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PART I OF: PLANIMETRIC MAPPING OF WORLD CONTINENTAL LAND SURFACES

Mary Lynette Larsgaard

Map and Imagery Laboratory, Davidson Library

University of California, Santa Barbara

mary@sdc.ucsb.edu

The focal point of the story of the world's exploration is Europe ... knowledge of the world as it is, the size of its oceans, the distribution of its land masses and their shapes, owes almost everything to the curiosity and drive of the peoples living along the margins of the Mediterranean.

Newby 1975, p. 10

Porque, necesario es confesarlo: ni el lucro, ni la conquista militar fueron incentivos suficientes, que capacitaron al hombre para conocer el mundo y dominarlo.

Sanz Lopez 1967, p. 22

... the extent of geographical knowledge of a country is determined by the extent to which maps of it have been perfected.

Dmitry Nikolaevich Anuchin (1843-1923)

INTRODUCTION

The map is naturally more ancient than the book.

Fordham 1923, p. 8

Primitive peoples, and, by extension, prehistoric peoples, make maps long before they develop written language, perhaps because we think in pictures even though we speak in words; thus, a study of the spread of mapped areas of the Earth's surface could conceivably have boundaries exactly the same as the range of Homo sapiens, an awesome study area indeed (Raisz 1948, p. 3; Daly 1879, p. 2). The narrowing of that enormous area is suggested by the fact than an interest in mapping on some relatively permanent medium such as stone, metal, vellum, parchment, or paper - not only of their own but of foreign countries - has been displayed by those peoples occupying Europe (especially western and northwestern Europe) and by Europeanized nations. There is an exception; once again, as in so many matters of culture and civilization, the Chinese were probably first. A thorough study of Chinese mapping would be a valuable and enlightening contribution to the literature; it awaits the Western scholar versed in Chinese culture, mores, and language.

This study deals with planimetric mapping, that is, with determining the location (e.g., in terms of latitude and longitude) of cultural and natural features, ignoring the aspect of determination of elevation which is the primary characteristic of topographic mapping. In deciding whether an area had been mapped by a given time or not, the primary criterion was correct general form and size, but considerable leniency intervened re correct latitudinal and especially longitudinal placement, since accurate measurement of the latter was not readily attainable until the nineteenth century. This demand for a certain accuracy excludes from the study cosmographies, which may be highly subjective, and constitute a study area all their own. Speaking in more quantitative terms, mapping on a small scale - anywhere from about 1:2,000,000 to about 1:20,000,000 - was accepted as sufficient to map a given area, the latter for continental outlines, the former for relatively small areas such as nations.

Research has been accomplished by using profusely illustrated and frequently scholarly secondary materials (one of which had a list of illustrations prior to the table of contents - first things first, obviously), of which there are an almost unbelievable number (viz. the bibliography). The literature of the history of cartography is extensive, involved, and often written by persons in love with the topic. While any definitive study of the mapping of a relatively small area requires close examination of primary sources - the maps - a study such as this, dealing in generalized terms, may safely keep to reproductions and to the many studies one on these reproductions and the originals. Considering that relatively few libraries possess a substantive collection of pre-1800 maps, and that such maps have become increasingly expensive over the last twenty years, this is just as well.

The number of maps predating A.D. 1800, let alone A.D. 1500, is not particularly large; the student of such maps is dealing with only the survivors. Some maps may indeed have come down to us, reasonably intact, because of their superiority, but since maps are working tools, and assuming that persons use maps approximately the same way now as they did in the past, many of the best maps, especially nautical charts, disintegrated from constant use under adverse conditions, in a manner akin to the rapid decay of a road map in an automobile glove compartment.

Let us define a few basic terms. A map is a "representation in an medium or manner of any particular area or country" (Bagrow 1964, p. 22). A chart, which terms seems to come from the Portuguese "cartes" ("paper") or Latin "charta," is generally a nautical map, designed primarily for navigational use. An "early" map may be considered to be a map produced before the first systematic survey of a given area.

Cultural Ancestors of the Europeans: Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome

Western cartography begins, as do so many Western cultural traits, in what schoolchildren learn to call the cradles of civilization - Egypt along the Nile, and the area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Direct material evidence is scanty. One of the earliest known maps to survive was made by a Sumerian in about 2500 B.C..; it illustrates military operations of Sargon of Akka. Found in the ruined city of Ga Sur, 200 miles north of Babylon, this baked clay tablet depicts a river valley with mountains on either side, a three-lobed delta, and the river flowing into a lake or sea (Jervis 1938, p. 185; James 1972, p. 4; Raisz 1948, p. 5). Babylonian civilization used military, route, and cadastral maps, especially the latter; in the British Museum are city and town plans dating back to about 2000 B.C. (Bagrow 1964, p. 31; Raisz 1948, p. 5). In Egypt cadastral plans and surveying methods were also important; the annual Nile flood swept away some boundary stones, and taxation procedures - then as now - required that land be carefully measured and registered. Rameses II (1333-1300 B.C.) initiated a systematic land survey, although no maps have survived (Raisz 1948, p. 6). A schematic map of a Nubian gold mine (an area now called Wadi Alaiki), ca. 1300 B.C., has survived, as have plans of palaces and temples (Daly 1879, p. 4; Bagrow 1964, p. 32), but it is probable that the Egyptians did little to advance cartography, for they were not a particularly migratory, colonizing, or navigating race (Daly 1879, p. 4).

The Phoenicians, who drew much of their culture from Babylonia, probably developed maps as an essential support to their business as purveyors to the known world of ship-carried goods, but as merchants they considered such maps to be trade secrets - what Phoenician in his right mind would reveal the location of, for instance, the Isles of Scilly, with their deposits of tin? For "... next to professional lawbreakers, no group of people in the history of mankind has been more reluctant to keep records than professional sailors" (Brown 1949, pp. 114-15). Although we know so little of the Phoenicians that we do not even know if they did indeed possess maps and charts, Marinus of Tyre (about A.D. 120) apparently employed considerable Phoenician information in making his chart (Raisz 1948, p. 5).

In Greece also - the next focus of cartographic effort - initially only small areas were portrayed; if large area depiction were attempted, the results were generally schematic efforts in the form of cosmographies (Bagrow 1964, p. 32). One major problem, especially in large-are depiction, is planimetric location of points. The determination of latitude was fairly easily and early solved, since it is relatively simple to obtain latitude if a recognizable celestial object is visible. Although longitude also ultimately depends on celestial observation, it is much more elusive, since for its accurate determination the observer must know the difference in time between two different places on two different lines of longitude, and without accurate timepieces or such long-distance instantaneous communication as the telephone this is, to say the least, difficult (Arthur H. Robinson 1973, p. 447).

Anaximander (611-546 B.C.) seems to have been the first to attempt to draw a map of the world to scale; Greece was at the center, the Pillars of Hercules to the west, the north African deserts to the south, east to the western limits of India, fading into the unknown hyperborean lands to the north (Raisz 1937, p. 10; James 1972, p. 25; Daly 1879, p. 6). By about 500 B.C. the Greeks had a general knowledge of the Mediterranean shores (Baker 1967, p. 18).

The first reference in Western literature to maps, by Herodotus of Helicarnassus (484?-425? B.C.), is scornful, and did not augur well for the future of cartography:

For my part, I cannot but laugh when I see numbers

of persons drawing maps of the world without having

any reason to guide them ...

Lister 1970, p. 14)

an attitude doubtless fostered by the mingling of the fantastic with the known in such maps as those by Hecataeus (550-480 B.C.), whose map/plan of the Earth divided it into two continents, Europe in the north and Asia to the south and east. On the other hand, Herodotus himself had an erroneous idea of the comparative dimensions of the Euxine and the Maeotis Palus (Sea of Azov), and knew very little of interior Africa or of central and northern Europe, including the north Adriatic. He knew vaguely of the existence of the Tanais (Don), Borysthenes (Dneiper), and other rivers flowing into the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, and had the Danube arise in Spain and flow to the northeast and east (Burton 1969, p. 27; Thacher 1896, p. 10; Jervis 1938, p. 185, 209; Sykes 1949, p. 9; see Myres 1896 for maps constructed according to Herodotus).

Knowledge of form and content of Greek maps is based upon references in contemporary writings on the history of geography; none of the maps has survived (Crone 1968, p. 18). It seems probably that maps as we know them did not exist until the time of Ptolemy (ca. A.D. 150), when geography was first defined as the representation of the known world (Bagrow 1964, p. 32).

From an early date the Greeks had periploi, written itineraries of sea coasts, and itinerary "maps" of main trading routes in the eastern Mediterranean regions, but no sailing charts existed, reflecting the method of sailing then used, which mainly consisted of hugging the coast. The itineraries merely showed stops along such important routes as, for example, from the Mediterranean sea coast through Asia Minor to Susa in Persia (the route being shown as a straight line). It was from such sources that maps of the known world were compiled, by establishing a few fundamental base lines such as the Nile or the aforementioned road to Souse (Crone 1968, p. 18). The travels of such persons as Pytheus, a Greek who described the British Isles and the west and northwest coast of Europe with fair accuracy about 333 B.C., were of considerable importance.

By the fourth century B.C., certain Greek minds were recognizing the need for a formal, abstract grid on maps; the Greeks were the first to use parallels. Dicaearchus (350-290 B.C.; or 326-296 B.C.) pointed out the need for an orienting line - his ran from west to east, through Gibraltar and Rhodes - on his then highly esteemed world map (Raisz 1937, p. 10).

Crates of Mallus constructed a globe of the four quarters of the inhabited part of the world, from Arctic to tropic, in the form of a half circle, ca. 326 B.C. (Daly 1879, p. 8; Jervis 1938, p. 185). Eratosthenes (276-196 B.C.), librarian at Alexandria about 200 B.C., made a map of the known world using the geographical information gathered by Alexander the Great and his successors, using a line through Alexandria as the meridian, and with an increased number of oriented lines, parallel but not necessarily equidistant; this map covered from the west coast of Africa east to India and from Scandinavia to Libya, and would remain in use (despite its many errors) until about A.D. 30 (Bagrow 1964, p. 33; Baldock 1966, p. 92). Eratosthenes' map covered about 7,800 miles east to west, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Gulf of Issus, and 3,800 miles north to south, from Thule to Cinnamon Land (Brown 1949, pp. 48, 50). Hipparchus in particular was upset about this map, and perhaps as a result of looking it over proposed, in effect, latitude and longitude lines at regular intervals (Brown 1949, p. 51). The inhabited world at this time was considered to cover about 9,000 miles east to west and about 4,400 miles north to south (Dickenson and Howarth 1976, p. 24).

The next focus of world power and of mapping was the Roman Empire, beginning about 30 B.C. and collapsing about A.D. 400. Whereas the Greeks had measured the Earth by the stars, the Romans measured it by milestones. The romans tended - at least insofar as mapping was concerned - to be a sturdily practical race, viewing maps as an aid to journeys and especially to campaigns, the latter view being one earnestly espoused by all Western nations to the present day (and current frays). Thus descriptive graphic itineraries, "painted roads," such as the Tabula Peutingeriana (named after Conrad Peutinger, 1465-1547, who published it), which dates from A.D. 250 and is perhaps a copy of a 20 B.C. map by Marcus Nipsanius Agrippa, is representative of Roman cartography in that it is a foot-wide, 20-foot long road map of the Roman Empire - highly reminiscent of the aids the American Automobile Association issues. It is the only surviving such item (Bagrow 1964, p. 38; Jervis 1938, p. 186). Map diagrams were added to illustrate such texts as Sallust's histories, Juvenal's Satires (the mind boggles at this), and Lacan's Pharsalia. About 174 B.C. a map of Sicily was made for a temple of Matuta; Varro (116-27? B.C.) mentions a map of Italy. When colonies were founded or territory was divided (perhaps for deserving centurions), plans were made in duplicate, one on metal or stone for public display, and another on linen for the state archives. Sketch maps of garrisons and surveyors' maps were apparently common; the aforementioned map of Agrippa was based on road surveys of the Roman Empire carried out by command of the Emperor Augustus (Bagrow 1964, p. 37; Lister 1970, p. 16). These were highly practical maps, with no pretensions toward being scientific - which was just as well, since the scientifically constructed maps were known to be full of errors (Daly 1879, p. 12)

The Geography of Strabo (545 B.C.-A.D. 24) is the principal key to the history of ancient cartography, if only because it has survived:

All that is known of Greek cartography prior to

Ptolemy can be traced back to Strabo of Amasia

and no further.

(Brown 1949, p. 17).

His map shows the Pillars of Hercules, but does not exactly locate them; India and the eastern ocean are in the same situation. Taprobane (Ceylon) is located vaguely; but the Britons, Germans, and peoples north and south of Ister are more exactly located, and new information on Hyrcania, Baetriana, and Arabia Felix appears, although Africa is not mentioned (Brown 1949, pp. 42, 57; Thacher 1896, p. 14).

It was from one of Rome's conquered territories, Egypt, that important maps, or at least instructions on how to construct them, came - about A.D. 150, from Ptolemy (ca. A.D. 90-168), who worked in Alexandria between A.D. 127 and 148, during the principates of Hadrian and Antonionus Pius (Dilke 1977, p. [1]). Using a chart by Marinus of Tyre (his teacher), who constructed charts by examining accounts of the most recent geographical explorations to the Far East and to the east coast and interior of Africa, Ptolemy wrote an eight-volume Geographical guide to the making of maps (usually called Geographia or Cosmographia); he performed what we today would call "editing a new and revised edition of an existing work" (Daly 1879, p. 13). Ptolemy admired Marinus' enthusiasm and diligence but noted that his distances were incorrect, since Marinus had assumed latitudes and longitudes to be at right angles (Dilke 1977, p. [2]). The first volume is devoted to theoretical principles, including a discussion of globe construction and techniques of map production, while volumes two through seven list some 8,000 place names, with coordinates given in terms of time (latitude in our degrees as length of longest day, longitude in hours and minutes in distance from the meridian of Alexandria or in degrees east of the Canaries); volume eight is a discussion of cartography, with maps (Bagrow 1964, p. 35; Dilke 1977, p [2[; Raisz 1948, p. 11). It is, as Oliver Thomson remarks, hardly readable (Dilke 1977, p. [2]). The "A" recension of the work has 26 regional maps and a one-hemisphere mappamundi (medieval world map); the "B" recension has 64 or 67 maps of smaller areas (Dilke 1977, p. [3]; Lister 1970, p. 15). There is considerable discussion as to whether Ptolemy actually constructed the maps or whether Geographia merely provided information and instructions; the maps issued with Geographia in the sixteenth century and after seem to be descended from those drawn by Byzantine monks in the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries (Raisz 1948, p. 11; Bagrow 1964, p. 36). On the other hand, "4 mss. of Ptolemy mention that maps of the Geography were drawn by Agathodaimon, a mechanikes, i.e. cartographer of Alexandria (Dilke 1977).

There are frequent inconsistencies and contradictions in the maps, not to mention the inclusion of material not known in Ptolemy's time, and, even more surprisingly, the Geographia is nowhere mentioned in lists of Ptolemy's works (Bagrow 1964, p. 35). Scholars working with the Geographia point out, occasionally with a somewhat gleeful disdain 9perhpas because it is heartening to think that we have progressed in our knowledge in twenty centuries), the many errors: the Caspian is shown as an inland sea, Ireland is too far north; there is an odd bend in the configuration of Scotland; the Persian Gulf is inaccurate in size and position; Ceylon is exaggeratedly large (this depiction would nonetheless hang on into the sixteenth century); the coastal outline of north Africa (especially the central section, which shows the coast of Tunisia as east-west instead of, in part, north-south) is inaccurate; the Mediterranean is a third too large; Africa is extended infinitely to the southwest and in the east connects with the eastern part of Asia, making the Indian Ocean an inland sea (only the Mediterranean coast and southwestern Europe are depicted well); the Scandinavian peninsula is depicted as two islands; the north coast of Germany is given as the margin of the northern ocean; there is no north coast of Asia; and so forth (Daly 1879, p. 14; Dilke 1977, p. [2]; Fite and Freeman 1926, p. 2; Brown 1949, pp. 76-76). All of the foregoing is neatly crowned by the fact that:

Ptolemy's irreliability in great parts of his

northern maps is known, but not sufficiently.

These maps display the most horrible chaos;

northern regions are turned into south-western,

coasts into rivers and vice versa, mountains

into tribes; names are mutilated, doubled,

tripled, invented.

(Schutte 1914, p. 61)

The final judgment - in spite of the foregoing comments -seems to be that the Geographia is a great compilation, demonstrating a better idea of topographical details than that of other Greeks and Romans, that Ptolemy originated the custom of placing north at the top (in spite of which we continue to orient rather than to boreate ourselves), that it contains maps from three or four different hands, and was put together in a leisurely fashion over 12 centuries (Brown 1949, p. 79; Dilke 1977, p. [4]; Bagrow 1964, p. 36). As an example of the latter, a Byzantine monk, Maximos Planudos (1260-1310), who found a manuscript of Geographia, was so delighted that he wrote a verse celebrating his purchase (a feat equalled only by Francesco Berlinghieri of Firenze, who - obviously a man after Planudos' own heart - prepared some centuries later, in 1482, a rhyming version of the Geographia), constructed a map from its instructions, and commemorated that in verse. As evidence that Planudos was not overestimating the importance of his purchase or his map, the Emperor Andronicus II, hearing of the map (which had aroused much scholarly interest), requested a copy for himself. It will come as no surprise to find out that Planudos also wrote a verse about that (Bagrow 1964, p. 36).

As these older maps and their descriptions pass before our eyes and we compare them with succeeding (in all ways) maps, they are best viewed as steps on a path forcing the graphic surrender of ethnocentricity. Early maps feature, and accurately reflect, man's feeling that where he stands is Delphi.

Planimetric Mapping of Africa: Classic Times to A.D. 400

The northern coast of Africa and the Nile in Egypt had been appearing on maps since before the birth of Christ, but the rest of the continent was quite another matter. The Phoenicians, those great, silent travelers, knew the African coast well (Winsor 1889a, p. 24). About Ptolemy's time, from the northern littoral to the Nile Valley, Egypt, Sudan, Barbary, and the lower Nile were all known and mapped. Morocco had first been mentioned in 520 B.C. by Hecataeus of Miletus, but information of west Africa was vague, hazier, and less precise as one went south. Both Ptolemy and Hipparchus passed on the belief that Africa was attached to some southern continent; an alternative concept was that Africa curved around to join Asia (Tooley 1969, p. iii; Winsor 1889a, p. 10; Langlands 1961; Playfair and Brown 1893, p. 217). The depiction of Africa would remain as per Ptolemy until the fifteenth century, when the Portuguese would begin the modern mapping of Africa (Tooley 1969, p. iii).

Planimetric Mapping of Eurasia: Classic Times to A.D. 400

Asia

The earliest known maps of Asia are those resulting from Ptolemy's Geographia. As far east as the Golden Chersonese/Aurea Khersonesos (present-day Malay Peninsula), the coastline is fairly accurate - if one excepts India, which is scarcely recognizable. Ceylon is depicted as much larger than it actually is - perhaps it was confused with the peninsula of India. Although the major mountain ranges and rivers are depicted, the southern coast is shown as a relatively straight line. Ptolemy did greatly, and correctly, reduce the estimate of the length of Asia given by Marinus (Asanachinta 1968, p. 5; Gole 1976, p. 20; Needy 1959, v.3, p. 527).

Europe

As with so many other European countries Scandinavia and Ireland, at the northern fringes, were first known to the civilized world through Ptolemy, although his maps are full of errors, with an unnaturally straight Baltic coastline, and with Ireland too long and too far north. Scotland has a pronounced swing to the west and Wales scarcely protrudes at all, nor is northeastern Europe well depicted (Tooley 1952, p. 91; Spekke 1961, p. 5; Royal Scottish Geographical Society 1960, p. 3; Michael Corbet Andrews 1924, p. 14).

Russia

The triangular shape of the Crimea first began to appear in manuscript maps ascribed to Ptolemy; little else was accurately depicted (Kohlin 1960, p. 87).

Planimetric Mapping: A.D. 400-1500

The truth is that the interpretation of primitive nautical cartography is a problem of the utmost difficulty.

Caraci 1960, p. 33

Overview

With the fall of the Roman Empire about A.D. 400 came the decline and near disappearance of cartography; geography itself disappeared as a science, not to reappear until the sixteenth century (Almagia 1935, p. 94). Yet by the end of the classical age of exploration Europe was well known west of the Elbe and south of the Danube, albeit less well known the farther east one traveled (Baker 1967, p. 32). Especially in the third through the fifth centuries there was little travel except by pilgrims (Baker 1967, p. 33).

The taste of the age ran to the marvelous, and medieval cartography reflected this. From the third to the thirteenth centuries, cartography was marked by the decaying to pure fancy of the once fairly accurate delineation of the coastlines, the maps themselves becoming more schematic and diagrammatic, more cosmographic than cartographic. Between the fourth and the tenth centuries, cartography was predominantly Christian in origin and ecclesiastical in conception (Brown 1949, p. 85). Where the Greeks had left spaces blank, the Middle Ages - perhaps abhorring a visual vacuum - filled in with fantasy, turning mappamundi into "poems of the world" (Spekke 1948, p. 43). Twentieth-century comments on medieval cartography tend toward the scornful:

- "ces debris de la cartographie medievale" (Denuce 1908, p. 8)

- "drab and witless" (Goode 1927, p. 4)

- "of such complete futility" (Beazley 1949, p. 528)

- "really delightful, if ignorant, maps of the period" (Synge 1962, p. 92)

and so forth. Accuracy in geography was not a concern in the Middle Ages; the world consisted of Europe, Africa, and Asia, "vaguely apprehended," with a vast Terra Incognita somewhere in the south (Hale 1966, p. 31).

Of secular cartography in the early Middle Ages there is no trace except references; Charlemagne (724-814) had many maps, including three on silver tablets, the largest of which was cut up by Lothair (a grandson) and distributed to soldiers (Daly 1879, p. 19; Bagrow 1964, p. 42; Raisz 1937b, p. 11). Lothair's descendants are unfortunately alive, well, and using libraries to this day. Monastic libraries and those of princes and noblemen had some mappaemundi, Holy Land maps, and, later, sea charts. In the main, the Church fathers (being among the few who could read and write) were responsible for cartography, and all tended to use the same sources - Pliny, Solinus, Isidore, and legend (Bagrow 1`964, pp. 42, 50). The complete domination by Christian supernaturalism of the medieval map maker (who made no serious attempt to show the Earth as it was, for if this world were only an unimportant, brutish waystop on the path to heaven, why bother?) is exemplified in the T-O maps, circular cartograms with the top half being Asia, the Tanais (Don) and Red Sea forming a horizontal bar delimiting Asia from Europe and Africa, and the last two separated by a vertical bar that represents the Mediterranean (Raisz 1948, p. 14).

Mappaemundi - compromises between the portolan charts and the medieval theoretical maps - were produced in fairly large numbers from the eighth through the mid-fifteenth century; two famous examples are the Hereford (1290) and Ebstorf (1284) maps. Although both are very detailed, they also both exhibit the "profoundest ignorance of the world in general" (Daly 1897, p. 24). This sort of map was intended generally for the learned, and had little to do with the improvement of cartography (Daly 1879, p. 25). It was not until the twelfth century that mappaemundi began to have a feeble grasp on reality; the people's affection for these "legendary descriptions and their iconographic representation" demonstrated the "really impressive force of human inertia" (Spekke 1948, pp. 41, 42). Meanwhile, the Norsemen - in their prime in the eighth through the twelfth centuries - were traveling to Iceland (795), Greenland 9983), and North America (about 1000), but apparently left no maps (Baker 1967, p. 36).

During the ninth through the thirteenth centuries only the Arabs assiduously cultivated factual geography; the preservation of Ptolemy is due to the translation of his work into Arabic (Daly 1879, pp. 20, 21, 26). With the rise of Islam, the Arabs had become the intellectual heirs of the Greeks, and between the seventh and twelfth centuries science and geography came to Europe via the great Arab centers of learning - Baghdad, Cordova, and Damascus (Tooley 1961, p. 9). In light of this and their extensive travels and conquests, the Arab contribution to cartography is disappointing; Arab cartographers in the middle, purely Islamic phase tended to force outlines of land into geometric patterns, sometimes changing the shape beyond recognition, and the end result of their work bore a striking resemblance to Arab calligraphy, which itself was not developed until the end of the seventh century (Raisz 1948, p. 17; Bagrow 1964, p. 53). The very same nomadic tradition that caused the Arabs to have a rich fund of geographical knowledge seemed to militate against writing it down; few or no maps were produced by the Turks until they were firmly settled in Asia Minor (Raisz 1948, p. 209).

During the tenth through the fifteenth centuries, the Christian Church was consolidating, national states were taking form, and relics of classical Greek and Roman science that had been preserved in monastic libraries were coming to light. In fact, religion itself provided a stimulus for mapping - the Crusades (eleventh through fourteenth centuries), which brought about an increase in trade, the growth of Italian trade cities in northern Italy, and much activity on the Mediterranean, all fostering the development of sailing charts (Baker 1967, p. 38). At the beginning of the crusades, east and northeastern Europe was as shadowy and unfamiliar to men of the West as were central Asia and Africa, although some tangible view had been given of the west coast of Europe as far north as the Baltic (Spekke 1948, pp. 40-41).

Strangely enough, it was virtually in the midst of the Crusades (which were, at least outwardly, a battle between Christian Europeans and Near East Arabs) that a meeting of Near East and West produced, in 1154, the first relatively accurate map to appear in many centuries. The court of the Norman King Roger II Guiscard of Sicily (1097-1154) was a meeting place for travelers, sailors, and scholars, where accounts of distant lands were frequently heard. Idrisi (alternatively El-Adrisi and Edrisi), an Arab scholar, came to court to collaborate with roger on the compilation of a book containing all available data on latitude and longitude of towns, the distances between them, and their climatic-zone distribution. In about 1154 the book and an accompanying map on a silver table (3.5 x 5 meters) appeared; the map was smashed by a mob in 1160 (Bagrow 1964, pp. 56-57).

The next major cartographic sign that Western Europe was coming out of the drugged sleep of the Dark Ages was an accurate map of Great Britain by Matthew Paris in about 1250 (Raisz 1948, p. 15). Travel was much more common than it had been in the past; especially was it done by merchants, such as Marco Polo, who was in China from 1271 to 1290 (Baker 1967, p. 46).

The most active and accurate mapmakers were all at sea, but only physically; the major maps of the period were without question nautical charts. The seas became the focus of mapmaking as travel and commerce increased, and since mysticism and fantasy, while all very well for someone not going anywhere, would not suffice for sailors trying to get from Venice to Alexandria, sea charts had to be correct. Such charts form a striking contrast to the mappaemundi dreamed up by scholars of the time. The waterways of the known world were the roads over which much of the trade goods traveled; poor maps resulted not just in no profit but in bankruptcy. It would not be until 1400 that other maps would reflect contemporary geographical knowledge.

Sea charts have a long and somewhat cloudy history. One theory is that they are of Byzantine origin and were brought to the West about A.D. 100 by Italian navigators, who learned from Greeks in Constantinople how to make and use them (Kimble 1938, p. 181; Stevenson 1911, p. 3), but there is considerable argument as to whether the Catalans or the Italians were first. The charts made their appearance in the tenth and eleventh centuries with the awakening of commercial activities in the coast cities of Europe and especially of Italy. A most valuable Chinese invention, the compass (introduced to the West about 1147-1149) made the change from the old written instructions for sailing (variously called itineraries, periploi, rutter, routier) to the portolano, a manual illustrated with charts. The most characteristic feature of the charts is the many straight intersecting lines, called rhumb lines (radiating from a center in the direction of winds or compass points), added after the coast outlines were drawn in. These rhumb lines allowed a pilot to lay a course from one harbor to another; the navigator would apply his compass to the chart and note the angle formed between north as indicated by the magnetic needle and the direction in which he needed to proceed (Stevenson 1908, p. 18). No projection is used in these charts, so the lines are not loxodromes (i.e., lines intersecting all meridians at the same angle). Although a scale is used, a unit of length is seldom given (Crone 1968, p. 32). Withal, such charts generally depict the coastlines of Europe and North Africa accurately. In a change from Roman maps which had south at the top and early medieval maps with east at the top, these charts - because of their dependence on the compass - have north at the top (Bagrow 1964, p. 65; Tooley 1961, p. 15).

No portolan charts made prior to A.D. 1300 survive. The oldest extant example is the Carte Pisane of Pietru Visconte (Petrus Vesconte), ca. 1311, produced at Genoa, which outlines the coast from the Black Sea to southern England (Crone 1968, p. 31; Stevenson 1911, p. 2; Jervis 1938, p. 187). Approximately 130 surviving portolans antedate 1500, with the oldest from Genoa and Pisa, and those from the latter half of the fourteenth century being mainly Catalan (Crone 1968, p. 16; Bagrow 1964, p. 64; Kimble 1938, p. 193). These charts cover the Mediterranean and Black Seas, some of the Atlantic coasts of Europe (occasionally as far north as the Baltic), and south of Gibraltar to Cape Bojador, just past the Atlas Mountains; some include the north part of the Red Sea (Crone 1968, p. 32; Stevenson 1911, p. 18; Penrose 1955, chapter 16).

The poor delineation of the Baltic coast is explained by the Hanseates not drawing such charts and for commercial reasons discouraging the Italians from frequenting Baltic waters, but by the end of the fifteenth century the use of charts was spreading to northern waters, and the head of the Gulf of Bothnia and the modern outline of the Prussian Livonian coasts appeared (Crone 1968, p. 38; Spekke 1948, p. 48).

In approximately 1375, the Catalan map of the world - based on portolan charts plus information on the interior - appeared, the finest map of the Middle Ages, made for Charles V of France. It was the first map to give a relatively proper outline to Ceylon and the Indian peninsula, including the west coast of Africa to south of Cape Bojador and furnishing a roughly correct outline of the Arabian peninsula. Marco Polo's writings and those of the missionaries who followed Polo were used for land mapping of east and southeast Asia. In a major step forward, the mapmakers left blank those areas about which they knew nothing; unfortunately for science but fortunately for art, later mapmakers would slide back into the here-be-dragons manner (James 1972, p. 6;3 Jervis 1938, p. 187; Penrose 1955, p. 18; Winter 1954, pp. 6-7).

In 1400, the people of Europe had as their known world Europe, south and west Asia, and north Africa; they had heard of the Spice Islands (Moluccas) and Zipanu, but no one had been to either place (Wynd and Wood 1963, figure 1). The coastal outlines of Europe and north Africa were remarkably accurate, but continental interiors were blank.

The importance of portolan charts is clearly shown by the fact that the first seaman's manual was printed in the fifteenth century soon after the invention of the printing press (Bagrow 1964, p. 63). Amazingly enough, portolans were not accepted by land-based mapmakers until Ptolemy's Geographia was proved inaccurate in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It was not until 1779 that many of the Ptolemaic conventions were finally removed from the world map (Stevenson 1911, p. 28; James 1972, p. 11). The scholar working in a monastery, gathering information from written documents, had little contact with the chartmakers who worked for merchants. All portolans are strikingly similar, showing little change except for detail in delineation of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, with few going beyond the stalemate of the British coast or the west coast of Denmark to reach the Baltic. Yet each is slightly different, for each was tailored to the purchasers request, and therefore may be quite lovely, decorated in gay colors with ships and so forth. And they do have their little foibles, vide the chart by Leonardo Dati (1360-1425), called La Sfera, which is in verse - but Sr. Dati also made T-O maps (Bagrow 1964, p. 62; Jervis 1938, p[. 188).

The fifteenth century marked the emergence of weatherly ships in which oceanic voyages could be attempted with some hope of return; a greater knowledge of Atlantic winds and currents and the application of navigational methods enabled the sailor to plot more realistically where he was, at least in terms of latitude (Bagrow 1964, p. 105). Mappaemundi were being made both in and out of the cloister; Giovanni Leardo of Venice had a specialty in world maps, issuing them in 1442, 1447, and 1448, but information on these maps was about 100 years out of date. A major impetus for making maps sprang from the sudden increase in exploring activity in Europe, caused by a zeal to spread the Christian faith and more pressingly by a critical need to replenish European supplies of precious metals and spices, supplying goods for appetites whetted by the Crusades. Somehow the two goals blended together and were not allowed to interfere with each other. For the first time in Europe, exploration was planned and supported by government and commercial concerns, and for the first time it was directed toward the open ocean. The Portuguese took the lead in 1434 with the humble but prophetic beginning of a valiant captain outfoxing his crew so that they were south of Cape Bojador (beyond which as every sailor knew dreadful things happened) before they knew it (James 1972, pp. 83, 89). From this time on, first the Portuguese, then the Spanish, then the Dutch, French, and English, provided almost more discoveries than the mapmaker could handle - 1456 Cape Verde, 1484 Congo River mouth, 1487 Cape of Good Hope, 1492 West Indies, 1497 Newfoundland, 1498 Vasco da Gama to India, 1500 Brazil - if he could find out about them (Baker 1967, pp. 65-83).

The second half of the fifteenth century was also marked, ironically enough, by new and important editions of Ptolemy, so that the people of the Renaissance almost simultaneously discovered an important geographical source and disproved it. What initiated this rash of Geographia printing? The collapse of Byzantium had, among other things, brought Greek manuscripts to Italy, and the printing press had been invented (in the West) in about 1454 (Bagrow 1964, pp. 77, 89-94). Before 1458, the maps accompanying Ptolemy had been province maps of Spain, France, Italy, Etruria, the Peloponessus, Candia, and Egypt with Ethiopia, plus some town plans (e.g., Rome, Alexandria), as in the edition by Pietro del Massajo (Crone 1968, p. 66).

The first printed edition of Ptolemy appeared in 1476 in Vicenze, sans maps, followed by the 1477 Bologna edition, the 1478 Rome edition, and the 1482 Firenze edition, the latter adding five modern maps (Crone 1968, pp. 67-70). To 1730, 62 editions of Ptolemy would be published. At the very end of the fifteenth century Henricus Martellus Germanicus prepared a manuscript of Ptolemy and added 12 new maps - England and Ireland; Spain; Gaul; Germany; Scandinavia; Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and Cyprus; the Balkans; Crete; Asia Minor; Palestine; and a sea chart of the new Portuguese discoveries (Bagrow 1964, p. 81). As the fifteenth century turned into the sixteenth, more and more modern maps were added to each edition of Ptolemy. A third Rome edition of 1507 added six new maps, including a map of central Europe (Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia); a 1511 Venetian edition contained the first printed (but still not very accurate) map of the British Isles; and an ambitious 1513 Strasbourg edition added 20 new maps, the first atlas compiled from contemporary sources since the classics. By the time of the Basel edition of 1540, Ptolemaic maps were considered interesting only historically (Crone 1968, pp. 70-71; Tooley 1961, p. 24).

The Geographias printed in the fifteenth century were certainly not popular books for wide circulation; the 1477 Bologna edition had a print run of about 500 copies. But limited as these editions were, they gave a much wider access to Ptolemy than manuscript editions ever had done; in fact, many Italians and Germans probably saw their first map in these Ptolemy editions, for portolan charts were restricted in use to seafarers (Bagrow 1964, p. 89). The application of the printing press to the reproduction of maps not only enabled a wider diffusion of geographical knowledge but also ensured greater fidelity to the original, thus revolutionizing the communication of cartographic data. Furthermore, the development of the map trade, in part because of the ease and relatively low expense of printing maps as compared to having them handcopied, encouraged the production of individual printed sheet maps, by which means cartographic information could be even more widely spread than by the still relatively expensive book (Bagrow 1964, p. 94).

The second half of the fifteenth century was also marked, appropriately enough, by the last characteristically medieval map, the summit of Church cartography - Fra Mauro's world map of 1459 - and by Martin Behaim's globe of 1492. Fra Mauro's map is not only a culmination but also a transition; although it bears some resemblance to a T-O map (circular; a not particularly accurate notion of what portion of the Earth it is portraying), sough (not east) is at the top, Jerusalem is not at the center, in several places the map disagrees with Ptolemy, the Caspian Sea is correctly portrayed (a feat not matched for another 200 years), and roads are shown. But although Java, the Moluccas, the Bay of Bengal, Ceylon, the Maldives, the Andamans, Sumatra, possibly Japan (in its first appearance on a Western map), China, Persia, Burma, and northeast Africa appear, they are incorrectly placed and shaped in many cases (Bagrow 1964, p. 73; Crone 1968, pp. 53-60).

In between Fra Mauro's map and Behaim's globe appeared the earliest printed map, a traditional T-O, in an Augsburg 1472 edition of the Etymologiae of St. Isidore, one of the classic sources for T-O maps (Bagrow 1964, p. 100). In 1474, Donnus Nicolaus Germanus constructed a world map delineating the regions of the North Atlantic prior to Columbus' voyages.

Martin Behaim's globe is the last notable representation of the world prior to the discovery of America; it displays the improvements of a better delineation of the coastline of Europe and of southern Africa, although there is some disagreement as to whether Behaim were directly influenced by the news of the Portuguese discoveries (Kimble 1938, pp. 200-201; Tooley 1961, p. 25; Daly 1879, pp. 30-31). Thus, at the end of the fifteenth century, coastlines and inland areas of Europe had been mapped, but as regards the rest of the world, only the coasts of Africa and some of the coastline of southern Asia had any representation on a known-world map. This was a landmark time in cartography, for within a few score years, almost all of the regions of the Earth would be brought within the compass of knowledge (Villiers 1914, p. 176).

Planimetric Mapping of Africa: A.D. 400-1500

On portolan charts Africa was initially shown as little more than Egypt, the Sahara, the Pillars of Hercules, and a smidgeon of west coast, but gradually more and more was shown, so that the Laurentian portolan chart of 1351 shows the west coast as far sought as Sierra Leone. By 1400 the coast from Egypt west to Cape Blanc on the Atlantic coast was on the map. Even a half-century later, the Leardo world maps still contained some errors; Africa is given an unusual shape, with two gulfs reaching in from the Indian Ocean and from the Atlantic, and the Nile arising in west Africa (Kimble 1935, pp. 29-30; John Kirtland Wright 1928, p. 15; Langlands 1961, p. 5). And on the 1457 Fra Mauro map, beyond Cape Roxo there is no linear correspondence with the actual coastline (Kimble 1938, p. 200). Late in the century the west coast was shown with any degree of certainty only to the Gulf of Guinea, although the Henricus Martellus Germanus world map of about 1490 does show the discoveries of Bartolomeu Diaz (Lister 1970, pp. 106-107; Aguilar 1968, p. 133). Behaim's globe displayed a crude form of Africa, since apparently the Portuguese were somewhat close-mouthed about their discoveries; there is disagreement as to whether Behaim actually depicted the Cape of Good Hope or whether it were first shown on a 1513 map (Cartwright 1976, p. vii; Malte-Brun 1862, p. 390; Langlands 1961, p. 6). Whatever the case, the continent's circumnavigability and its triangular shape, with a deep gulf in the west, were correctly represented by the close of the century (Hennig 1948, p. 33). The century closed with rumors of a great island, called by the geographers "Madagascar" (Kammerer 1950, p. 93; see Klemp 1969).

Planimetric Mapping of Eurasia: A.D. 400-1500

Asia

Arabia began to appear on maps as a geographical entity in the thirteenth century (Tibbets 1954, p. 15); fully reliable information concerning the ocean boundaries of Asia in the Far East was not obtained until that same century, when the Pope sent emissaries to the Mongol rulers (Nordenskiold 1897, p. 184). The first news of Japan was brought to the West, by marco Polo, at the end of the century. Polo visited many places that would not be seen again by a Westerner for as much as 600 years; names he mentioned in his report began to creep onto maps in the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries, as for instance on the 1375 Catalan map (Washburn 1952, p. 221; Kish 1966, p. 206; Nordenskiold 1899, pp. 397-98). On maps of the fourteenth century, Asia was nearly joined, at the Malay Peninsula, by the southern tip of Africa, which had been elastically swung to the east, as on Marino Sanuto's 1321 map (Collingridge 1894, p. 35). As evidenced on the 1452 or 1453 Leardo world map, "European cartographers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries seem to have known and cared little about the relative positions of places in Asia ..." (John Kirtland Wright 1928, p. 11); correspondingly, maps of India and other parts of southern Asia were numerous and inaccurate (Lister 1970, p. 105). Japan may possibly appear in the Fra Mauro map of 1457 (which confuses the Ganges with the Indus), but if so it is incorrectly shaped, placed, and named - "Zimpagu" (Lister 1970, p. 105; Washburn 1952, pp. 222-23). In the latter fifteenth century, and more specifically on Behaim's globe, Asia stretches beyond the Equator and has four peninsular projections, of which the only even approximately correct one is the Malay Peninsula, which had been known to the ancients. The south sea is studded with islands, some of which were the result of actual discovery (Collingridge 1894, p. 35). Germanus Martellus' map of ca. 1490 inaugurates a long series of maps on which a grand gulf serves as a delimitation of the Orient; he also put "Zipangu" on this map (Kish 1966, p. 212; Kammerer 1944, p. 185).

There was some little mapping of single countries, of which Erhard Reuwich's 1484 map of Palestine may be typical; there is little detail on it - fortunately, since what there is mostly incorrect ("Present geography of Palestine" 1857, p. 81). Behaim's globe retains the Ptolemaic error of the southerly extension of Indochina, but extends east Asia far beyond the Ptolemaic boundary, and shows Japan ("Cipangu") in about the proper place except that it is only 3,000 miles from the Canaries - a prime example of wishful thinking (Kish 1966, p. 206; Washburn 1952, pp. 224-25).

Europe

The first cartographical representations of Iceland, after its discovery by the Norsemen in the ninth century, are vague and evidence a certain lack of interest. Iceland is first mentioned by that name on an Anglo-Saxon map from about the tenth or eleventh century, as a long island extending east-west, north of Dacia and Gotha and northeast of the British Isles (Hermannsson 1931, p. 4 and 1926, p. 10).

The general contours of western Europe appear on the tenth century Cottonian Anglo-Saxon map, the oldest map to outline the British Isles with any approach to reality, although the orientation of Ireland is wrong, as is that of Scotland (which is toward the northwest, not toward the east as in Ptolemaic maps) (Crone 1962, p. 75; Royal Geographical Society 1961, p. 13; Spekke 1961, p. 12). Spain was depicted as far back as the eighth century on native maps, stretched out west to east. By the tenth century it still had the same general shape, and some of the off-lying islands in the Mediterranean were named (Blazquez 1906, p. 200, 211).

It was in the tenth century that maps gradually changed from schematic designs to true maps. Eleventh century maps were still primarily T-O maps, and thus we may feel as does Michael Corbet Andrews that, "The medieval period need not detain us long" (1924, p. 15). Even in the twelfth century what Blazquez says of maps of Spain applies equally well to mapping of other areas: "La configuracion de las costas y fronteras mas parece responder a exigencias de dibujo que a necesidades geograficas ... " (1906, p. 214).

The thirteenth century was a turning point in the cartography of the British Isles. The earliest known map of Britain produced by a native made its appearance ca. 1250, when a Benedictine monk at St. Albans, Matthew Paris, drew a map of the country including Scotland, which later was "cum grano salis," correct (Winter 1948, p. 74). Paris' maps are the "first to embody direct observation by the cartographer" (Royal geographical Society 1961, p. 7). Other areas were not so fortunate. Although the contours of Silesia were first shown - albeit dimly - on the Ebstorf mappamundi, the makers of the 1203 Beatus map were sure that Scandinavia was composed of islands (Nansen 1911a, p. 186; Janczak 1976, p. 115). The depiction of the Netherlands coast was changing constantly for the better (Engelbrecht 1938, p. 96).

It was in the fourteenth century that cartographical depictions dramatically began to present reality, primarily because of the portolans:

With the rise to sea-power and commercial supremacy

of the Italian maritime cities sailors began to feel

the want of some more practical aid to navigation

than was provided by the maps then in fashion.

(Michael Corbet Andrews 1926, p. 129)

The Carte Pisane, ca. 1311, shows the outline of Europe in the main correctly, the Mediterranean coast well, and the Atlantic coast, by comparison, deplorably (Kelley 1977, p. 3; Michael Corbet Andrews 1926, p. 134). The Petrus Vesconte portolan chart is one of the first to depict the British Isles with some amount of accuracy; Giovanni da Carignano's portolan chart (ca. 1310) shows England and Wales in a recognizable outline (Westropp 1913, p. 363). Portolan charts continually improved in their depiction of the north Atlantic coast of Europe, although Norway was generally placed too far west and made too broad, and Sweden much too small (too little extension to the south); the Baltic is too far to the east and has a remarkable narrowing in the middle; the Gulf of Bothnia is unknown, and the islands to the north of Scotland were placed west of Norway, in a somwhat arbitrary fashion and in the wrong order (Nansen 1911a, p. 219).

From about A.D. 1325 on, the British isles coast was well represented on the charts (Crone 1968, p. 36). Dalorto's chart of 1330 shows the first marked improvement in the representation of Scandinavia, specifically of Jutland; it also gives a completely finished if not totally accurate form to Scotland (Michael Corbet Andrews 1926, p. 138).

Landsmen's maps such as the Hereford map did offer a fresh source for nomenclature and had some surprising details, such as rivers (Crone 1962, p. 76). But it is the ca. 1340 Gough map (based on an elaborate system of itineraries), with its "far from satisfactory outline" of Scotland, that stands as the high-water mark of British medieval mapmaking (Royal Socttish Geogrpahical Society 1960, p. 3).

Fourteenth-century chart coverage extended from the Black Sea and the Mediterranean to western Europe, the Baltic, and part of the northwest African coast. The British Isles were on the northern margin of the area mapped by charts, so that although the south and southeast coasts of England and the east and south coasts of Ireland (itself shown too large) were relatively well known by about 1380, Soctland was "only partly and sketchily included," with its coast and orientation wronge (given as north-south), and sometimes separated from England - as many good Scots have occasionally wished were true (Royal Geographical Society 1961, pp. 18-19; Winter 1948, p. 74).

On the continent, the fifteenth cnetury was the time in which much of western Europe was mapped in some fashion. Before this century, there had been few attempts to map whole countries (Bagrow 1964, p. 143). In the early part of the century several maps showed more of northern Scandinavia, extending the Norwegian coast north-northeast, primarily due to the rediscovery of Ptolemy plus some Danish sources; the Baltic was brought nearer reality, but the Gulf of Finland was still not recognizable (Winter 1955, p. 46). The first detailed maps of such central European countries as Czechoslovakia and Poland appeared in the first half of the fifteenth century; the first Polish map (which has not survived) is referred to in 1421, but the two oldest surviving maps are two schematic drawings of Pomerelia of 1450. The earliest known map to deal with the northern regions of Europe was that compiled by Claudius Clavus (Claus Claussen Svart) in 1427, upon which the shape of Scandinavia is more accurate than before but oriented incorrectly, west to east (Suomalaisen 1967, pp. 12-13). Iceland is shown as very long from north to south (Hermannsson 1926, p. 10). Germany is covered in a 1439 or 1454 central European map by Cardinal Nicholas Khryfts (Nicolas Cusanus, 1401-1464), which many other fifteenth century maps of Germany used as a model. By mid-century a modern map of Spain existed (Almagia 1948, pp. 28-29).

By 1430 Ireland had a fairly accurate west coast (Westropp 1913, p. 365). After 1450, knowledge of the country began to be more readily available to foreigners, and consequently Ireland itself began to take on a new cartographic form, "although it can hardly be said to be any improvement on the established chart;" its width was much reduced, it did not extend as far north as Scotland, and it was roughly oblong, rather pointed at the southwest (Michael Corbet Andrews 1924, p. 18).

Switzerland was first described geographically in written form in 1478 by Albrecht von Bonstetten, who included with the text four crude sketches. The first regional map of the Alps appeared about 1496-97, immediately after Konrad Turst's map of Switzerland of 1495 (Jervis 1938, p. 189). Denmark was still somewhat generalized and not detailed on maps in the late fifteenth century (Bramsen 1952, p. 12). Ireland began to take on a pear or spindle shape from about 1480; fortunately, at the close of the century a new outline with some trifling improvements in shape appeared (Westropp 1913, p. 366; Michael Corbet Andrews 1924, p. 21). The first printed map of France had appeared in the 1482 Ptolemy as "Tabula Moderna Galliae." By 1490 the first modern map of the British Isles had been printed, in an edition of Ptolemy. Cardinal Cusanus' 1491 map of central Europe, including the Baltic and Scandinavia, was also an important map, although the coastline of Germany given on that map does not match the intricacy of actuality (Tooley 1952, p. 125; Fockema and van't Hoff 1947, pp. 10-11). Erhard Etzlaub's 1492 map of central Europe is definitely more crude and less correct than the Cusa type (Durand 1933, pp. 487-88). In Italy, where the humanists had indulged in topographic description of their land from the early fourteenth century, maps from the fifteenth century - mainly covering the country as a whole - are numerous (Bagrow 1964, pp. 144, 147-48, 160-62, 165, 170).

Russia

Medieval cartography of eastern Europe was characterized by two Sarmatias divided by the Tanais, a feature maintained on maps of every epoch with the exception of those produced by Idrisi (Bagrow 1962, p. 33). Most maps of the Middle Ages have little of interest relating to Russia, although:

Toward the middle of the fifteenth century, world

maps began to be transformed, as if they were competing

with the newly found maps attached to Greek and Latin

manuscripts of Ptolemy.

(Bagrow and Castner 1975a, p. 27)

Medieval features and practices slowly died out, with only occasional reappearances such as that of a T-O map ("lubok") in the seventeenth century. Some investigations have indicated the existence of cartographic representations of Russia at the end of the fifteenth century, but Goldenberg believes these arguments to be unconvincing (1971, p. 3), although Castner says that archival evidence points to maps being made during the reign of Grand Duke Ivan III (Essays 1975, p. vii; Bagrow and Castner 1975b, p. 1 and 1975a, p. 37).

Planimetric Mapping of South America: A.D. 400-1500

They blundered upon the islands and mainlands of what is now called America, then, in the course of a search for something ... The discoverers, as might be expected, were initially very reluctant to accept the full implications of what they found.

(Parry 1978, p. 24)

Brazil (from "breas" - large - and "i" - isla) began to appear on maps in the fourteenth century, about 100 years before its discovery; a nautical chart of 1448 by Andrea Bianco has been interpreted as showing something that might be South America, spoken of as a fabulous country (Spalding 1941, pp. 156, 160; Oliveira 1952, p. 216; Batalha-Reis 1897, p. 185). Colombia first appeared on Colon's 1493 Carta de navegar para saber el viaje de las Indias, his map of his discoveries, in which he sketched in the northern Atlantic littoral (Colombia 1921, p. 3; Rozo M. 1952, p. 177). Surinam's coast was first discovered and charted by a Spaniard, Alonzo de Rojeda, who first reached the coast, near the estuary of the Marowijne River, in 1499 (Bubberman 1973, pp. 1-2).

Planimetric Mapping of North America: A.D. 400-1500

[The map] cannot be criticized, however, for shabby treatment of topographic detail, because it altogether scorns topography.

("Maps of North America" 1892, p. 35)

The only exception in this respect [difficulties of research in the history of cartography] is the diligently collected and well-known cartographic literature on America.

(Mickwitz and Miekkavaara 1979, p. xvi)

... as a whole our knowledge of the location of early maps of America is lamentably deficient.

(Wagner 1932, p. 105)

The seawolves of the North, the Norsemen, sallied out in their tough, elegant ships in the tenth and eleventh centuries and discovered the new World. They colonized Greenland ca. 981-985; ships from the Greenland settlements discovered North America ca. 985-986 and 1001-1002, and the Norse apparently attempted colonization ca. 1010 (Cumming, Skelton and Quinn 1972, p. 45; Kohl 1885, pp. 496-97). The rest of Europe had as little to do with the Norsemen as possible, and so remained in the main unaware of these voyages and discoveries, although occasionally fifteenth-century maps such as a 1474 world map by Donnus Nicolaus Germanus showed Greenland as a peninsula of Europe west and north of Iceland (Fite and Freeman 1926, p.5).

There were reports (derived from a 1558 map) in the late nineteenth century that the Zeni brothers, Nicolo and Antonio, had visited America about 1380; this seems to have been a fraud perpetrated by one Nicolo Zeno, who published an unsubstantiated account of his ancestors' supposed voyage to Greenland and beyond (Baxter 1893, p. 8; Burrage 1897, p. 398; Ruge 1896, p. 283; Kidd 1977, p. 6).

There were attempts to extend Ptolemy's world map northwards, most notably by the Dane Claudius Clavus (ca. 1425-1440), "a man of acute intelligence, but a rover, and unsteady" (Nansen 1911a, p. 249). His later map of the north (ca. 1457) was copied by Nicolaus Germanus and Henricus Martellus, and thus exercised for a long period a decisive influence on the representation of Greeland, which it showed as an island (Nansen 1911a, pp. 251, 276; Crone 1962, p. 381; Lillestrand and Johnson 1971, p. 234). At the close of the Middle Ages Greenland was represented on maps in one of two ways, either in a comparatively correct position west of Iceland but far too near Europe and connected to it, or as a peninsula to the north of Norway; the latter was more usual in all editions of Ptolemy and on many globes (Nansen 1911a, p. 279). Fridtjof Nansen in his work, In northern mists: Arctic exploration in early times, expresses the situation well:

... and the mists had settled once more over large regions which had been formerly known; but out in the mists lay mythical islands and countries in the north and west.

(p. 290).

Then in 1492 came the Spanish discovery of America, or rather of its outliers, the islands of Hispaniola, by Christopher Columbus, who on his return from his first voyage presented in 1494 a report and map, showing a group of islands off the east coast of Asia, to Ferdinand and isabella (Kish 1978, p. 2). The first landing on the continent proper was on Newfoundland, by John Cabot (the Venetian Giovanno Caboto Montecaluna) in 1497, at which date mapping of the continent began, for upon his return to England in that same year, he made a map of this travels and discoveries (Peters 1936a, p. 4; Arthur Davies 1958, p. 29).