lion's head, by referring to something at the lion's right forward paw, you can guess some distances and paths quite easily.

It sounds like something a primitive and superstitious race would do.

Labeling:
Maybe they don't yet have developed writing to the point of labeling a map, and have to express themselves in a more pictorial way. The smoky river is drawn literally as a river with smoke clouds above it? The dark passage between the mountains is colored black? The human village is represented as a stylized human? I can see the map quickly turning into a huge drawing. (By the way, is it no longer a map? It surely serves a map function).

Media:
Maybe paper is very rare, found only on lucky raids on human villages. They could use burning sticks on leather, or maybe carve wood. If they do get good at carving wood, and with some leather, they could even attempt a woodcut relief printing, it is a technique used by humanity for reproduction for a very very long time, and the looks of roughly done xylography are quite barbaric and I think that are aesthetically perfect for monsters.

Here is a quickly scribbled test of those ideas, of what might be a map for that troll society, if done in woodcut printed in two colors (human blood and coal


If you're not that familiar with the look of woodcut printed stuff (you probably are, remember Munch's The Scream, or Madonna?) here are some nice examples:






I love this! If I ever get enough free time I'll steal my fathers equipment and try my hand at a woodcut map!

How do you think a monster would map? What would be their uses for a map? Media? Style?


PS: I'm sorry about the huge amount of uploaded images, I know how irresponsible that is regarding server disc usage. I will donate to make up for my occasional excesses.