Writing, developed first by people in Sumer, is considered a hallmark of civilization and appears to accompany the rise of complex administrative bureaucracies or the conquest state. Traders and bureaucrats relied on writing to keep accurate records.
Elevation, or geometric height, is mainly used when referring to points on the Earth 's surface, while altitude or geopotential height is used for points above the surface, such as an aircraft in flight or a spacecraft in orbit, and depth is used for points below the surface. topographical map is the main type of map used to depict elevation, often through use of contour lines. In a Geographic Information System (GIS), digital elevation models (DEM) are commonly used to represent the surface (topography) of a place, through a raster (grid) dataset of elevations.
    Science Major: Altitude is height above mean sea level (MSL) or true altitude, which means in reference to what sea level is on the grou â¦ nd, or height above ground level (AGL), which is also called absolute altitude, which means height above the ground with no reference to the ground's height above sea level.n example, if the sea level in a certain place is 100 feet and you are 250 feet above the ground, your altitude above sea level would be 350 feet, and your altitude above ground level would be 250 feet.