One of the largest known early maps of the world with mythical creatures and all that jazz is finally restored by experts!
It appears that this map was created around 430 years ago by a man called Urbano Monte. A few centuries later, this hand-drawn map was found by a collector called David Rumsey and his nephew. They have scanned and digitally stitched together all 60 pages and that’s how they completed the maps (in an atlas form) for the very first time as it was originally intended.
THIS MAP GIVES AN INSIGHT OF HOW PEOPLE ACTUALLY UNDERSTOOD THE WORLD BACK IN THE DAY!
It was first created back in 1587 in Italy, Milan and for back that you can say that it was pretty advanced. This concept of the world as it looks from above (looking down on the North Pole) was a perspective that wasn’t so commonly used back in the day by mapmakers.
In the maps there are also included some of the misconceptions illustrative of that time, like unicorns or ships that being attacked by some mermen.
Even if this map is nothing like Google Maps, it is amazing to find out more about how actually cartographers saw the world back at that time.
That circle from above which gives the map quite unusual shape is here because the cartographer actually wanted to give an indication of the shape of the Earth.
“Monte wanted to show the entire earth as close as possible to a three-dimensional sphere using a two-dimensional surface. His projection does just that, notwithstanding the distortions around the south pole” Rumsey explained.
Even if there are various distortions of the world, still, on this map there are some places that are familiar can be recognized very easily.
If you want to see the whole thing, you can check it out in Ramsey’s blog. You can also find a video of the map that shows how it would look like if it’s projected onto a globe (using google Earth).
Antarctica appears to be extremely prominent on this which “gave him a vast area to indulge in all the speculations about Antarctica that proliferated in geographical descriptions in the 16th century”, according to David Rumsey.
This article was originally featured on NikolaTeslaFans.com