Working with spatial data on many environments requires an historic perspective of the land use, urban development and other changes on earth surface. Some times (or most times) the only data available is on printed form with or without a system of reference that makes this data of limited use for a spatial analysis. Afortunately, QGIS can handle the georeferenciation of ancient maps on a smooth and quick way based on the functionality of its tools.
Anyone can overlay an historic map on the map canvas on few steps. This tutorial shows the whole procedure to georeference a map of Lima city from 1856 in QGIS.
You can download the input data for this tutorial here.