Geographical knowlegde through maps

In today’s post we are going to see the evolution of the geographical knowledge through some different maps. Doing this analysis we will realize that there are a lot of differences between them, so we will try to understand the cause of these differences.

v  1482, Plotemy:

     In this map we can see the similarities between the image that romans and Greeks had of the world and the image that the Europeans of the 15^th century had.

First of all, we can realize that this map had been done by people who live in the Mediterranean, because it is the best detailed zone. It is almost perfect, even the coasts are well defined. Therewith, the Mediterranean zone is more or less the half of the world. It is why the farther you go to the east, the lands and seas are not so well represented. There are many different examples to see what we have just said:

Africa: the north zone of Africa is well defined, because they had commercial relations with the Mediterranean zone. But as we go to the south, there is not any relation with the reality, as we can see in Sahara, which is full of lakes and rivers.

India and Sri Lanka: there is not a correct and real relation between the sizes.

Scandinavia: it appears in the map, even when Plotemy did not know about this country, so we can see how it has been just added.

Terra Incongnita, unknown-land: there is no a clear end of the land, so they did not represent it.

The proportion of land and sea is not real, because the idea of a full of sea earth id very modern. They just thought that the most part of the Earth was formed by land.

We can also see that the huge land in this map is in the south, and there is a simple reason: if there was more land in the north, it would turn around.

v  1490, Henricus Martellus:

    

This map is basically a copy of the previous, but if we look at the west coast of Africa, we will see that it is much better defined. The reason is that the Portuguese’s have done a lot of discoveries and travel to this part of the world, and as result we have a very realistic representation of most of the geographical accidents of the coast. Also we can see that there is no knowledge about the east coast.

Beside this, the size of Europe now is smaller, but the forms are still not corrects.

This is a good representation of who the evolution of the knowledge makes changes in the maps, because at the last moment, they did some discoveries in South Africa and it has been added to the map, but it appears “out of the map”.

Another change is that there are three India, the first one, India, the second one, Indochina, and the third one, China.

To finish with this map, we have to say that it has a clear end, because of Marco Polo’s trips, and this is the map that Columbus used.

v  1500, Juan De La Cosa:

   

  In this map we can see the first representation of America done in a map, so it is very important. Specifically, the new territories that appear are the Caribbean Islands, the first lands to be discovered. Juan De La Cosa is the only man who witnessed the trips of Columbus. The author tried to match the Caribbean islands and the Asian Coast, to present this territory as an extension of Asia. Finally, there are some little improvements on the representation of Africa.

    

v  1502, Cantino:

    In this map Cantino added the new knowledge about the geography, as we can see in the evolution of the representations of Africa and India, which are far better illustrated, the proportions and the situation of these land is realistic. On the other hand we have the representation of the New World, which is more detailed that in the previous map, because now they know that there is a continent, but they do not know anything about the interior of this land, so they just represent the coast. There is also some decoration, a drawing of the local wildlife. We can see who they represent the differences between the New World and the Old World. In Europe there are many castle and flags, in Africa there are little villages, fauna and the flags of those who had established bases on the coast. Finally, in South America (which is the only one that is represented) there is no village or buildings, there are only animals, trees and water.

v  1507, Rusych:

In this map Europe is more or less perfect, but they maintain the same distortion in Scandinavia. India is also perfectly represented, thanks to the description of Portuguese. As we can see, this map is made to be connected and form a cone, so Asia continues on the left. The only thing that has changed in this map is the new discoveries, which are added to the previous distribution.

v  1507 Waldssemüller:

     This is the first map in which the name of America appears. As we can see, Waldssemüller copied the map of Martellus and that is why the distortion is the same. Waldssemüller said that he read a letter from Americo Vespuccio in which he said that the new discoveries could not be part of Asia, so they could be a new continent. Therefore, Waldssemüller wanted to give the achievement to Americo, so he called this New Continent America.

v  1513: Piri Reis:

     This is the first representation of the world out of the European or the Christian world. As usual, the west part of Africa and Spain are well defined. Antilia is still on the map, and we can see Japan drawn in the east coast of America. So we can say that this map is a mixture of the medieval and the new knowledge.  

v  1529: Diego Ribero:

     In this map there is no remaining of the Plotemaic map, save Sumatra. Madagascar is now very well defined and we can see that Newfoundland is a part of a continent. We have to realize that only 30 years before the first map of America, there is a huge difference between these maps, and this is a representation of all the advances in the knowledge.

They still did not know the east coast of America.

Finally, we can see two flags, the Portuguese one and the Spanish one, and also the limit of Tordesillas.

v  1534 Giovanni Battista Ramu:

     This is quite similar to the map of Diego Rivera, and in this moment, the west coast of America is well known.

v  1569: Mercator:

     This is, definitely, the map of all we have seen that saves more relation with nowadays maps. It is important to realize that Gerardus Mercator was German, and the geographical subjects were matter of the State. By this moment they have made a good cartography of this part of the world, Europe, Asia, India, Filipinas… there are perfectly represented. However, Terra Incognita still appears in the map, and they added text boxes and decorative elements to cover the zones that they did not know.

v  1570 Ortellius:

     Finally, in this map we can find, more or less and saving some distortions, the same representation of the world that we know at this moment.