About Old World Maps
- Claudius Ptolemaeus wrote the book, "Geograpy," to display what was known in the second century AD about the world. His map of the world looks like a section of a cone with a point at the top and an arc at the bottom. He drew eight heads blowing towards the world from outside the margins of the map. These are known as "wind heads." His map continued to be authoritative until the sixteenth century when it was replicated by Waldseemuller in 1513. Copies of Waldseemuller's map occasionally become available to collectors. They can cost as much as $24,800.
- What medieval authorities understood about the map of the world was influenced by Christian theology and the Crusades. Jerusalem was considered to be the center of the world. A circular map of the world in the "Rudimentum Novitorum," the encyclopedia of 1475, put Jerusalem at the center of the world. The east was at the top of the map and the Pillars of Hercules were at the bottom. The Pillars of Hercules are at the westernmost entrance to the Mediterranean Sea where Europe nearly meets Africa.
- More accurate world maps began to be drawn in the early sixteenth century. The 1511 map of the world by Sylvanus showed reliable drawings of the British Isles, India and Africa even though it did not include either North or South America. This map was printed in Venice using two colors. It took two leaves of velum which had to be glued together to display the entire map.
- The first commercially available map that included the new world was made by Forlani in 1562. His map took information from an oval map drawn by Giacomo Gastaldi which was the first to include Canada and the Arctic Ocean. The reference to Canada was the Iroquois town, Stadocone, which is where Quebec City is today. The Arctic Ocean was named "Oceano Settentrionale." Forlani's map also included two compass roses.
- By 1684, the exploration and settlement of the new world was in full swing. When John Seller, the hydrographer to the British king, produced his "New Map of the World," it included recognizable oceans and continents. The map was drawn on two circles, the front and back of the globe. The equator was drawn as a straight horizontal line dividing the northern and southern hemispheres in the center of the map. It included California, as an island, and parts of both the Australian and New Zealand coastlines. Even though the northwestern part of Canada and Alaska are not shown, there is an area approximating where they are left blank on the map. This miniature old map of the world measures six by five inches. Copies of it sell today for around $1000.
