16th-Century Mapmaker's Intriguing Knowledge['America']

The Washington Post ^ | 17 Nov 2008 | David Brown

[BGHater]

How was it that a German priest writing in Latin and living in a French city far from the coast became the first person to tell the world that a vast ocean lay to the west of the American continents?

That is one of the bigger mysteries in the history of the Renaissance.

But it is not the only one involving Martin Waldseemueller, a map-making cleric whose own story is sufficiently obscure that his birth and death dates aren't known for certain.

Waldseemueller appears to have also known something about the contours of South America's west coast years before Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the bottom of the continent. History books record them as the first Europeans to bring back knowledge of the Pacific Ocean.

The evidence of this knowledge is in Waldseemueller's world map of 1507, perhaps the most valuable of the 5 million maps owned by the Library of Congress. It was acquired for $10 million in 2003 and went on permanent display last year.

The map -- in near-perfect condition and with no other known copies -- is the oldest document that applies the label "America" to the land mass between Africa and Asia.

This was, of course, in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator who had sailed to the New World for the Portuguese. (His first name was Latinized to "Americus" and then feminized to "America.") The act of naming was apparently Waldseemueller's alone; there is no evidence that the term was in use at the time.

Waldseemueller's Map
A detail from Martin Waldseemueller's 1507 map of the world honors explorer Amerigo Vespucci and for the first time depicts an ocean to the west of the New World.

[Bernard Marx]

The Earth has been known to be round for a very long time. Greek mathematician Eratosthenes calculated the planet’s diameter quite accurately before his death in 195 B.C. An enormous amount of knowledge has been lost to the ravages of time and war.

[Free Vulcan]

Awesome.

[blam]

"I know we're pi$$ing away trillions these days, but what is the government doing acquiring collector's items?"

You have a right to know just because it's your money?

[ml/nj]

Strange notion, I'll admit.

ML/NJ

[pabianice]

Cartography is spell-binding. I was delighted to be a P-3 aircraft navigator in the US Navy. But I had to "upgrade" to tactical coordinator (TACCO) per the Navy qual system. I volunteered to be nav as often as I could whenever we went to Europe or Asia. The places we went and the things we saw and the people we met and the things we did. What a priviledge and what an adventure! US Navy.

[gleeaikin]

“a civilization comparable to that of Rome that flourished before known history.”

An will continue not to be known until archeology takes up serious underwater coastal and riverine exploration to find settlements along the ancient (much lower) shorelines.

[SunkenCiv]

[Hegewisch Dupa]

selfo-pingo