Quote Originally Posted by Mysterysword View Post
Speaking of old maps, is there any reason why we haven't found any maps of the world from the Allagans yet? Because I'm finding it really difficult to believe that a world-spanning empire could invent space-travel without having a complete map of the world. Why bother expanding towards space if there's land next to you that you haven't yet explored/conquered?
Besides the sensible meta-reasons explained by Moose, and the Calamitous re-geography-ing explained by Razor, we should also consider that maps (as would have been accurate during Allagan reign) quite probably do exist, but they are in non-paper (tomestone) format or otherwise very well hidden. Five thousand years is a long time for paper records, and they are not likely to have survived unless kept in sealed, magicked, or otherwise protected locations.

To draw a real-world parallel, we Earthans have shifted a great amount of our record-keeping to electronic formats in the last few decades, and books from even just a few hundred years ago might require careful preservation and handling to keep them from crumbling on contact.