The concept of the Yellow River Map has a contextual apparatus associated with ancient Chinese cosmology. Various myths or legends are connected with the idea of mapping, involving correspondences between the earth, the sky, and/or abstract diagrams. The idea of a simple division of a flat/square earth into the very basic 3x3, (9-square) grid is historically attested in literature as early as the Tian Wen's "Heavenly Questions", together with a suggested corresponding mapping solution for a round heaven/the sky (Hawkes, 136–137 [notes to Tian wen]). This text from the Chu Ci dates to pre-221 BCE. This basic grid is associated with the plan of Yu to control the Great Flood of China.

Myths of the Yellow River Map go back to earliest stages of the recorded history of Chinese culture.
Fu Xi or Fuxi was a half-snake deity and protoplast who has appeared with his sister Nüwa in accounts of the creation of humanity and invention of civilization since at least the Zhou dynasty. Among the stories told about him is one in which, inspired by spider webs and other natural phenomena, he created the River Map and then used it to devise the trigrams that comprise the later I Ching.
Yellow River floods were a constant occurrence throughout ancient, medieval, and early modern Chinese history, sometimes covering entire provinces and even shifting between the north and south sides of the Shandong Peninsula. The Great Flood was a foundational myth of Chinese culture concerning a major flood said to have lasted at least two generations amid storms and famines. Chinese legend traditionally places it during the third millennium BCE reign of the Emperor Yao. The River Map typically plays an important role in Yu the Great's eventual successful control over the flooding waters c. 2200–2100 BCE.
The personification or deity of the Yellow River holds the rank of count or earl (bo) in the celestial bureaucracy and is accordingly known as He Bo. In some accounts, he is involved in providing the River Map.
Houtu (后土) is a male, female, or non-gendered divinity depending on the source, although the image of a Sacred Mother Earth deity is now common. Houtu is worshiped in Chinese popular religion, with her birthday on the 18 day of the third month of the Chinese lunar calendar. Sacrifice and prayer to Houtu are believed to be efficacious for problems of weather, reproduction and family, wealth, and boating safety on the Yellow River. According to one account, when Yu the Great was attempting to channel the Yellow River and so avoid its flooding, he began by trying to open it to the west towards the mountains and away from the sea. Observing this, Houtu is said to have created and studied the River Map, after which she sent divine messenger birds to Yu to tell him to open up the river to the east instead. Yu's new dredging was a success, the flood waters drained into the eastern sea, and Yu's former dredging project toward the west was named the "River Wrongly Opened". In this story, Houtu and the River Map were key to the successful engineering solution to the flood problem.

The River Map is attested to in the Gu Ming section of the Book of Documents, one of its "new text" sections. Supposedly, the River Map was put on display during the Zhou dynasty. However, this has also been interpreted to mean a depiction of the 8 trigrams (bagua). This incident is recorded to have been during the reign of the Zhou Kangwang, who reigned either about 1020–996 BCE or 1005–978 BCE.