Posted on 07/03/2012 6:23:06 PM PDT by blam
The Oldest Map With The Word 'America' On It Was Just Found Between Two Geometry Books
The Daily Telegraph
Jul. 3, 2012, 7:44 PM
A version of a 500-year-old world map that was the first to mention the name "America" has been discovered in a German university library.
Experts did not even know about the existence of a fifth copy of the map by German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller until it showed up a few days ago, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich said.
The discovery is much smaller and thought to have been made after the 1507 original version, which Germany officially handed over to the United States in 2007 and now lies in the Library of Congress in Washington.
The newly unearthed map, one of the so-called globe segments, is believed to have been produced by Waldseemueller himself, who died in 1522.
These were "at least as important for the dissemination of geographical knowledge in his own time" as the world wall map, which is UNESCO-registered and often dubbed "America's birth certificate", the university said.
Ludwig Maximilian University
The new find shows the world divided into 12 segments which taper to a point at each end and are printed on a single sheet, which, when folded out, form a small globe, with the three rightmost segments depicting a boomerang-shaped territory named America.
Only four copies of the segmental maps were previously known about, the university said in a written statement.
One of the four was sold at auction for $1 million in 2005.
The fifth was found by a bibliographer, who was revising the catalogue, "in an otherwise unremarkable volume that had been rebound in the 19th century", it said.
It was nestled between two printed works on geometry from the early 16th century.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Has the NEA really not opened a math book in that long..
Looks like all they knew about at the time the map was made was what we call Florida.
NEA taught librarian: geometry, geology, geography, same diff.
They better check the other books too, maybe Obama's birth certificate will turn up finally.
What did they think they knew and how'd they GET that way?
Actually pretty amazing, that strip with “America”
on it is SOUTH America, north America is just above it
and you can just make out the gulf of Mexico and Florida.
Kind of distorted but it’s there.
Wow!
Hide a welfare check under work boots and it will never be cashed...this story, for some reason, brings that to mind.
If you look at the equator it seems as it is part of the east coast of South America, like Brazil.
Mark Hofmann's out of the pen and back in business ... ping!
Take it to the Pawn Stars shop and have Chumley take a look.
Thanks for the laugh ping! That poor dumb bastard is still sitting at Point of the Mountain with his legs spread welcoming all the Morgbot perverts in prison.
LOL!
QUick!! Look between some Trig books! Maybe you'll find 0bama's birth certificate!
No, wait. He wouldn't be near anything named 'Trig'. Try the Algebra books. Lots of zeroes in those.
I thought Germans spelled Africa as Afrika.
Wow. Isn’t that wonderful? :-)
At the time this map was drawn, probably no Europeans had seen Florida. Apart from the Scandinavian explorers centuries earlier, the only parts of North America known to have been seen by Europeans by 1507 were Newfoundland and perhaps Nova Scotia and/or New England by John Cabot, and parts of Central America by Columbus. Juan Ponce de Leon’s discovery of Florida was several years later. Magellan’s exploration of the coast of South America began in 1519. Amerigo Vespucci had been a passenger on a ship that explored part of the coast of Brazil, and a Portuguese explorer en route to India accidentally ran into Brazil in 1500. Waldseemuller did pretty well given the limited amount of information available at the time.
UH...Mazing!
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