The oldest reference to a map comes from the year 227 BCE, when the assassin Jing Ke was to present a map to Ying Zheng, King of Qin, who later ruled as Qin Shi Huang. Later the Rites of Zhou, compiled during the Han and commented by Liu Xin in the 1st century CE, mentioned the use of maps by governmental provinces and districts, principalities,
frontier boundaries, and locations of ores and minerals for mining facilities. The first Chinese gazetter was written in 52 CE and included information on territorial divisions, the founding of cities, and local products and customs. Pei Xiu was the first to describe in detail the use of a graduated scale and geometrically plotted reference grid. Although there is speculation fueled by the report in Sima's Records of the Grand Historian that a gigantic raised-relief map representing the Qin Empire is located within the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, it is known that small raised-relief maps were created during the Han Dynasty, such as one made out of rice by the military officer Ma Yuan (14 BCE – 49 CE). Maps from the Han period have been uncovered by modern archaeologists, such as those found with 2nd-century-BCE silk texts at Mawangdui. In contrast to the Qin maps, the Han maps found at Mawangdui employ a more diverse use of map symbols, cover a larger terrain, and display information on local populations and even pinpoint locations of military camps. One of the maps discovered at Mawangdui shows positions of Han military garrisons which were to attack Nanyue in 181 BCE.