Mapping the World

Exploring the Early Americas The Jay I. Kislak Collection

Pre-Contact America | Explorations and Encounters | Aftermath of the Encounter

Languages and Religion | Competition for Empire | Documenting New Knowledge

The European world view changed dramatically following the voyages of early explorers. News of the “new worlds” challenged current cosmographic beliefs as well as the information in geographical works by Claudius Ptolemy and other ancient Classical Greek astronomers and geographers. Maps played a major role in the information transfer, providing unmatched representations of newly discovered geographic realities. Johann Gutenberg’s mechanical printing press and the development of woodcut and engraving techniques ensured the preservation and wide distribution of this new information.

Maya Portrayal of the Cosmos

The Maya portrayed the cosmos and the otherworld in myriad ways. Serpents and alligators became the tangible entities inhabiting the otherworld and encircling the earth or the heavens. A sky-serpent spirals his way around this elegantly thin-walled bowl. Here the universe is portrayed as an ever-changing conflict between light and dark, day and night, and this world and the other world. The bowl’s carved areas include abstract renditions of reptilian creatures combined with celestial signs. These flow into the great cosmic serpent that is the Milky Way.

Carved bowl with swirl patterns.
Guatemalan Lowlands. AD 200–500.
Burnished black-brown ceramic.
Jay I. Kislak Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (136)
Photo ©Justin Kerr, Kerr Associates

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Isidore, Bishop of Seville (d. 636).
Etymologiae [Etymologies].
Augsburg: Guntherus Ziner, 1472.
Vollbehr Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (138)

T–O Map of the World

This early European world map is called a “T–O Map” because of its symbolic design. Originally drawn in the seventh century as an illustration for an encyclopedia of world knowledge by Isidore of Seville, the design had great religious significance. The “T” represented a Christian cross that placed Jerusalem at the center of the world. It also separated the known continents—Asia, Europe, and Africa. The “O” enclosing the entire image represented the medieval idea of the world surrounded by water.

Konrad von Megenberg (1309–1374),
Buch der Natur [Book of Nature]. Augsberg: Johannes Bämler, 1481.
Rosenwald Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (139)

Picturing the Universe

Before the revolutionary, heliocentric or sun-centered ideas of Nicolaus Copernicus, the traditional geocentric or earth-centered universe was usually depicted by concentric circles. In this popular German work on natural history, medicine, and science, Konrad von Megenberg depicted the universe in an unusual but effective manner. The seven known planets are contained within straight horizontal bands that separate the Earth below from Heaven, populated by the saints, above.

Claudius Ptolemy (ca. AD 100–AD 170).
Geographia.
Ulm: Lienhart Holle, 1482.
Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress (140)

1482 Ulm Ptolemy

The 1482 Ulm edition of the Geographia of Claudius Ptolemy was one of the most important cartographic texts of the early Renaissance and the first edition of the work to be printed outside Italy. The Ulm edition of the Geographia is much different than the Italian editions in the look of its maps, which were printed from carved wood blocks rather than copperplate engravings. Four new regional maps that show geographical knowledge gathered after the time of Ptolemy were also added to this edition.

Martin Waldseemüller and Mathias Ringmann.
Cosmographiae introductio. St. Dié: 1507.
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (141)

Cosmographiae Introductio

The Cosmographiae introductio, written by Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann and printed in St. Dié, France, in 1507, was meant to be a guidebook to Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map, the Universalis cosmographiae. The text describes the necessary geographic and cartographic information that a viewer would need in order to understand Waldseemüller’s representation of the world. In it, Waldseemüller and Ringmann also describe their reasons for naming the New World “America” after Amerigo Vespucci.

Claudius Ptolemy (ca. AD 100–ca. 170).
“Universalior cogntit orbis tabula” [Map of the world more universally known] in In hoc opere haec continentur Geographiae Cl. Ptolemaei a plurimis uiris utriusq[ue] linguae doctiss [Continuations of the Geographiae of Cl. Ptolemaeus by many learned men in their own languages].
Rome: Bernardinum Venetum de Vitalibus, 1507.
Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress (145.1)

1507 World Map

The “Universalior cogntit orbis tabula,” a world map by the astronomer and cartographer Johannes Ruysch, was included in the 1507 Rome edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia. The map documents the voyages of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot and includes information from Portuguese sources as well as information taken from Marco Polo’s account of his travels.

Jan ze Stobnicy (ca. 1470–1530).
Introductio in Ptolomei comosgraphia[m] cu[m] longitudinibus et latitudinibus et cuvitatum celebrioriu [Introduction to the cosmography of Ptolemy. . . .].
Krakow: Florian Ungleri, 1512.
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (146)

1512 Stobnicy Map

This map from Jan ze Stobnicy’s Introduction to the cosmography of Ptolemy is one of the few contemporary sources to copy information directly from Waldseemüller’s 1507 Universalis cosmographiae. Examination of this map reveals that it was copied from the hemispherical insets that adorn the top of Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map.

Petrus Apianus [Peter Bienewitz].
In Julius C. Solinus’s Ioannis Camertis Minoritani, artium, et sacrae theologiae doctoris, in C. Iulii Solini Polyistōra enarrationes.… [Weakness of Johannes Camers Minoritanus, of his expertise, and of his dissertation, in regard to the Polyistora of C. Julius Solinus].
Vienna: Johann Singrenium, 1520.
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (147)

Enhanced View of the World

The “Delineation of the entire world prepared according to the teaching of Ptolemy the Cosmographer and the voyages of Americus Vespuccius,” was assembled by the astronomer Peter Bienewitz, known as “Petrus Apianus,” and printed in Vienna in 1520. Though he based his work on Ptolemaic tradition, Apianus enhanced his view of the world using information garnered on the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci. He also gathered information from the best available maps of the period, including Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map and probably the globes of Johann Schöner.

Novus orbis regionum ac insularum.… [News of the regions and islands of the world.…].
Johann Huttich, comp., with preface by Simon Grynäus.
Basel: Johannes Heruagium, 1532.
Jay I. Kislak Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (148)

The Sixteenth-Century World

This early anthology of the lands and peoples of the Americas includes letters and descriptions of the voyages of Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, and Amerigo Vespucci. A truly remarkable feature of the work is a world map, possibly drawn by Sebastian Münster, and, in part, by Hans Holbein the Younger. The Americas are clearly depicted, based partly on the world as configured by the Johann Schöner globes or on Petrus Apianus’s map of 1520 and showing the influence of the ideas of Copernicus. The scenes and vignettes that surround the oval projection are particularly interesting images, reflecting European views of this new world as a place where cannibals, monsters, and other dangers lurked.

Nicolaus Copernicus.
De Revolutionibus orbium caelestium [On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres].
Nuremberg: Johannes Petrus, 1543.
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (149)

On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

In this book, printed in 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus first presented a full heliocentric theory, a solar system in which the earth orbited the sun. Some of the calculations in the book were made by Bernhard Walther (1430–1504) and sent to Copernicus by Johann Schöner. In this landmark publication, Copernicus also discusses the “discovery” of the New World and quotes from the Cosmographiae introductio of Waldseemüller and Ringmann.

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