At a certain moment in time people start to create more graphical representations of their surrounding environment. New technologies offered ways to expand these representations to larger geographical extent, higher spatial resolution, finer temporal granularity and larger periods. Technologies even made it possible to include other representations of reality such as social media and data ensembles in geodata visualizations, to the extent to even blend the real world with geodata-based visualization providing an augmented – virtual reality continuum. New forms of geo-data, like geolocated sensors may challenge the way geo-data visualisations are generated, shared and, eventually, influence decision-making processes. History and trends sketch these developments and future outlook. This concept introduces the main stages and turns in development of cartography, from earliest times to the present, the most important methods in map-making and map-based visualizations.