
The earliest known world maps date to classical antiquity, the oldest examples of the 6th to 5th centuries BCE still based on the flat Earth paradigm. World maps assuming a spherical Earth first appear in the Hellenistic period. The developments of Greek geography during this time, notably by Eratosthenes and Posidonius culminated in the Roman era, with Ptolemy's world map (2nd century CE), which would remain authoritative throughout the Middle Ages. Since Ptolemy, knowledge of the approximate size of the Earth allowed cartographers to estimate the extent of their geographical knowledge, and to indicate parts of the planet known to exist but not yet explored as terra incognita.
With the Age of Discovery, during the 15th to 18th centuries, world maps became increasingly accurate; exploration of Antarctica, Australia, and the interior of Africa by western mapmakers was left to the 19th and early 20th century.
Antiquity
Bronze Age Saint-Bélec slab
The Saint-Bélec slab discovered in 1900 by Paul du Châtellier, in Finistère, France, is dated to between 1900 BCE and 1640 BCE. A recent analysis, published in the Bulletin of the French Prehistoric Society, has shown that the slab is a three-dimensional representation of the River Odet valley in Finistère, France. This would make the Saint-Bélec slab the oldest known map of a territory in the world. According to the authors, the map probably was not used for navigation, but rather to show the political power and territorial extent of a local ruler's domain of the early Bronze Age.
Babylonian Imago Mundi (c. 6th c. BCE)
A Babylonian world map, known as the Imago Mundi, is commonly dated to the 6th century BCE. The map as reconstructed by Eckhard Unger shows Babylon on the Euphrates, surrounded by a circular landmass including Assyria, Urartu (Armenia) and several cities, in turn surrounded by a "bitter river" (Oceanus), with eight outlying regions (nagu) arranged around it in the shape of triangles, so as to form a star. The accompanying text mentions a distance of seven beru between the outlying regions. The descriptions of five of them have survived:
- The third region is where "the winged bird ends not his flight", i.e., cannot reach.
- On the fourth region "the light is brighter than that of sunset or stars": it lay in the northwest, and after sunset in summer was practically in semi-obscurity.
- The fifth region, due north, lay in complete darkness, a land "where one sees nothing", and "the sun is not visible".
- The sixth region, "where a horned bull dwells and attacks the newcomer".
- The seventh region lay in the east and is "where the morning dawns".
Anaximander (c. 610–546 BCE)
Anaximander (died c. 546 BCE) is credited with having created one of the first maps of the world, which was circular in form and showed the known lands of the world grouped around the Aegean Sea at the center. This was all surrounded by the ocean.
Hecataeus of Miletus (c. 550–476 BCE)
Hecataeus of Miletus is credited with a work entitled Periodos Ges ("Travels round the Earth" or "World Survey"), in two books each organized in the manner of a periplus, a point-to-point coastal survey. One, on Europe, is essentially a periplus of the Mediterranean, describing each region in turn, reaching as far north as Scythia. The other book, on Asia, is arranged similarly to the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea of which a version of the 1st century CE survives. Hecataeus described the countries and inhabitants of the known world, the account of Egypt being particularly comprehensive; the descriptive matter was accompanied by a map, based upon Anaximander's map of the Earth, which he corrected and enlarged. The work only survives in some 374 fragments, by far the majority being quoted in the geographical lexicon the Ethnica, compiled by Stephanus of Byzantium.
Eratosthenes (276–194 BCE)
Eratosthenes (276–194 BCE) drew an improved world map, incorporating information from the campaigns of Alexander the Great and his successors. Asia became wider, reflecting the new understanding of the actual size of the continent. Eratosthenes was also the first geographer to incorporate parallels and meridians within his cartographic depictions, attesting to his understanding of the spherical nature of the Earth.
Posidonius (c. 135–51 BCE)
Posidonius (or Poseidonius) of Apameia (c. 135–51 BCE) was a Greek Stoic philosopher who traveled throughout the Roman world and beyond and was a celebrated polymath throughout the Greco-Roman world, like Aristotle and Eratosthenes. His work "about the ocean and the adjacent areas" was a general geographical discussion, showing how all the forces had an effect on each other and applied also to human life. He measured the Earth's circumference by reference to the position of the star Canopus. His measure of 240,000 stadia translates to 24,000 miles (39,000 km), close to the actual circumference of 24,901 miles (40,074 km). He was informed in his approach by Eratosthenes, who a century earlier used the elevation of the Sun at different latitudes. Both men's figures for the Earth's circumference were uncannily accurate, aided in each case by mutually compensating errors in measurement. However, the version of Posidonius' calculation popularised by Strabo was revised by correcting the distance between Rhodes and Alexandria to 3,750 stadia, resulting in a circumference of 180,000 stadia, or 18,000 miles (29,000 km).Ptolemy discussed and favored this revised figure of Posidonius over Eratosthenes in his Geographia, and during the Middle Ages scholars divided into two camps regarding the circumference of the Earth, one side identifying with Eratosthenes' calculation and the other with Posidonius' 180,000 stadion measure, which is now known to be about 33% too low. This was the number used by Christopher Columbus to underestimate the distance to India as 70,000 stades.
Strabo (c. 64 BCE – 24 CE)
Strabo is mostly famous for his 17-volume work Geographica, which presented a descriptive history of people and places from different regions of the world known to his era. The Geographica first appeared in Western Europe in Rome as a Latin translation issued around 1469. Although Strabo referenced the antique Greek astronomers Eratosthenes and Hipparchus and acknowledged their astronomical and mathematical efforts towards geography, he claimed that a descriptive approach was more practical. Geographica provides a valuable source of information on the ancient world, especially when this information is corroborated by other sources. Within the books of Geographica is a map of Europe. Whole world maps according to Strabo are reconstructions from his written text.
Pomponius Mela (c. 43 CE)
Pomponius is unique among ancient geographers in that, after dividing the Earth into five zones, of which two only were habitable, he asserts the existence of antichthones, people inhabiting the southern temperate zone inaccessible to the folk of the northern temperate regions due to the unbearable heat of the intervening torrid belt. On the divisions and boundaries of Europe, Asia and Africa, he repeats Eratosthenes; like all classical geographers from Alexander the Great (except Ptolemy) he regards the Caspian Sea as an inlet of the Northern Ocean, corresponding to the Persian (Persian Gulf) and Arabian (Red Sea) gulfs on the south.
Marinus of Tyre (c. 120 CE)
Marinus of Tyre's world maps were the first in the Roman Empire to show China. Around 120 CE, Marinus wrote that the habitable world was bounded on the west by the Fortunate Islands. The text of his geographical treatise however is lost. He also invented the equirectangular projection, which is still used in map creation today. A few of Marinus' opinions are reported by Ptolemy. Marinus was of the opinion that the Okeanos was separated into an eastern and a western part by the continents (Europe, Asia and Africa). He thought that the inhabited world stretched in latitude from Thule (Shetland) to Agisymba (Tropic of Capricorn) and in longitude from the Isles of the Blessed to Shera (China). Marinus also coined the term Antarctic, referring to the opposite of the Arctic Circle. His chief legacy is that he first assigned to each place a proper latitude and longitude; he used a "Meridian of the Isles of the Blessed (Canary Islands or Cape Verde Islands)" as the zero meridian.
Ptolemy (c. 150)
Surviving texts of Ptolemy's Geography, first composed c. 150, note that he continued the use of Marinus's equirectangular projection for its regional maps while finding it inappropriate for maps of the entire known world. Instead, in Book VII of his work, he outlines three separate projections of increasing difficulty and fidelity. Ptolemy followed Marinus in underestimating the circumference of the world; combined with accurate absolute distances, this led him to also overestimate the length of the Mediterranean Sea in terms of degrees. His prime meridian at the Fortunate Isles was therefore around 10 actual degrees further west of Alexandria than intended, a mistake that was corrected by Al-Khwārizmī following the translation of Syriac editions of Ptolemy into Arabic in the 9th century. The oldest surviving manuscripts of the work date to Maximus Planudes's restoration of the text a little before 1300 at Chora Monastery in Constantinople (Istanbul); surviving manuscripts from this era seem to preserve separate recensions of the text which diverged as early as the 2nd or 4th century. A passage in some of the recensions credits an Agathodaemon with drafting a world map, but no maps seem to have survived to be used by Planude's monks. Instead, he commissioned new world maps calculated from Ptolemy's thousands of coordinates and drafted according to the text's 1st and 2nd projections, along with the equirectangular regional maps. A copy was translated into Latin by Jacobus Angelus at Florence around 1406 and soon supplemented with maps on the 1st projection. Maps using the 2nd projection were not made in Western Europe until Nicolaus Germanus's 1466 edition. Ptolemy's 3rd (and hardest) projection does not seem to have been used at all before new discoveries expanded the known world beyond the point where it provided a useful format.
Cicero's Dream of Scipio described the Earth as a globe of insignificant size in comparison to the remainder of the cosmos. Many medieval manuscripts of Macrobius' Commentary on the Dream of Scipio include maps of the Earth, including the antipodes, zonal maps showing the Ptolemaic climates derived from the concept of a spherical Earth and a diagram showing the Earth (labeled as globus terrae, the sphere of the Earth) at the center of the hierarchically ordered planetary spheres.
Tabula Peutingeriana (4th century)
The Tabula Peutingeriana (Peutinger table) is an itinerarium showing the cursus publicus, the road network in the Roman Empire. It is a 13th-century copy of an original map dating from the 4th century, covering Europe, parts of Asia (India) and North Africa. The map is named after Konrad Peutinger, a German 15th–16th century humanist and antiquarian. The map was discovered in a library in Worms by Conrad Celtes, who was unable to publish his find before his death, and bequeathed the map in 1508 to Peutinger. It is conserved at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Hofburg, Vienna.
Middle Ages
Cosmas Indicopleustes' Map (6th century)
Around 550 Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote the copiously illustrated Christian Topography, a work partly based on his personal experiences as a merchant on the Red Sea and Indian Ocean in the early 6th century. Though his cosmogony is refuted by modern science, he has given a historic description of India and Sri Lanka during the 6th century, which is invaluable to historians. Cosmas seems to have personally visited the Kingdom of Axum in modern Ethiopia and Eritrea, as well as India and Sri Lanka. In 522 CE, he visited the Malabar Coast (South India). A major feature of his Topography is Cosmas' worldview that the world is flat, and that the heavens form the shape of a box with a curved lid, a view he took from unconventional interpretations of Christian scripture. Cosmas aimed to prove that pre-Christian geographers had been wrong in asserting that the earth was spherical and that it was in fact modelled on the Tabernacle, the house of worship described to Moses by God during the Jewish Exodus from Egypt.
Isidore of Sevilla's T and O map (c. 636)
The medieval T and O maps originate with the description of the world in the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (died 636). This qualitative and conceptual type of medieval cartography represents only the top-half of a spherical Earth. It was presumably tacitly considered a convenient projection of the inhabited portion of the world known in Roman and medieval times (that is, the northern temperate half of the globe). The T is the Mediterranean, dividing the three continents, Asia, Europe and Africa, and the O is the surrounding Ocean. Jerusalem was generally represented in the center of the map. Asia was typically the size of the other two continents combined. Because the sun rose in the east, Paradise (the Garden of Eden) was generally depicted as being in Asia, and Asia was situated at the top portion of the map.
Albi Mappa Mundi (8th century)
The UNESCO.
is a medieval map of the world, included in a manuscript of the second half of the 8th century, preserved in the old collection of the library Pierre-Amalric in Albi, France. This manuscript comes from the chapter library of the Sainte-Cécile Albi Cathedral. The Albi Mappa Mundi was inscribed in October 2015 in the Memory of the World Programme ofThe manuscript bearing the card contains 77 pages. It is named in the eighteenth century "Miscellanea" (Latin word meaning "collection"). This collection contains 22 different documents, which had educational functions. The manuscript, a Parchment probably made from a goat or sheep skin, is in a very good state of preservation.
The map itself is 27 cm high by 22.5 wide. It represents 23 countries on 3 continents and mentions several cities, islands, rivers and seas. The known world is represented in the form of a horseshoe, opening at the level of the Strait of Gibraltar, and surrounding the Mediterranean, with the Middle East at the top, Europe on the left and North Africa on the right.
Ibn Hawqal's map (10th century)
Ibn Hawqal was an Arab scientist of the 10th century who developed a world map, based on his own travel experience and probably the works of Ptolemy. Another such cartographer was Istakhri.
Anglo-Saxon Cotton World Map (c. 1040)
This map appears in a copy of a classical work on geography, the Latin version by Priscian of the Periegesis, that was among the manuscripts in the Cotton library (MS. Tiberius B.V., fol. 56v), now in the British Library. It is not intended purely as an illustration to that work, for it contains much material gathered from other sources, including some which would have been the most up-to-date available, although it is based on a distant Roman original (similar to the source of another 11th-century world map, illustrating an edition of Isidore of Seville) – on which the network of lines appears to indicate the boundaries of imperial provinces. The date of drawing was formerly estimated at c. 992–994 CE, based on suggested links to the journey of Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury from Rome but more recent analysis indicates that, although the information was revised about that time, the map was probably drawn between 1025 and 1050.
Like the later map by al-Idrisi (see below) this map is clearly outside the largely symbolic early medieval mapping tradition, but equally it is not based on the famous Ptolemaic co-ordinate system. East is at the top, but Jerusalem is not in the centre, and the Garden of Eden is nowhere to be seen. Unusually, all the waterways of Africa, not just the Red Sea, are depicted in red (mountains are green). The depiction of the far East is ambitious, including India and Taprobane (Sri Lanka) – the latter depicted according to the exaggerated classical conception of its size. Unsurprisingly, Britain itself is depicted in some detail. Great Britain, unusually by medieval standards, is shown as one island, albeit with an exaggerated Cornish promontory, and Mona, Ireland and the many Scottish islands are all indicated. The cartographer is slightly confused by Iceland, depicting it both by a version of its classical name 'Thule', north-west of Britain, and as 'Island', logically linked with Scandinavia.
An open-access high-resolution digital image of the map with place and name annotations is included among the thirteen medieval maps of the world edited in the Virtual Mappa project.
Beatus Mappa Mundi (1050)
Beatus of Liébana (c. 730–798) was an Asturian monk and theologian. He corresponded with Alcuin, and took part in the Adoptionist controversy, criticizing the views of Felix of Urgel and Elipandus of Toledo. He is best remembered today as the author of his Commentary on the Apocalypse, published in 776. An illustrated manuscript known as the Saint-Sever Beatus, featuring the Commentary, was produced around 1050 at the Abbey of Saint-Sever, Aquitaine, France. It contains one of the oldest Christian world maps as an illustration of the Commentary. Although the original manuscript and map has not survived, copies of the map survive in several of the extant manuscripts.
Mahmud al-Kashgari's Map (1072)
Kara-Khanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari compiled a Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk (Compendium of the languages of the Turks) in the 11th century. The manuscript is illustrated with a 'Turkocentric' world map, oriented with east (or rather, perhaps, the direction of midsummer sunrise) on top, centered on the ancient city of Balasagun in what is now Kyrgyzstan, showing the Caspian Sea to the north, and Iraq, Armenia, Yemen and Egypt to the west, China and Japan to the east, Hindustan, Kashmir, Gog and Magog to the south. Conventional symbols are used throughout – blue lines for rivers, red lines for mountain ranges etc. The world is shown as encircled by the ocean. The map is now kept at the Pera Museum in Istanbul.
Al-Idrisi's Tabula Rogeriana (1154)
The Arab geographer, Muhammad al-Idrisi, incorporated the knowledge of Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Far East gathered by Arab merchants and explorers with the information inherited from the classical geographers to create the most accurate map of the world at the time. It remained the most accurate world map for the next three centuries. The Tabula Rogeriana was drawn by Al-Idrisi in 1154 for the Norman King Roger II of Sicily, after a stay of eighteen years at his court, where he worked on the commentaries and illustrations of the map. The map, written in Arabic, shows the Eurasian continent in its entirety, but only shows the northern part of the African continent.
Ebstorf Mappa Mundi (1235)
The Ebstorf Map was an example of a European mappa mundi, made by Gervase of Ebstorf, who was possibly the same man as Gervase of Tilbury, some time in the thirteenth century. It was a very large map: painted on 30 goatskins sewn together, it measured about 3.6 m × 3.6 m (12 ft × 12 ft). The head of Christ was depicted at the top of the map, with his hands on either side and his feet at the bottom. The Map was a greatly elaborated version of the medieval tripartite or T and O map; it was centred on Jerusalem with east at the top of the map. It represented Rome in the shape of a lion, and had an evident interest in the distribution of bishoprics. The original was destroyed in the bombing of Hanover in 1943 during World War II, but some photographs and colour copies remain.
Hereford Mappa Mundi (1300)
The Hereford Mappa Mundi is a detailed mappa mundi based on the T and O map style, dating to c. 1300. The map is signed by one "Richard of Haldingham or Lafford". Drawn on a single sheet of vellum, it measures 158 by 133 cm (62 by 52 in). The writing is in black ink, with additional red and gold, and blue or green for water (with the Red Sea coloured red). The captions demonstrate clearly the multiple functions of these large medieval maps, conveying a mass of information on Biblical subjects and general history, in addition to geography.
Jerusalem is drawn at the centre of the circle, east is on top, showing the Garden of Eden in a circle at the edge of the world (1). Great Britain is drawn at the northwestern border (bottom left, 22 & 23). Curiously, the labels for Africa and Europe are reversed, with Europe scribed in red and gold as 'Africa', and vice versa.
An open-access high-resolution digital image of the map with more than 1,000 place and name annotations is included among the thirteen medieval maps of the world edited in the Virtual Mappa project.
Pietro Vesconte's World Map (1321)
Italian geographer Pietro Vesconte was a pioneer of the field of the portolan chart. His nautical charts are among the earliest to map the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions accurately. He also produced progressively more accurate depictions of the coastlines of northern Europe. In his world map of 1321 he brought his experience as a maker of portolans to bear; the map introduced a previously unheard of accuracy to the mappa mundi genre. The world map, as well as a map of the Holy Land and plan of Acre and Jerusalem were made for inclusion in Marino Sanuto's Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis.
Catalan World Atlas (1375)
The Catalan World Atlas was produced by the Majorcan cartographic school and is attributed to Cresques Abraham. It has been in the royal library of France (now the Bibliothèque nationale de France) since the time of Charles V. The Catalan Atlas originally consisted of six vellum leaves folded down the middle, painted in various colours including gold and silver. The first two leaves contain texts in the Catalan language covering cosmography, astronomy, and astrology. These texts are accompanied by illustrations. The texts and illustration emphasize the Earth's spherical shape and the state of the known world. They also provide information to sailors on tides and how to tell time at night.
Unlike many other nautical charts, the Catalan Atlas is read with the north at the bottom. As a result of this the maps are oriented from left to right, from the Far East to the Atlantic. The first two leaves, forming the oriental portion of the Catalan Atlas, illustrate numerous religious references as well as a synthesis of medieval mappae mundi (Jerusalem located close to the centre) and the travel literature of the time, notably The Travels of Marco Polo and the Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Many Indian and Chinese cities can be identified.
"Da Ming Hunyi Tu" world map (after 1389)
The Da Ming Hunyi Tu (Chinese: 大明混一图; lit. 'Amalgamated Map of the Great Ming Empire') world map, likely made in the late 14th or the 15th century, shows China at the centre and Europe, half-way round the globe, depicted very small and horizontally compressed at the edge. The coast of Africa is also mapped from an Indian Ocean perspective, showing the Cape of Good Hope area. It is believed that maps of this type were made since about the 1320s, but all earlier specimens have been lost, so the earliest survivor is the elaborate, colourful Da Ming Hunyi Tu, painted on 17 m2 (180 sq ft) of silk.
Gangnido world map (1402)
The Gangnido ("Map of Integrated Lands and Regions of Historical Countries and Capitals (of China)") is a world map and historical map of China, made in Korea in 1402, although extant copies, all in Japan, were created much later. It plays a key role in reconstructing the content of the now-lost 14th-century Chinese map of the world named Shengjiao Guangbei Tu, which was based on Chinese cartographic techniques with additional input from western sources, via Islamic scholarship in the Mongol Empire. It also demonstrates the post-Mongol era stagnation of East Asian cartography as geographic information about the West was not updated until the introduction of European knowledge in the 16-17th centuries. Superficially similar to the Da Ming Hun Yi Tu (which has been less well known in the West because it is kept in closed archive storage) the Gangnido shows its Korean origin in the enlargement of that country, and incorporates vastly improved (though wrongly positioned, scaled and oriented) mapping of Japan. Elsewhere, the map betrays a decorative rather than practical purpose, particularly in the portrayal of river systems, which form unnatural loops rarely seen on Chinese maps. Nonetheless, it is considered as "superior to anything produced in Europe prior to the end of the fifteenth century".
De Virga world map (1411–1415)
The De Virga world map was made by Albertinus de Virga between 1411 and 1415. Albertin de Virga, a Venetian, is also known for a 1409 map of the Mediterranean, also made in Venice. The world map is circular, drawn on a piece of parchment 69.6 cm × 44 cm (27.4 in × 17.3 in). It consists of the map itself, about 44 cm (17 in) in diameter, and an extension containing a calendar and two tables.
Bianco's world map (1436)
Andrea Bianco's atlas of 1436 comprises ten leaves of vellum, measuring 29 cm × 38 cm (11 in × 15 in), in an 18th-century binding. The first leaf contains a description of the Rule of marteloio for resolving the course, with the "circle and square", two tables and two other diagrams. The next eight leaves contain various navigation charts. The ninth leaf contains a circular world map measuring 25 cm (9.8 in) in circumference. And the final leaf contains the Ptolemaic world map on Ptolemy's first projection, with graduation. Some believe Bianco's maps were the first to correctly portray the coast of Florida, as a macro-peninsula is attached to a large island labeled Antillia. Bianco also collaborated with Fra Mauro on the Fra Mauro world map of 1459.
Borgia world map (early 15th century)
Mainly a decoration piece, the Borgia map is a world map made sometime in the early 15th century, and engraved on a metal plate.
Genoese map (1457)
The Genoese map of 1457 is a world map that relied extensively on the account of the traveller to Asia Niccolo da Conti, rather than the usual source of Marco Polo. The author is unknown, but is a more modern development than the Fra Mauro world map, less intricate and complete, with fairly good proportions given to each of the continents. The map depicts the main landmarks of the time, and figures such as the legendary Prester John in Africa, the Great Khan in China, "Xilam" (Ceylon) and Sumatra, and the design of a three-masted European ship in the Indian Ocean, something which had not occurred, suggesting that a sea-lane was a possibility.
Fra Mauro world map (1459)
The Fra Mauro map was made between 1457 and 1459 by the Venetian monk Fra Mauro. It is a circular planisphere drawn on parchment and set in a wooden frame, about 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) in diameter. The original world map was made by Fra Mauro and his assistant Andrea Bianco, a sailor-cartographer, under a commission by king Afonso V of Portugal. The map was completed on April 24, 1459, and sent to Portugal, but did not survive to the present day. Fra Mauro died the next year while he was making a copy of the map for the Seignory of Venice, and the copy was completed by Andrea Bianco.
The map is preserved in the Museo Correr in Venice.
Martellus world map (1490)
The world map of Henricus Martellus Germanus (Heinrich Hammer), c. 1490, was remarkably similar to the terrestrial globe later produced by Martin Behaim in 1492, the Erdapfel. Both show heavy influences from Ptolemy, and both possibly derive from maps created around 1485 in Lisbon by Bartolomeo Columbus. Although Martellus is believed to have been born in Nuremberg, Behaim's home town, he lived and worked in Florence from 1480 to 1496.
Behaim's Erdapfel globe (1492)
The Erdapfel (German: earth apple) produced by Martin Behaim in 1492 is considered to be the oldest surviving terrestrial globe. It is constructed of a laminated linen ball reinforced with wood and overlaid with a map painted on gores by Georg Glockendon. The Americas are not included yet, as Columbus returned to Spain no sooner than March 1493. It shows a rather enlarged Eurasian continent and an empty ocean between Europe and Asia. It includes the mythical Saint Brendan's Island. Japan and Asian islands are disproportionately large. The idea to call the globe "apple" may be related to the Reichsapfel ("Imperial Apple", Globus cruciger) which was also kept in Nuremberg along with the Imperial Regalia (Reichskleinodien). In 1907, it was transferred to the Germanic Museum in Nuremberg.
After 1492
Juan de la Cosa Map (1500)
The Juan de la Cosa, a Spanish cartographer, explorer and conquistador, born in Santoña in what was then the Kingdom of Castille, made several maps of which the only survivor is the Mappa Mundi of 1500. It is the first known European cartographic representation of the Americas. It is now in the Museo Naval in Madrid. Reproductions of it are given by Humboldt in his Atlas géographique et physique.
Cantino Planisphere (1502)
The Cantino planisphere or Cantino world map is the earliest surviving map showing Portuguese discoveries in the east and west. It is named after Alberto Cantino, an agent for the Duke of Ferrara, who successfully smuggled it from Portugal to Italy in 1502. It shows the islands of the Caribbean and what may be the Florida coastline, as well as Africa, Europe and Asia. The map is particularly notable for portraying a fragmentary record of the Brazilian coast, discovered in 1500 by Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral who conjectured whether it was merely an island or part of the continent that several Spanish expeditions had just encountered farther north (cf. Amerigo Vespucci).
Caverio Map (c. 1505)
The Caverio Map, also known as the Caveri Map or Canerio Map, is a map drawn by Nicolay de Caveri, c. 1505. It is hand drawn on parchment and coloured, being composed of ten sections or panels, measuring 2.25 by 1.15 metres (7.4 by 3.8 ft). Historians believe that this undated map signed with "Nicolay de Caveri Januensis" was completed in 1504–05. It was probably either made in Lisbon by the Genoese Canveri, or copied by him in Genoa from the very similar Cantino map. It shows the east coast of North America with surprising detail, and was one of the primary sources used to make the Waldseemüller map in 1507. The Caverio map is currently at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.
Ruysch World Map (1507)
Johannes Ruysch an explorer, cartographer, astronomer and painter from the Low Countries produced the second oldest known printed representation of the New World. The Ruysch map was published and widely distributed in 1507. It uses Ptolemy's coniform projection, as does the Contarini-Rosselli 1506 map. Both document Christopher Columbus' discoveries as well as that of John Cabot, including information from Portuguese sources and Marco Polo's account. There are notes on his map that clearly were from Portuguese sources. Newfoundland and Cuba are shown connected to Asia, as Columbus and Cabot believed. “Sipganus” (Marco Polo's Japan) is identical with “Spagnola” (Hispaniola) on the Ruysch map. The presence of codfish is noted on the Ruysch map in the area of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and shows the discoveries the Portuguese had made along the African coast and shows India as a triangular peninsula with Ceylon in the correct proportion and position. Greenland is shown connected to Newfoundland and Asia on Ruysch's map, and not Europe as earlier maps had showed. Around the north pole, Ruysch drew islands, based on reports in the book Inventio Fortunata of the English friar Nicholas of Lynne. The island above Norway shows remarkable similarities to Svalbard, which was not discovered until 1597 (by Willem Barents). Ruysch calls it 'European Hyberborea' and a peninsula stretching out towards it is clearly marked with the church of 'Sancti Odulfi', St Olaf's church in Vardø on the Finnmark coast.
Waldseemüller and Ringmann map (1507)
The cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann from southern Germany, supported by the mapping friend René II, Duke of Lorraine, collected map data over several years, including information on the most recent discoveries, to build up a new collective work of geography and cartography. Along with a book they further incorporated, for the first time in history, the name America on a map, holding the strong opinion that it was a new continent that Amerigo Vespucci had discovered on his voyage and not only a few smaller islands as Christopher Columbus did in the West Indies.
Piri Reis Map (1513)
The Piri Reis map is a famous world map created by 16th-century Ottoman Turkish admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. The surviving third of the map shows part of the western coasts of Europe and North Africa with reasonable accuracy, and the coast of Brazil is also easily recognizable. Various Atlantic islands including the Azores and Canary Islands are depicted, as is the mythical island of Antillia. The map is noteworthy for its apparent south-eastward extension of the American continent to depict a southern landmass that some controversially claim is evidence for early awareness of the existence of Antarctica. Alternatively, it has been suggested that this is actually a record of the coast as far as Cape Horn, explored secretly by Portuguese navigators before 1507 (when it appeared on the Waldseemüller map) and bent south-eastward simply to fit on the parchment.
Pietro Coppo Map (1520)
The map by Pietro Coppo was one of the last world maps to feature the "Dragon's Tail" extending southwards from the far eastern extremity of Asia, the last vestige of Ptolemy's landlocked depiction of the Indian Ocean, nearly 1,500 years earlier.
Padrón Real (1527)
The editions of the Spanish royal standard map (Padrón Real or General) overseen by Diogo Ribeiro in the 1520s and 1530s are considered to be the first scientific world maps based on empiric latitude observations. Europe and Central and South America are very precisely delineated, although Portuguese control of the African trade routes limited the accuracy of information on the Indian Ocean. Incorporating information from the Magellan, Gomes, and Loaysa expeditions and geodesic research undertaken to establish the demarcation line of the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, the maps show for the first time the real extension of the Pacific Ocean and the continuous coast of North America.
The originals are now lost but six copies of known provenance have survived. The 1525 Castiglione Map is now held by the Estense Library in Modena, Italy; the 1526 Salviati Planisphere is held by the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence; the 1527 Weimar Map is held by the Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar, Germany; and the 1529 Propaganda Map is held by the Vatican Library. Detailed copies of the Propaganda Map were made in the 19th century by William Griggs.
- 1525 Castiglione Map
- 1526 Salviati Planisphere
- 1527 Weimar Map
- 1529 Propaganda Map
Mercator world map (1569)
Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator world map of 1569 introduced a cylindrical map projection that became the standard map projection known as the Mercator projection. It was a large planisphere measuring 202 by 124 cm (80 by 49 in), printed in eighteen separate sheets. While the linear scale is constant in all directions around any point, thus preserving the angles and the shapes of small objects (which makes the projection conformal), the Mercator projection distorts the size and shape of large objects, as the scale increases from the Equator to the poles, where it becomes infinite. The title (Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigatium Emendate: "new and augmented description of Earth corrected for the use of navigation") and the map legends show that the map was expressly conceived for the use of marine navigation. The principal feature of the projection is that rhumb lines, sailing courses at a constant bearing, are mapped to straight lines on the map. The development of the Mercator projection represented a major breakthrough in the nautical cartography of the 16th century although it was only slowly adopted by seafaring nations.
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius (1570)
The Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (or "Theatre of the World") is considered to be the first true modern atlas. Prepared by Abraham Ortelius and originally printed on May 20, 1570, in Antwerp, it consisted of a collection of uniform map sheets and sustaining texts bound to form a book for which copper printing plates were specifically engraved. The Ortelius atlas is sometimes referred to as the summary of sixteenth-century cartography. Many of his atlas's maps were based upon sources that no longer exist or are extremely rare. Ortelius appended a unique source list (the "Catalogus Auctorum") identifying the names of contemporary cartographers, some of whom would otherwise have remained obscure. Three Latin editions of this (besides a Dutch, a French and a German edition) appeared before the end of 1572; twenty-five editions came out before Ortelius's death in 1598; and several others were published subsequently, as the atlas continued to be in demand until approximately 1612.
Die ganze Welt in einem Kleberblat by Heinrich Bünting (1581)
The Bünting Clover Leaf Map, also known as The World in a Cloverleaf (German title: Die ganze Welt in einem Kleberblat/Welches ist der Stadt Hannover meines lieben Vaterlandes Wapen) is an historic mappa mundi drawn by the German Protestant pastor, theologist, and cartographer Heinrich Bünting. The map was published in his book Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae (Travel through Holy Scripture) in 1581.
Today the map is found within the Eran Laor maps collection in the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. A mosaic model of the map is installed on the fence of Safra Square at the site of Jerusalem's city hall.
The map is a figurative illustration, in the manner of the medieval mappa mundi format, depicting the world via a clover shape. The shape is a symbolisation of the Christian Trinity and a component at the symbolisation of the German city Hanover, where Bünting was born. The city of Jerusalem is represented as the centre, surrounded by three central continents, with some more areas of the world being accordingly illustrated separately from the clover.
"Kunyu Wanguo Quantu" by Matteo Ricci (1602)
Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (Chinese: 坤輿萬國全圖; lit. 'A Map of the Myriad Countries of the World'; Italian: Carta Geografica Completa di tutti i Regni del Mondo, "Complete Geographical Map of all the Kingdoms of the World"), printed by Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci at the request by Wanli Emperor in 1602, is the first known European-styled Chinese world map (and the first Chinese map to show the Americas). The map is in Classical Chinese, with detailed annotations and descriptions of various regions of the world, a brief account of the discovery of the Americas, polar projections, scientific explanation of parallels and meridians, and proof that the Sun is bigger than the Moon. Following Chinese cartographical convention, Ricci placed China ("the Middle Kingdom") at the centre of the world. This map is a significant mark of the expansion of Chinese knowledge of the world, and an important example of cultural syncretism directly between Europe and China. It was also exported to Korea and Japan as well.
Hendrik Hondius map (1630)
Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica ac Hydrographica Tabula is a map of the world created by Hendrik Hondius in 1630, and published the following year at Amsterdam, in the atlas Atlantis Maioris Appendix. Illustrations of the four elements of fire, air, water, and land are included. In the four corners, there are portraits of Julius Caesar, Claudius Ptolemy, and the atlas's first two publishers, Gerard Mercator and Jodocus Hondius, the father of Hendrik. Among its claims to notability is the fact that it was the first dated map published in an atlas, and therefore the first widely available map, to show any part of Australia, the only previous map to do so being Hessel Gerritsz' 1627 Caert van't Landt van d'Eendracht ("Map of the Land of Eendracht"), which was not widely distributed or recognised. The Australian coastline shown is part of the west coast of Cape York Peninsula, discovered by Jan Carstensz in 1623. Curiously, the map does not show the west coast features shown in Gerritsz' Caert.
Shahid-i Sadiq (1647)
The Shahid-i Sadiq was an atlas composed by Sadiq Isfahani in Jaunpur. This included the Inhabited Quarter, a map of the parts of the world which he held to be suitable for human life. This is one of the only surviving maps made in India. The map stretched from the Insulae Fortunatae (Canary Islands) in the top right to Andalusia (Europe) to Sus al Aqsa (Western Africa) in the left. The Shahid-i Sadiq included The 32 sheet atlas—with maps oriented towards the south as was the case with Islamic works of the era—is part of a larger scholarly work compiled by Isfahani during 1647. This map measures 661 cm × 645 cm (260 in × 254 in; 21.69 ft × 21.16 ft).
Nicolaes Visscher map (1658)
This engraved double hemisphere map, Orbis Terrarum Nova et Accuratissima Tabula, was created by Nicolaes Visscher in 1658 in Amsterdam. It also contains smaller northern and southern polar projections. The border is decorated with mythological scenes, one in each corner, drawn by the painter Nicolaes Berchem, showing Zeus, Neptune, Persephone and Demeter. It is an early example of highly decorated Dutch world maps.
Gerard van Schagen's Map of the World (1689)
Gerard van Schagen (c. 1642–1724?) was a cartographer from Amsterdam, known for his exquisite reproductions of maps, particularly of those by Nicolaes Visscher I and Frederick de Wit. The map is of 1689. The original size is 48.3 cm × 56.0 cm (19.0 in × 22.0 in) and was produced using copper engraving. There is only one known example, which is in the Amsterdam University.
Tovmas Vanandetsi world map (1695)
Hamatarats Ashkharhatsuyts (Geographic Map of the World), was produced in 1695 in Amsterdam by the Armenian printing firm founded by Armenian. The world map was created in a Western cartographic style. To engrave the map's copper plates, the Schoonebeek brothers, who were considered the best masters, were employed. The map is divided into eight sections, totaling 150 × 120 cm in size. The different portions of the map were adhered to a thin canvas to guard against damage during folding. The map has conventional, astrological, and mythical symbols representing the four seasons in each of its four corners.
. At the time, one of the most reliable maps of the two hemispheres was the first large-scale map drawn inSamuel Dunn's map of the world (1794)
Samuel Dunn (died 1794) was a British mathematician and amateur astronomer. His map covers the entire world in a double hemisphere projection. This map follows shortly after the explorations of Captain Cook in the Arctic and Pacific Northwest, so the general outline of North America is known. However, when this map was made, few inland expeditions had extended westward beyond the Mississippi River.Antarctica is noticeably absent, which is of particular note, as earlier maps had depicted an imagined Antarctica, as early as 1570 in the West by Abraham Ortelius, and 1602 in the Far East. These images were speculative, as Antarctica had not then been proven to exist.
See also
- Cylcon, Aboriginal Australian cylindro-conical stones some of which are thought to contain maps
- Dieppe maps, a series of 16th-century world maps produced in Dieppe, France
- "Here be dragons", a phrase indicating uncharted areas
- History of cartography
- Jambudvīpa, a geographic idea originated in India
- Johannes Schöner globe, made in 1520
- Mappa mundi, medieval European maps of the world
- Nebra sky disc, a Bronze Age "map" of the cosmos
- Terra incognita, uncharted territories documented in early maps
- Vinland Map, a claimed 15th-century map later confirmed as a 20th-century forgery
- Virtual Mappa, a project to digitise medieval mappa mundi
- Mao Kun map, also called Zheng He's navigation map, a world map dated to the 17th century but thought to be a copy of an early 15th-century map
Notes
- Gershon, Livia. "Is This 4,000-Year-Old Bronze Age Slab the Oldest Known Map in Europe?". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
- "La plus ancienne carte d'Europe ?". Inrap (in French). 6 April 2021. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
- "Bronze Age slab found in France is oldest 3D map in Europe". BBC News. 6 April 2021. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
- Nicolas, C.; Pailler, Y.; Stephan, P.; Pierson, J.; Aubry, L.; Le Gall, B.; Lacombe, V.; Rolet, J. (April 2021). "La carte et le territoire : la dalle gravée du Bronze ancien de Saint-Bélec (Leuhan, Finistère)". Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française (in French). 118 (1): 99–146. doi:10.3406/bspf.2021.15173. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
- British Museum Inv. No. 92687: "6th C BC approx". See also: Siebold, Jim. Slide 103. Archived 2016-11-09 at the Wayback Machine. Via henry-davis.com – accessed 2008-02-04. First published 1899, formerly also dated to an earlier period, c. 900 BCE. Raaflaub, Kurt A.; Talbert, Richard J. A. (2009). Geography and Ethnography: Perceptions of the World in Pre-Modern Societies. John Wiley & Sons. p. 147. ISBN 978-1-4051-9146-3.
- Smith, Catherine Delano (1996). "Imago Mundi's Logo the Babylonian Map of the World". Imago Mundi. 48: 209–211. doi:10.1080/03085699608592846. JSTOR 1151277.
- Finkel, Irving (1995). A join to the map of the world: A notable discovery. pp. 26–27.
- "Timechart of historical cartography: Antiquity". Archived from the original on 25 February 2021.
- "World map according to Eratosthenes (194 B.C.)". Archived from the original on 13 August 2021.
- "Poseidonius". Encyclopædia Britannica. "Greek philosopher, considered the most learned man of his time and, possibly, of the entire Stoic school."
- Poseidonius, fragment 202
- Brown, Lloyd Arnold (1979). The Story of Maps. Dover Publications. pp. 29–31.
- Freely, John (2013). Before Galileo: The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe. ISBN 978-1468308501.
- Strabonis Geographica, Book 17, Chapter 7.
- Vat. Urbinas Graecus 82.
- Codex Seragliensis GI 57
- Snyder, John P. (1993), Flattening the Earth: Two Thousand Years of Map Projections, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 14, ISBN 978-0226767475
- Eastwood, B., and Graßhoff, G. (2004). "Planetary Diagrams for Roman Astronomy in Medieval Europe, ca. 800–1500". Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 94:3. pp. 49–50.
- Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, transl. W. H. Stahl, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), chapters v-vii (pp. 200–212).
- Michael Livingston, Modern Medieval Map Myths: The Flat World, Ancient Sea-Kings, and Dragons Archived 2006-02-09 at the Wayback Machine, 2002.
- "Focus sur... La Mappa mundi d'Albi". mediatheques.grand-albigeois.fr (in French).
- "La " Mappa mundi d'Albi " a rejoint en octobre 2015 le registre " Mémoire du monde " de l'Unesco". culture.fr (in French)..
- "Présentation de la Mappa Mundi d'Albi". www.youtube.com (in French). 4 February 2016. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021.
- The History of cartography by John Brian Harley, David Woodward pp. 120ff
- Siebold, Jim Slide 210 monograph: Cottoniana or Anglo-Saxon Map Archived 2018-07-30 at the Wayback Machine, via henry-davis.com - accessed 2008-02-04
- British Library Collect Britain Archived 2009-04-28 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 2008-03-14
- 81 – The First Turkish World Map, by Kashgari (1072) « Strange Maps
- Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, (Oxford Medieval Texts), Oxford, 2002, p. xxxiv.
- Edson, Evelyn (1997). Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers viewed their World. London: British Library. p. 138. ISBN 0-7123-4535-3.
- Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, (Oxford Medieval Texts), Oxford, 2002, p. xxxv
- "Vesconte World Maps". Archived from the original on 17 February 2020.
- Harley, John Brian; Woodward, David, eds. (1987). The History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-31633-5.[permanent dead link ]
- The place names on the map reflect the political situation in 1389, or the 22nd year of the reign of the Hongwu Emperor. Thus some Chinese scholars concluded that it was indeed created in 1389 or little later (Wang et al., Juanben caihui Daming Hunyi Tu yanjiu 绢本彩绘大明混一图研究 (As Regards the Da Ming Hun Yi Tu Drawn in Colours on Stiff Silk), in: Zhongguo gudai dituji: Ming dai 中國古代地图集 明代 (An Atlas of Ancient Maps in China: The Ming dynasty (1368–1644)), Beijing, 1994, pp. 51–55). Others maintain that this reflects an earlier source and that the Da Ming Hun Yi Tu itself was created much later (Miya Noriko, "Kon'itsu Kyōri Rekidai Kokuto no Zu" he no michi 「混一疆理歴代国都之図」への道, Mongoru jidai no shuppan bunka モンゴル時代の出版文化, 2006, 487–651 (pp. 511–512).
- Robinson, Kenneth R. (2007). "Chosŏn Korea in the Ryukoku Kangnido: Dating the Oldest Extant Korean Map of the World (15th Century)". Imago Mundi. 59 (2): 177–192. doi:10.1080/03085690701300964. S2CID 128416415.
- Miya Noriko 宮紀子 (2006). "Kon'itsu Kyōri Rekidai Kokuto no Zu" he no michi 「混一疆理歴代国都之図」への道". Mongoru jidai no shuppan bunka モンゴル時代の出版文化 (in Japanese). pp. 487–651.
- Jackson, Peter (2005). The Mongols and the West. New York: Pearson Longman. p. 330. ISBN 0-582-36896-0.
- Whitfield, Peter (1998). New Found Lands: Maps in the History of Exploration. New York: Routledge. p. 36. ISBN 0-415-92026-4.
- Behaim Globe at Bayern-online
- Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha, beijo as maãos de vosa alteza. deste porto seguro da vosa jlha da vera cruz (see original letter in archaic Portuguese, in the Portuguese Wikisource project): I kiss Your Majesty's Hands, from this safe haven of your island of Vera Cruz
- McGuirk, Donald L. Jr. (1989). "Ruysch World Map: Census and Commentary". Imago Mundi. 41 (1): 133–141. doi:10.1080/03085698908592674.
- Ribero, Diego. "Carta Universal". Archived from the original on 9 November 2020.
- Genevieve Carlton (2015). Worldly Consumers: The Demand for Maps in Renaissance Italy. University of Chicago Press. p. 42. ISBN 978-0-226-25545-3.
- Rothstein, Edward (19 January 2010). "Map That Shrank the World". New York Times, Arts, Exhibition Review. New York: New York Times Company. Retrieved 20 January 2010.
- "Nova totius terrarum orbis geographica ac hydrographica tabula". Norman B. Leventhal Map Center.
- Isfahani, Sadiq (1647). "Map of the "Inhabited Quarter"" (PDF).
- Schwartzberg, 1302
- Schwartzberg, 1303
- "Visscher, Nicolaes (1618–1679). Orbis Terrarum Nova et Accuratissima Tabula. Amsterdam: 1658". Christie's.
- "Orbis Terrarum Nova et Accuratissima Tabula, 1658". Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
- "van Schagen 1680 World & Continents". Archived from the original on 10 April 2016. Retrieved 9 October 2016.
- Catalog of van Schagen's maps at the University of Amsterdam
- Biographical sketch (in Dutch)
- "RareMaps.com".
- "Art-A-Tsolum". 21 August 2023.
- Gordon Goodwin: "Dunn, Samuel (d.1794)" in Leslie Stephen, Dictionary of National Biography, 16, London, 1888, 211–213.
Further reading
- Brodersen, Kai (2012). "Chapter 4: Cartography". Geography in Classical Antiquity. By Dueck, Daniela. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. pp. 99–110. ISBN 9780521197885.
- Edson, Evelyn (1993). "The Oldest World Maps: Classical Sources of Three Eighth Century Mappaemundi". Ancient World. 24 (2): 169–184.
- Fox, Michael; Reimer, Stephen R (2008). Mappae Mundi: Representing the World and Its Inhabitants In Texts, Maps, and Images In Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Edmonton: Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta. ISBN 9781551951874. OCLC 227019112.
- Goffart, Walter (2003). Historical Atlases: The First Three Hundred Years, 1570–1870. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226300726. OCLC 727367115.
- Harwood, Jeremy; Bendall, A. Sarah (2006). To the Ends of the Earth: 100 Maps That Changed the World. Cincinnati, OH: David & Charles. ISBN 9781582974644. OCLC 75546416.
- Harvey, Paul D.A., ed. (2006). The Hereford World Map: Medieval World Maps and their Context. London: British Library. ISBN 9780712347600. OCLC 0712347607.
- Shirley, Rodney W. (1993). The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps 1472–1700. London: Holland Press. ISBN 9781853682711. OCLC 29389647.
- Talbert, Richard J.A., ed. (2000). Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. ISBN 9780691031699. OCLC 43970336.
- Wendt, Henry; Delaney, John; Bowles, Alex (2010). Envisioning the World: The First Printed Maps 1472–1700. Santa Rosa, CA: Sonoma County Museum. OCLC 617728973.
- Woodward, David (1985). "Reality, Symbolism, Time, and Space in Medieval World Maps". Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 75 (4): 510–521. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.1985.tb00090.x.
External links
Media related to Maps of the world before Columbus at Wikimedia Commons
- Index of Maps of the Early Medieval Period – HenryDavis.com Archived 2007-03-12 at the Wayback Machine
- Mapping History – resource from the British Library
- Geography and Map Reading Room at the Library of Congress
- Ancient World Maps
- The Peutinger Map
- Virtual Mappa: Digital Editions of Early Medieval Maps of the World, edit. Martin Foys, Heather Wacha, et al. (Philadelphia, PA: Schoenberg Institute of Manuscript Studies, 2018): doi:10.21231/ef21-ev82
- Medieval Maps and Mapping Resources
The earliest known world maps date to classical antiquity the oldest examples of the 6th to 5th centuries BCE still based on the flat Earth paradigm World maps assuming a spherical Earth first appear in the Hellenistic period The developments of Greek geography during this time notably by Eratosthenes and Posidonius culminated in the Roman era with Ptolemy s world map 2nd century CE which would remain authoritative throughout the Middle Ages Since Ptolemy knowledge of the approximate size of the Earth allowed cartographers to estimate the extent of their geographical knowledge and to indicate parts of the planet known to exist but not yet explored as terra incognita With the Age of Discovery during the 15th to 18th centuries world maps became increasingly accurate exploration of Antarctica Australia and the interior of Africa by western mapmakers was left to the 19th and early 20th century AntiquityBronze Age Saint Belec slab The Saint Belec slab discovered in 1900 by Paul du Chatellier in Finistere France is dated to between 1900 BCE and 1640 BCE A recent analysis published in the Bulletin of the French Prehistoric Society has shown that the slab is a three dimensional representation of the River Odet valley in Finistere France This would make the Saint Belec slab the oldest known map of a territory in the world According to the authors the map probably was not used for navigation but rather to show the political power and territorial extent of a local ruler s domain of the early Bronze Age Babylonian Imago Mundi c 6th c BCE Imago Mundi Babylonian map the oldest known world map 6th century BC Babylonia Now in the British Museum A Babylonian world map known as the Imago Mundi is commonly dated to the 6th century BCE The map as reconstructed by Eckhard Unger shows Babylon on the Euphrates surrounded by a circular landmass including Assyria Urartu Armenia and several cities in turn surrounded by a bitter river Oceanus with eight outlying regions nagu arranged around it in the shape of triangles so as to form a star The accompanying text mentions a distance of seven beru between the outlying regions The descriptions of five of them have survived The third region is where the winged bird ends not his flight i e cannot reach On the fourth region the light is brighter than that of sunset or stars it lay in the northwest and after sunset in summer was practically in semi obscurity The fifth region due north lay in complete darkness a land where one sees nothing and the sun is not visible The sixth region where a horned bull dwells and attacks the newcomer The seventh region lay in the east and is where the morning dawns Anaximander c 610 546 BCE Reconstruction of Anaximander s map Anaximander died c 546 BCE is credited with having created one of the first maps of the world which was circular in form and showed the known lands of the world grouped around the Aegean Sea at the center This was all surrounded by the ocean Hecataeus of Miletus c 550 476 BCE Reconstruction of Hecataeus map Hecataeus of Miletus is credited with a work entitled Periodos Ges Travels round the Earth or World Survey in two books each organized in the manner of a periplus a point to point coastal survey One on Europe is essentially a periplus of the Mediterranean describing each region in turn reaching as far north as Scythia The other book on Asia is arranged similarly to the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea of which a version of the 1st century CE survives Hecataeus described the countries and inhabitants of the known world the account of Egypt being particularly comprehensive the descriptive matter was accompanied by a map based upon Anaximander s map of the Earth which he corrected and enlarged The work only survives in some 374 fragments by far the majority being quoted in the geographical lexicon the Ethnica compiled by Stephanus of Byzantium Eratosthenes 276 194 BCE 1883 reconstruction of Eratosthenes map Eratosthenes 276 194 BCE drew an improved world map incorporating information from the campaigns of Alexander the Great and his successors Asia became wider reflecting the new understanding of the actual size of the continent Eratosthenes was also the first geographer to incorporate parallels and meridians within his cartographic depictions attesting to his understanding of the spherical nature of the Earth Posidonius c 135 51 BCE A 1628 reconstruction of Posidonius ideas about the positions of continents many details could not have been known by Posidonius Posidonius or Poseidonius of Apameia c 135 51 BCE was a Greek Stoic philosopher who traveled throughout the Roman world and beyond and was a celebrated polymath throughout the Greco Roman world like Aristotle and Eratosthenes His work about the ocean and the adjacent areas was a general geographical discussion showing how all the forces had an effect on each other and applied also to human life He measured the Earth s circumference by reference to the position of the star Canopus His measure of 240 000 stadia translates to 24 000 miles 39 000 km close to the actual circumference of 24 901 miles 40 074 km He was informed in his approach by Eratosthenes who a century earlier used the elevation of the Sun at different latitudes Both men s figures for the Earth s circumference were uncannily accurate aided in each case by mutually compensating errors in measurement However the version of Posidonius calculation popularised by Strabo was revised by correcting the distance between Rhodes and Alexandria to 3 750 stadia resulting in a circumference of 180 000 stadia or 18 000 miles 29 000 km Ptolemy discussed and favored this revised figure of Posidonius over Eratosthenes in his Geographia and during the Middle Ages scholars divided into two camps regarding the circumference of the Earth one side identifying with Eratosthenes calculation and the other with Posidonius 180 000 stadion measure which is now known to be about 33 too low This was the number used by Christopher Columbus to underestimate the distance to India as 70 000 stades Strabo c 64 BCE 24 CE Strabo is mostly famous for his 17 volume work Geographica which presented a descriptive history of people and places from different regions of the world known to his era The Geographica first appeared in Western Europe in Rome as a Latin translation issued around 1469 Although Strabo referenced the antique Greek astronomers Eratosthenes and Hipparchus and acknowledged their astronomical and mathematical efforts towards geography he claimed that a descriptive approach was more practical Geographica provides a valuable source of information on the ancient world especially when this information is corroborated by other sources Within the books of Geographica is a map of Europe Whole world maps according to Strabo are reconstructions from his written text Pomponius Mela c 43 CE An 1898 reconstruction of Pomponius Mela s view of the world Pomponius is unique among ancient geographers in that after dividing the Earth into five zones of which two only were habitable he asserts the existence of antichthones people inhabiting the southern temperate zone inaccessible to the folk of the northern temperate regions due to the unbearable heat of the intervening torrid belt On the divisions and boundaries of Europe Asia and Africa he repeats Eratosthenes like all classical geographers from Alexander the Great except Ptolemy he regards the Caspian Sea as an inlet of the Northern Ocean corresponding to the Persian Persian Gulf and Arabian Red Sea gulfs on the south Marinus of Tyre c 120 CE Marinus of Tyre s world maps were the first in the Roman Empire to show China Around 120 CE Marinus wrote that the habitable world was bounded on the west by the Fortunate Islands The text of his geographical treatise however is lost He also invented the equirectangular projection which is still used in map creation today A few of Marinus opinions are reported by Ptolemy Marinus was of the opinion that the Okeanos was separated into an eastern and a western part by the continents Europe Asia and Africa He thought that the inhabited world stretched in latitude from Thule Shetland to Agisymba Tropic of Capricorn and in longitude from the Isles of the Blessed to Shera China Marinus also coined the term Antarctic referring to the opposite of the Arctic Circle His chief legacy is that he first assigned to each place a proper latitude and longitude he used a Meridian of the Isles of the Blessed Canary Islands or Cape Verde Islands as the zero meridian Ptolemy c 150 The oldest surviving Ptolemaic world map redrawn according to his 1st projection by monks at Constantinople under Maximus Planudes around 1300Nicolaus Germanus s 1467 Latin world map according to Ptolemy s 2nd projection the first known to the west Surviving texts of Ptolemy s Geography first composed c 150 note that he continued the use of Marinus s equirectangular projection for its regional maps while finding it inappropriate for maps of the entire known world Instead in Book VII of his work he outlines three separate projections of increasing difficulty and fidelity Ptolemy followed Marinus in underestimating the circumference of the world combined with accurate absolute distances this led him to also overestimate the length of the Mediterranean Sea in terms of degrees His prime meridian at the Fortunate Isles was therefore around 10 actual degrees further west of Alexandria than intended a mistake that was corrected by Al Khwarizmi following the translation of Syriac editions of Ptolemy into Arabic in the 9th century The oldest surviving manuscripts of the work date to Maximus Planudes s restoration of the text a little before 1300 at Chora Monastery in Constantinople Istanbul surviving manuscripts from this era seem to preserve separate recensions of the text which diverged as early as the 2nd or 4th century A passage in some of the recensions credits an Agathodaemon with drafting a world map but no maps seem to have survived to be used by Planude s monks Instead he commissioned new world maps calculated from Ptolemy s thousands of coordinates and drafted according to the text s 1st and 2nd projections along with the equirectangular regional maps A copy was translated into Latin by Jacobus Angelus at Florence around 1406 and soon supplemented with maps on the 1st projection Maps using the 2nd projection were not made in Western Europe until Nicolaus Germanus s 1466 edition Ptolemy s 3rd and hardest projection does not seem to have been used at all before new discoveries expanded the known world beyond the point where it provided a useful format Cicero s Dream of Scipio described the Earth as a globe of insignificant size in comparison to the remainder of the cosmos Many medieval manuscripts of Macrobius Commentary on the Dream of Scipio include maps of the Earth including the antipodes zonal maps showing the Ptolemaic climates derived from the concept of a spherical Earth and a diagram showing the Earth labeled as globus terrae the sphere of the Earth at the center of the hierarchically ordered planetary spheres Tabula Peutingeriana 4th century The Tabula Peutingeriana Peutinger table is an itinerarium showing the cursus publicus the road network in the Roman Empire It is a 13th century copy of an original map dating from the 4th century covering Europe parts of Asia India and North Africa The map is named after Konrad Peutinger a German 15th 16th century humanist and antiquarian The map was discovered in a library in Worms by Conrad Celtes who was unable to publish his find before his death and bequeathed the map in 1508 to Peutinger It is conserved at the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek Hofburg Vienna Modern re drawing of the Tabula Peutingeriana from Iberia in the west to India in the east Middle AgesCosmas Indicopleustes Map 6th century World map by Cosmas Indicopleustes Around 550 Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote the copiously illustrated Christian Topography a work partly based on his personal experiences as a merchant on the Red Sea and Indian Ocean in the early 6th century Though his cosmogony is refuted by modern science he has given a historic description of India and Sri Lanka during the 6th century which is invaluable to historians Cosmas seems to have personally visited the Kingdom of Axum in modern Ethiopia and Eritrea as well as India and Sri Lanka In 522 CE he visited the Malabar Coast South India A major feature of his Topography is Cosmas worldview that the world is flat and that the heavens form the shape of a box with a curved lid a view he took from unconventional interpretations of Christian scripture Cosmas aimed to prove that pre Christian geographers had been wrong in asserting that the earth was spherical and that it was in fact modelled on the Tabernacle the house of worship described to Moses by God during the Jewish Exodus from Egypt Isidore of Sevilla s T and O map c 636 T and O map from a 12th century copy of Etymologiae The medieval T and O maps originate with the description of the world in the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville died 636 This qualitative and conceptual type of medieval cartography represents only the top half of a spherical Earth It was presumably tacitly considered a convenient projection of the inhabited portion of the world known in Roman and medieval times that is the northern temperate half of the globe The T is the Mediterranean dividing the three continents Asia Europe and Africa and the O is the surrounding Ocean Jerusalem was generally represented in the center of the map Asia was typically the size of the other two continents combined Because the sun rose in the east Paradise the Garden of Eden was generally depicted as being in Asia and Asia was situated at the top portion of the map Albi Mappa Mundi 8th century Albi Mappa Mundi The fr is a medieval map of the world included in a manuscript of the second half of the 8th century preserved in the old collection of the library Pierre Amalric in Albi France This manuscript comes from the chapter library of the Sainte Cecile Albi Cathedral The Albi Mappa Mundi was inscribed in October 2015 in the Memory of the World Programme of UNESCO The manuscript bearing the card contains 77 pages It is named in the eighteenth century Miscellanea Latin word meaning collection This collection contains 22 different documents which had educational functions The manuscript a Parchment probably made from a goat or sheep skin is in a very good state of preservation The map itself is 27 cm high by 22 5 wide It represents 23 countries on 3 continents and mentions several cities islands rivers and seas The known world is represented in the form of a horseshoe opening at the level of the Strait of Gibraltar and surrounding the Mediterranean with the Middle East at the top Europe on the left and North Africa on the right Ibn Hawqal s map 10th century World map by Ibn Hawqal south at top Ibn Hawqal was an Arab scientist of the 10th century who developed a world map based on his own travel experience and probably the works of Ptolemy Another such cartographer was Istakhri Anglo Saxon Cotton World Map c 1040 The Anglo Saxon Cotton world map c 1040 Britain and Ireland are bottom left This map appears in a copy of a classical work on geography the Latin version by Priscian of the Periegesis that was among the manuscripts in the Cotton library MS Tiberius B V fol 56v now in the British Library It is not intended purely as an illustration to that work for it contains much material gathered from other sources including some which would have been the most up to date available although it is based on a distant Roman original similar to the source of another 11th century world map illustrating an edition of Isidore of Seville on which the network of lines appears to indicate the boundaries of imperial provinces The date of drawing was formerly estimated at c 992 994 CE based on suggested links to the journey of Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury from Rome but more recent analysis indicates that although the information was revised about that time the map was probably drawn between 1025 and 1050 Like the later map by al Idrisi see below this map is clearly outside the largely symbolic early medieval mapping tradition but equally it is not based on the famous Ptolemaic co ordinate system East is at the top but Jerusalem is not in the centre and the Garden of Eden is nowhere to be seen Unusually all the waterways of Africa not just the Red Sea are depicted in red mountains are green The depiction of the far East is ambitious including India and Taprobane Sri Lanka the latter depicted according to the exaggerated classical conception of its size Unsurprisingly Britain itself is depicted in some detail Great Britain unusually by medieval standards is shown as one island albeit with an exaggerated Cornish promontory and Mona Ireland and the many Scottish islands are all indicated The cartographer is slightly confused by Iceland depicting it both by a version of its classical name Thule north west of Britain and as Island logically linked with Scandinavia An open access high resolution digital image of the map with place and name annotations is included among the thirteen medieval maps of the world edited in the Virtual Mappa project Beatus Mappa Mundi 1050 World map from the Saint Sever Beatus Beatus of Liebana c 730 798 was an Asturian monk and theologian He corresponded with Alcuin and took part in the Adoptionist controversy criticizing the views of Felix of Urgel and Elipandus of Toledo He is best remembered today as the author of his Commentary on the Apocalypse published in 776 An illustrated manuscript known as the Saint Sever Beatus featuring the Commentary was produced around 1050 at the Abbey of Saint Sever Aquitaine France It contains one of the oldest Christian world maps as an illustration of the Commentary Although the original manuscript and map has not survived copies of the map survive in several of the extant manuscripts Mahmud al Kashgari s Map 1072 Mahmud al Kashgari s Diwan Lughat al Turk Kara Khanid scholar Mahmud al Kashgari compiled a Diwan Lughat al Turk Compendium of the languages of the Turks in the 11th century The manuscript is illustrated with a Turkocentric world map oriented with east or rather perhaps the direction of midsummer sunrise on top centered on the ancient city of Balasagun in what is now Kyrgyzstan showing the Caspian Sea to the north and Iraq Armenia Yemen and Egypt to the west China and Japan to the east Hindustan Kashmir Gog and Magog to the south Conventional symbols are used throughout blue lines for rivers red lines for mountain ranges etc The world is shown as encircled by the ocean The map is now kept at the Pera Museum in Istanbul Al Idrisi s Tabula Rogeriana 1154 Original Tabula Rogeriana 1154 with south up The Arab geographer Muhammad al Idrisi incorporated the knowledge of Africa the Indian Ocean and the Far East gathered by Arab merchants and explorers with the information inherited from the classical geographers to create the most accurate map of the world at the time It remained the most accurate world map for the next three centuries The Tabula Rogeriana was drawn by Al Idrisi in 1154 for the Norman King Roger II of Sicily after a stay of eighteen years at his court where he worked on the commentaries and illustrations of the map The map written in Arabic shows the Eurasian continent in its entirety but only shows the northern part of the African continent Ebstorf Mappa Mundi 1235 Redrawn Ebstorf Map original c 1235 but since destroyed The Ebstorf Map was an example of a European mappa mundi made by Gervase of Ebstorf who was possibly the same man as Gervase of Tilbury some time in the thirteenth century It was a very large map painted on 30 goatskins sewn together it measured about 3 6 m 3 6 m 12 ft 12 ft The head of Christ was depicted at the top of the map with his hands on either side and his feet at the bottom The Map was a greatly elaborated version of the medieval tripartite or T and O map it was centred on Jerusalem with east at the top of the map It represented Rome in the shape of a lion and had an evident interest in the distribution of bishoprics The original was destroyed in the bombing of Hanover in 1943 during World War II but some photographs and colour copies remain Hereford Mappa Mundi 1300 The Hereford Mappa Mundi c 1300 The Hereford Mappa Mundi is a detailed mappa mundi based on the T and O map style dating to c 1300 The map is signed by one Richard of Haldingham or Lafford Drawn on a single sheet of vellum it measures 158 by 133 cm 62 by 52 in The writing is in black ink with additional red and gold and blue or green for water with the Red Sea coloured red The captions demonstrate clearly the multiple functions of these large medieval maps conveying a mass of information on Biblical subjects and general history in addition to geography Jerusalem is drawn at the centre of the circle east is on top showing the Garden of Eden in a circle at the edge of the world 1 Great Britain is drawn at the northwestern border bottom left 22 amp 23 Curiously the labels for Africa and Europe are reversed with Europe scribed in red and gold as Africa and vice versa An open access high resolution digital image of the map with more than 1 000 place and name annotations is included among the thirteen medieval maps of the world edited in the Virtual Mappa project Pietro Vesconte s World Map 1321 Pietro Vesconte s world map 1321 Italian geographer Pietro Vesconte was a pioneer of the field of the portolan chart His nautical charts are among the earliest to map the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions accurately He also produced progressively more accurate depictions of the coastlines of northern Europe In his world map of 1321 he brought his experience as a maker of portolans to bear the map introduced a previously unheard of accuracy to the mappa mundi genre The world map as well as a map of the Holy Land and plan of Acre and Jerusalem were made for inclusion in Marino Sanuto s Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis Catalan World Atlas 1375 Two leaves of The Catalan world atlas The Catalan World Atlas was produced by the Majorcan cartographic school and is attributed to Cresques Abraham It has been in the royal library of France now the Bibliotheque nationale de France since the time of Charles V The Catalan Atlas originally consisted of six vellum leaves folded down the middle painted in various colours including gold and silver The first two leaves contain texts in the Catalan language covering cosmography astronomy and astrology These texts are accompanied by illustrations The texts and illustration emphasize the Earth s spherical shape and the state of the known world They also provide information to sailors on tides and how to tell time at night Unlike many other nautical charts the Catalan Atlas is read with the north at the bottom As a result of this the maps are oriented from left to right from the Far East to the Atlantic The first two leaves forming the oriental portion of the Catalan Atlas illustrate numerous religious references as well as a synthesis of medieval mappae mundi Jerusalem located close to the centre and the travel literature of the time notably The Travels of Marco Polo and the Travels of Sir John Mandeville Many Indian and Chinese cities can be identified Da Ming Hunyi Tu world map after 1389 Da Ming Hunyi Tu map The Da Ming Hunyi Tu Chinese 大明混一图 lit Amalgamated Map of the Great Ming Empire world map likely made in the late 14th or the 15th century shows China at the centre and Europe half way round the globe depicted very small and horizontally compressed at the edge The coast of Africa is also mapped from an Indian Ocean perspective showing the Cape of Good Hope area It is believed that maps of this type were made since about the 1320s but all earlier specimens have been lost so the earliest survivor is the elaborate colourful Da Ming Hunyi Tu painted on 17 m2 180 sq ft of silk Gangnido world map 1402 Ryukoku copy of the Gangnido world map of Joseon Korea c 1479 1485 The Gangnido Map of Integrated Lands and Regions of Historical Countries and Capitals of China is a world map and historical map of China made in Korea in 1402 although extant copies all in Japan were created much later It plays a key role in reconstructing the content of the now lost 14th century Chinese map of the world named Shengjiao Guangbei Tu which was based on Chinese cartographic techniques with additional input from western sources via Islamic scholarship in the Mongol Empire It also demonstrates the post Mongol era stagnation of East Asian cartography as geographic information about the West was not updated until the introduction of European knowledge in the 16 17th centuries Superficially similar to the Da Ming Hun Yi Tu which has been less well known in the West because it is kept in closed archive storage the Gangnido shows its Korean origin in the enlargement of that country and incorporates vastly improved though wrongly positioned scaled and oriented mapping of Japan Elsewhere the map betrays a decorative rather than practical purpose particularly in the portrayal of river systems which form unnatural loops rarely seen on Chinese maps Nonetheless it is considered as superior to anything produced in Europe prior to the end of the fifteenth century De Virga world map 1411 1415 Photo of the De Virga world map 1411 1415 which disappeared in the 1930s The De Virga world map was made by Albertinus de Virga between 1411 and 1415 Albertin de Virga a Venetian is also known for a 1409 map of the Mediterranean also made in Venice The world map is circular drawn on a piece of parchment 69 6 cm 44 cm 27 4 in 17 3 in It consists of the map itself about 44 cm 17 in in diameter and an extension containing a calendar and two tables Bianco s world map 1436 Bianco world map 1436 Andrea Bianco s atlas of 1436 comprises ten leaves of vellum measuring 29 cm 38 cm 11 in 15 in in an 18th century binding The first leaf contains a description of the Rule of marteloio for resolving the course with the circle and square two tables and two other diagrams The next eight leaves contain various navigation charts The ninth leaf contains a circular world map measuring 25 cm 9 8 in in circumference And the final leaf contains the Ptolemaic world map on Ptolemy s first projection with graduation Some believe Bianco s maps were the first to correctly portray the coast of Florida as a macro peninsula is attached to a large island labeled Antillia Bianco also collaborated with Fra Mauro on the Fra Mauro world map of 1459 Borgia world map early 15th century Borgia map early 15th century Mainly a decoration piece the Borgia map is a world map made sometime in the early 15th century and engraved on a metal plate Genoese map 1457 Genoese map of 1457 Biblioteca Nazionale at Florence The Genoese map of 1457 is a world map that relied extensively on the account of the traveller to Asia Niccolo da Conti rather than the usual source of Marco Polo The author is unknown but is a more modern development than the Fra Mauro world map less intricate and complete with fairly good proportions given to each of the continents The map depicts the main landmarks of the time and figures such as the legendary Prester John in Africa the Great Khan in China Xilam Ceylon and Sumatra and the design of a three masted European ship in the Indian Ocean something which had not occurred suggesting that a sea lane was a possibility Fra Mauro world map 1459 Fra Mauro map 1459 The Fra Mauro map was made between 1457 and 1459 by the Venetian monk Fra Mauro It is a circular planisphere drawn on parchment and set in a wooden frame about 2 metres 6 ft 7 in in diameter The original world map was made by Fra Mauro and his assistant Andrea Bianco a sailor cartographer under a commission by king Afonso V of Portugal The map was completed on April 24 1459 and sent to Portugal but did not survive to the present day Fra Mauro died the next year while he was making a copy of the map for the Seignory of Venice and the copy was completed by Andrea Bianco The map is preserved in the Museo Correr in Venice Martellus world map 1490 Martellus world map 1490 The world map of Henricus Martellus Germanus Heinrich Hammer c 1490 was remarkably similar to the terrestrial globe later produced by Martin Behaim in 1492 the Erdapfel Both show heavy influences from Ptolemy and both possibly derive from maps created around 1485 in Lisbon by Bartolomeo Columbus Although Martellus is believed to have been born in Nuremberg Behaim s home town he lived and worked in Florence from 1480 to 1496 Behaim s Erdapfel globe 1492 Behaim s ErdapfelModern recreation of the gores of the Erdapfel The Erdapfel German earth apple produced by Martin Behaim in 1492 is considered to be the oldest surviving terrestrial globe It is constructed of a laminated linen ball reinforced with wood and overlaid with a map painted on gores by Georg Glockendon The Americas are not included yet as Columbus returned to Spain no sooner than March 1493 It shows a rather enlarged Eurasian continent and an empty ocean between Europe and Asia It includes the mythical Saint Brendan s Island Japan and Asian islands are disproportionately large The idea to call the globe apple may be related to the Reichsapfel Imperial Apple Globus cruciger which was also kept in Nuremberg along with the Imperial Regalia Reichskleinodien In 1907 it was transferred to the Germanic Museum in Nuremberg After 1492Juan de la Cosa Map 1500 Map of Juan de la Cosa shown rotated right in the original manuscript north points left 1500 The Juan de la Cosa a Spanish cartographer explorer and conquistador born in Santona in what was then the Kingdom of Castille made several maps of which the only survivor is the Mappa Mundi of 1500 It is the first known European cartographic representation of the Americas It is now in the Museo Naval in Madrid Reproductions of it are given by Humboldt in his Atlas geographique et physique Cantino Planisphere 1502 Cantino planisphere 1502 Biblioteca Estense Modena The Cantino planisphere or Cantino world map is the earliest surviving map showing Portuguese discoveries in the east and west It is named after Alberto Cantino an agent for the Duke of Ferrara who successfully smuggled it from Portugal to Italy in 1502 It shows the islands of the Caribbean and what may be the Florida coastline as well as Africa Europe and Asia The map is particularly notable for portraying a fragmentary record of the Brazilian coast discovered in 1500 by Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral who conjectured whether it was merely an island or part of the continent that several Spanish expeditions had just encountered farther north cf Amerigo Vespucci Caverio Map c 1505 Caverio Map c 1505 Bibliotheque Nationale de France Paris The Caverio Map also known as the Caveri Map or Canerio Map is a map drawn by Nicolay de Caveri c 1505 It is hand drawn on parchment and coloured being composed of ten sections or panels measuring 2 25 by 1 15 metres 7 4 by 3 8 ft Historians believe that this undated map signed with Nicolay de Caveri Januensis was completed in 1504 05 It was probably either made in Lisbon by the Genoese Canveri or copied by him in Genoa from the very similar Cantino map It shows the east coast of North America with surprising detail and was one of the primary sources used to make the Waldseemuller map in 1507 The Caverio map is currently at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris Ruysch World Map 1507 Ruysch s 1507 map of the world Johannes Ruysch an explorer cartographer astronomer and painter from the Low Countries produced the second oldest known printed representation of the New World The Ruysch map was published and widely distributed in 1507 It uses Ptolemy s coniform projection as does the Contarini Rosselli 1506 map Both document Christopher Columbus discoveries as well as that of John Cabot including information from Portuguese sources and Marco Polo s account There are notes on his map that clearly were from Portuguese sources Newfoundland and Cuba are shown connected to Asia as Columbus and Cabot believed Sipganus Marco Polo s Japan is identical with Spagnola Hispaniola on the Ruysch map The presence of codfish is noted on the Ruysch map in the area of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and shows the discoveries the Portuguese had made along the African coast and shows India as a triangular peninsula with Ceylon in the correct proportion and position Greenland is shown connected to Newfoundland and Asia on Ruysch s map and not Europe as earlier maps had showed Around the north pole Ruysch drew islands based on reports in the book Inventio Fortunata of the English friar Nicholas of Lynne The island above Norway shows remarkable similarities to Svalbard which was not discovered until 1597 by Willem Barents Ruysch calls it European Hyberborea and a peninsula stretching out towards it is clearly marked with the church of Sancti Odulfi St Olaf s church in Vardo on the Finnmark coast Waldseemuller and Ringmann map 1507 Waldseemuller map with joint sheets 1507 The cartographers Martin Waldseemuller and Matthias Ringmann from southern Germany supported by the mapping friend Rene II Duke of Lorraine collected map data over several years including information on the most recent discoveries to build up a new collective work of geography and cartography Along with a book they further incorporated for the first time in history the name America on a map holding the strong opinion that it was a new continent that Amerigo Vespucci had discovered on his voyage and not only a few smaller islands as Christopher Columbus did in the West Indies Piri Reis Map 1513 Fragment of the Piri Reis map by Piri Reis in 1513 The Piri Reis map is a famous world map created by 16th century Ottoman Turkish admiral and cartographer Piri Reis The surviving third of the map shows part of the western coasts of Europe and North Africa with reasonable accuracy and the coast of Brazil is also easily recognizable Various Atlantic islands including the Azores and Canary Islands are depicted as is the mythical island of Antillia The map is noteworthy for its apparent south eastward extension of the American continent to depict a southern landmass that some controversially claim is evidence for early awareness of the existence of Antarctica Alternatively it has been suggested that this is actually a record of the coast as far as Cape Horn explored secretly by Portuguese navigators before 1507 when it appeared on the Waldseemuller map and bent south eastward simply to fit on the parchment Pietro Coppo Map 1520 Map by Pietro Coppo Venice 1520 The map by Pietro Coppo was one of the last world maps to feature the Dragon s Tail extending southwards from the far eastern extremity of Asia the last vestige of Ptolemy s landlocked depiction of the Indian Ocean nearly 1 500 years earlier Padron Real 1527 The editions of the Spanish royal standard map Padron Real or General overseen by Diogo Ribeiro in the 1520s and 1530s are considered to be the first scientific world maps based on empiric latitude observations Europe and Central and South America are very precisely delineated although Portuguese control of the African trade routes limited the accuracy of information on the Indian Ocean Incorporating information from the Magellan Gomes and Loaysa expeditions and geodesic research undertaken to establish the demarcation line of the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas the maps show for the first time the real extension of the Pacific Ocean and the continuous coast of North America The originals are now lost but six copies of known provenance have survived The 1525 Castiglione Map is now held by the Estense Library in Modena Italy the 1526 Salviati Planisphere is held by the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence the 1527 Weimar Map is held by the Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar Germany and the 1529 Propaganda Map is held by the Vatican Library Detailed copies of the Propaganda Map were made in the 19th century by William Griggs 1525 Castiglione Map 1526 Salviati Planisphere 1527 Weimar Map 1529 Propaganda Map Mercator world map 1569 Mercator Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio 1569 High res image Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator world map of 1569 introduced a cylindrical map projection that became the standard map projection known as the Mercator projection It was a large planisphere measuring 202 by 124 cm 80 by 49 in printed in eighteen separate sheets While the linear scale is constant in all directions around any point thus preserving the angles and the shapes of small objects which makes the projection conformal the Mercator projection distorts the size and shape of large objects as the scale increases from the Equator to the poles where it becomes infinite The title Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigatium Emendate new and augmented description of Earth corrected for the use of navigation and the map legends show that the map was expressly conceived for the use of marine navigation The principal feature of the projection is that rhumb lines sailing courses at a constant bearing are mapped to straight lines on the map The development of the Mercator projection represented a major breakthrough in the nautical cartography of the 16th century although it was only slowly adopted by seafaring nations Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius 1570 Ortelius s map Theatrum Orbis Terrarum 1570 The Theatrum Orbis Terrarum or Theatre of the World is considered to be the first true modern atlas Prepared by Abraham Ortelius and originally printed on May 20 1570 in Antwerp it consisted of a collection of uniform map sheets and sustaining texts bound to form a book for which copper printing plates were specifically engraved The Ortelius atlas is sometimes referred to as the summary of sixteenth century cartography Many of his atlas s maps were based upon sources that no longer exist or are extremely rare Ortelius appended a unique source list the Catalogus Auctorum identifying the names of contemporary cartographers some of whom would otherwise have remained obscure Three Latin editions of this besides a Dutch a French and a German edition appeared before the end of 1572 twenty five editions came out before Ortelius s death in 1598 and several others were published subsequently as the atlas continued to be in demand until approximately 1612 Die ganze Welt in einem Kleberblat by Heinrich Bunting 1581 Die ganze Welt in einem Kleberblat The entire World in a Cloverleaf Jerusalem is in the centre of the map surrounded by the three continents The Bunting Clover Leaf Map also known as The World in a Cloverleaf German title Die ganze Welt in einem Kleberblat Welches ist der Stadt Hannover meines lieben Vaterlandes Wapen is an historic mappa mundi drawn by the German Protestant pastor theologist and cartographer Heinrich Bunting The map was published in his book Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae Travel through Holy Scripture in 1581 Today the map is found within the Eran Laor maps collection in the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem A mosaic model of the map is installed on the fence of Safra Square at the site of Jerusalem s city hall The map is a figurative illustration in the manner of the medieval mappa mundi format depicting the world via a clover shape The shape is a symbolisation of the Christian Trinity and a component at the symbolisation of the German city Hanover where Bunting was born The city of Jerusalem is represented as the centre surrounded by three central continents with some more areas of the world being accordingly illustrated separately from the clover Kunyu Wanguo Quantu by Matteo Ricci 1602 Kunyu Wanguo Quantu 1602 Japanese copy Kunyu Wanguo Quantu Chinese 坤輿萬國全圖 lit A Map of the Myriad Countries of the World Italian Carta Geografica Completa di tutti i Regni del Mondo Complete Geographical Map of all the Kingdoms of the World printed by Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci at the request by Wanli Emperor in 1602 is the first known European styled Chinese world map and the first Chinese map to show the Americas The map is in Classical Chinese with detailed annotations and descriptions of various regions of the world a brief account of the discovery of the Americas polar projections scientific explanation of parallels and meridians and proof that the Sun is bigger than the Moon Following Chinese cartographical convention Ricci placed China the Middle Kingdom at the centre of the world This map is a significant mark of the expansion of Chinese knowledge of the world and an important example of cultural syncretism directly between Europe and China It was also exported to Korea and Japan as well Hendrik Hondius map 1630 Hendrik Hondius Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica ac Hydrographica Tabula 1630 Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica ac Hydrographica Tabula is a map of the world created by Hendrik Hondius in 1630 and published the following year at Amsterdam in the atlas Atlantis Maioris Appendix Illustrations of the four elements of fire air water and land are included In the four corners there are portraits of Julius Caesar Claudius Ptolemy and the atlas s first two publishers Gerard Mercator and Jodocus Hondius the father of Hendrik Among its claims to notability is the fact that it was the first dated map published in an atlas and therefore the first widely available map to show any part of Australia the only previous map to do so being Hessel Gerritsz 1627 Caert van t Landt van d Eendracht Map of the Land of Eendracht which was not widely distributed or recognised The Australian coastline shown is part of the west coast of Cape York Peninsula discovered by Jan Carstensz in 1623 Curiously the map does not show the west coast features shown in Gerritsz Caert Shahid i Sadiq 1647 Map of the Inhabited Quarter by Sadiq Isfahani from Jaunpur 1647 The Shahid i Sadiq was an atlas composed by Sadiq Isfahani in Jaunpur This included the Inhabited Quarter a map of the parts of the world which he held to be suitable for human life This is one of the only surviving maps made in India The map stretched from the Insulae Fortunatae Canary Islands in the top right to Andalusia Europe to Sus al Aqsa Western Africa in the left The Shahid i Sadiq included The 32 sheet atlas with maps oriented towards the south as was the case with Islamic works of the era is part of a larger scholarly work compiled by Isfahani during 1647 This map measures 661 cm 645 cm 260 in 254 in 21 69 ft 21 16 ft Nicolaes Visscher map 1658 Nicolaes Visscher map of 1658 Orbis Terrarum Nova et Accuratissima Tabula 1658 This engraved double hemisphere map Orbis Terrarum Nova et Accuratissima Tabula was created by Nicolaes Visscher in 1658 in Amsterdam It also contains smaller northern and southern polar projections The border is decorated with mythological scenes one in each corner drawn by the painter Nicolaes Berchem showing Zeus Neptune Persephone and Demeter It is an early example of highly decorated Dutch world maps Gerard van Schagen s Map of the World 1689 Van Schagen s map of the world 1689 Gerard van Schagen c 1642 1724 was a cartographer from Amsterdam known for his exquisite reproductions of maps particularly of those by Nicolaes Visscher I and Frederick de Wit The map is of 1689 The original size is 48 3 cm 56 0 cm 19 0 in 22 0 in and was produced using copper engraving There is only one known example which is in the Amsterdam University Tovmas Vanandetsi world map 1695 Vanandetsi and Schoonebeek brothers world map 1695 Hamatarats Ashkharhatsuyts Geographic Map of the World was produced in 1695 in Amsterdam by the Armenian printing firm founded by hy At the time one of the most reliable maps of the two hemispheres was the first large scale map drawn in Armenian The world map was created in a Western cartographic style To engrave the map s copper plates the Schoonebeek brothers who were considered the best masters were employed The map is divided into eight sections totaling 150 120 cm in size The different portions of the map were adhered to a thin canvas to guard against damage during folding The map has conventional astrological and mythical symbols representing the four seasons in each of its four corners Samuel Dunn s map of the world 1794 World map by Samuel Dunn 1794 Samuel Dunn died 1794 was a British mathematician and amateur astronomer His map covers the entire world in a double hemisphere projection This map follows shortly after the explorations of Captain Cook in the Arctic and Pacific Northwest so the general outline of North America is known However when this map was made few inland expeditions had extended westward beyond the Mississippi River Antarctica is noticeably absent which is of particular note as earlier maps had depicted an imagined Antarctica as early as 1570 in the West by Abraham Ortelius and 1602 in the Far East These images were speculative as Antarctica had not then been proven to exist See alsoCylcon Aboriginal Australian cylindro conical stones some of which are thought to contain maps Dieppe maps a series of 16th century world maps produced in Dieppe France Here be dragons a phrase indicating uncharted areas History of cartography Jambudvipa a geographic idea originated in India Johannes Schoner globe made in 1520 Mappa mundi medieval European maps of the world Nebra sky disc a Bronze Age map of the cosmos Terra incognita uncharted territories documented in early maps Vinland Map a claimed 15th century map later confirmed as a 20th century forgery Virtual Mappa a project to digitise medieval mappa mundi Mao Kun map also called Zheng He s navigation map a world map dated to the 17th century but thought to be a copy of an early 15th century map Portals MapsWorldNotesGershon Livia Is This 4 000 Year Old Bronze Age Slab the Oldest Known Map in Europe Smithsonian Magazine Retrieved 9 April 2021 La plus ancienne carte d Europe Inrap in French 6 April 2021 Retrieved 9 April 2021 Bronze Age slab found in France is oldest 3D map in Europe BBC News 6 April 2021 Retrieved 14 April 2021 Nicolas C Pailler Y Stephan P Pierson J Aubry L Le Gall B Lacombe V Rolet J April 2021 La carte et le territoire la dalle gravee du Bronze ancien de Saint Belec Leuhan Finistere Bulletin de la Societe prehistorique francaise in French 118 1 99 146 doi 10 3406 bspf 2021 15173 Retrieved 14 April 2021 British Museum Inv No 92687 6th C BC approx See also Siebold Jim Slide 103 Archived 2016 11 09 at the Wayback Machine Via henry davis com accessed 2008 02 04 First published 1899 formerly also dated to an earlier period c 900 BCE Raaflaub Kurt A Talbert Richard J A 2009 Geography and Ethnography Perceptions of the World in Pre Modern Societies John Wiley amp Sons p 147 ISBN 978 1 4051 9146 3 Smith Catherine Delano 1996 Imago Mundi s Logo the Babylonian Map of the World Imago Mundi 48 209 211 doi 10 1080 03085699608592846 JSTOR 1151277 Finkel Irving 1995 A join to the map of the world A notable discovery pp 26 27 Timechart of historical cartography Antiquity Archived from the original on 25 February 2021 World map according to Eratosthenes 194 B C Archived from the original on 13 August 2021 Poseidonius Encyclopaedia Britannica Greek philosopher considered the most learned man of his time and possibly of the entire Stoic school Poseidonius fragment 202 Brown Lloyd Arnold 1979 The Story of Maps Dover Publications pp 29 31 Freely John 2013 Before Galileo The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe ISBN 978 1468308501 Strabonis Geographica Book 17 Chapter 7 Vat Urbinas Graecus 82 Codex Seragliensis GI 57 Snyder John P 1993 Flattening the Earth Two Thousand Years of Map Projections Chicago University of Chicago Press p 14 ISBN 978 0226767475 Eastwood B and Grasshoff G 2004 Planetary Diagrams for Roman Astronomy in Medieval Europe ca 800 1500 Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 94 3 pp 49 50 Macrobius Commentary on the Dream of Scipio transl W H Stahl New York Columbia University Press 1952 chapters v vii pp 200 212 Michael Livingston Modern Medieval Map Myths The Flat World Ancient Sea Kings and Dragons Archived 2006 02 09 at the Wayback Machine 2002 Focus sur La Mappa mundi d Albi mediatheques grand albigeois fr in French La Mappa mundi d Albi a rejoint en octobre 2015 le registre Memoire du monde de l Unesco culture fr in French Presentation de la Mappa Mundi d Albi www youtube com in French 4 February 2016 Archived from the original on 21 December 2021 The History of cartography by John Brian Harley David Woodward pp 120ff Siebold Jim Slide 210 monograph Cottoniana or Anglo Saxon Map Archived 2018 07 30 at the Wayback Machine via henry davis com accessed 2008 02 04 British Library Collect Britain Archived 2009 04 28 at the Wayback Machine accessed 2008 03 14 81 The First Turkish World Map by Kashgari 1072 Strange Maps Gervase of Tilbury Otia Imperialia Oxford Medieval Texts Oxford 2002 p xxxiv Edson Evelyn 1997 Mapping Time and Space How Medieval Mapmakers viewed their World London British Library p 138 ISBN 0 7123 4535 3 Gervase of Tilbury Otia Imperialia Oxford Medieval Texts Oxford 2002 p xxxv Vesconte World Maps Archived from the original on 17 February 2020 Harley John Brian Woodward David eds 1987 The History of Cartography Chicago University of Chicago Press ISBN 0 226 31633 5 permanent dead link The place names on the map reflect the political situation in 1389 or the 22nd year of the reign of the Hongwu Emperor Thus some Chinese scholars concluded that it was indeed created in 1389 or little later Wang et al Juanben caihui Daming Hunyi Tu yanjiu 绢本彩绘大明混一图研究 As Regards the Da Ming Hun Yi Tu Drawn in Colours on Stiff Silk in Zhongguo gudai dituji Ming dai 中國古代地图集 明代 An Atlas of Ancient Maps in China The Ming dynasty 1368 1644 Beijing 1994 pp 51 55 Others maintain that this reflects an earlier source and that the Da Ming Hun Yi Tu itself was created much later Miya Noriko Kon itsu Kyōri Rekidai Kokuto no Zu he no michi 混一疆理歴代国都之図 への道 Mongoru jidai no shuppan bunka モンゴル時代の出版文化 2006 487 651 pp 511 512 Robinson Kenneth R 2007 Chosŏn Korea in the Ryukoku Kangnido Dating the Oldest Extant Korean Map of the World 15th Century Imago Mundi 59 2 177 192 doi 10 1080 03085690701300964 S2CID 128416415 Miya Noriko 宮紀子 2006 Kon itsu Kyōri Rekidai Kokuto no Zu he no michi 混一疆理歴代国都之図 への道 Mongoru jidai no shuppan bunka モンゴル時代の出版文化 in Japanese pp 487 651 Jackson Peter 2005 The Mongols and the West New York Pearson Longman p 330 ISBN 0 582 36896 0 Whitfield Peter 1998 New Found Lands Maps in the History of Exploration New York Routledge p 36 ISBN 0 415 92026 4 Behaim Globe at Bayern online Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha beijo as maaos de vosa alteza deste porto seguro da vosa jlha da vera cruz see original letter in archaic Portuguese in the Portuguese Wikisource project I kiss Your Majesty s Hands from this safe haven of your island of Vera Cruz McGuirk Donald L Jr 1989 Ruysch World Map Census and Commentary Imago Mundi 41 1 133 141 doi 10 1080 03085698908592674 Ribero Diego Carta Universal Archived from the original on 9 November 2020 Genevieve Carlton 2015 Worldly Consumers The Demand for Maps in Renaissance Italy University of Chicago Press p 42 ISBN 978 0 226 25545 3 Rothstein Edward 19 January 2010 Map That Shrank the World New York Times Arts Exhibition Review New York New York Times Company Retrieved 20 January 2010 Nova totius terrarum orbis geographica ac hydrographica tabula Norman B Leventhal Map Center Isfahani Sadiq 1647 Map of the Inhabited Quarter PDF Schwartzberg 1302 Schwartzberg 1303 Visscher Nicolaes 1618 1679 Orbis Terrarum Nova et Accuratissima Tabula Amsterdam 1658 Christie s Orbis Terrarum Nova et Accuratissima Tabula 1658 Commonwealth Bank of Australia van Schagen 1680 World amp Continents Archived from the original on 10 April 2016 Retrieved 9 October 2016 Catalog of van Schagen s maps at the University of Amsterdam Biographical sketch in Dutch RareMaps com Art A Tsolum 21 August 2023 Gordon Goodwin Dunn Samuel d 1794 in Leslie Stephen Dictionary of National Biography 16 London 1888 211 213 Further readingBrodersen Kai 2012 Chapter 4 Cartography Geography in Classical Antiquity By Dueck Daniela Cambridge Cambridge Univ Press pp 99 110 ISBN 9780521197885 Edson Evelyn 1993 The Oldest World Maps Classical Sources of Three Eighth Century Mappaemundi Ancient World 24 2 169 184 Fox Michael Reimer Stephen R 2008 Mappae Mundi Representing the World and Its Inhabitants In Texts Maps and Images In Medieval and Early Modern Europe Edmonton Department of English and Film Studies University of Alberta ISBN 9781551951874 OCLC 227019112 Goffart Walter 2003 Historical Atlases The First Three Hundred Years 1570 1870 Chicago Univ of Chicago Press ISBN 9780226300726 OCLC 727367115 Harwood Jeremy Bendall A Sarah 2006 To the Ends of the Earth 100 Maps That Changed the World Cincinnati OH David amp Charles ISBN 9781582974644 OCLC 75546416 Harvey Paul D A ed 2006 The Hereford World Map Medieval World Maps and their Context London British Library ISBN 9780712347600 OCLC 0712347607 Shirley Rodney W 1993 The Mapping of the World Early Printed World Maps 1472 1700 London Holland Press ISBN 9781853682711 OCLC 29389647 Talbert Richard J A ed 2000 Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World Princeton NJ Princeton Univ Press ISBN 9780691031699 OCLC 43970336 Wendt Henry Delaney John Bowles Alex 2010 Envisioning the World The First Printed Maps 1472 1700 Santa Rosa CA Sonoma County Museum OCLC 617728973 Woodward David 1985 Reality Symbolism Time and Space in Medieval World Maps Annals of the Association of American Geographers 75 4 510 521 doi 10 1111 j 1467 8306 1985 tb00090 x External linksMedia related to Maps of the world before Columbus at Wikimedia Commons Library resources about Early world maps Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries Index of Maps of the Early Medieval Period HenryDavis com Archived 2007 03 12 at the Wayback Machine Mapping History resource from the British Library Geography and Map Reading Room at the Library of Congress Ancient World Maps The Peutinger Map Virtual Mappa Digital Editions of Early Medieval Maps of the World edit Martin Foys Heather Wacha et al Philadelphia PA Schoenberg Institute of Manuscript Studies 2018 doi 10 21231 ef21 ev82 Medieval Maps and Mapping Resources