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Waldseemüller map
- vidar 12y agoLoooove these old maps.
- fhars 12y agoIf you like maps like this, you will also like the globe produced by Martin Behaim in 1491, which (obviously) doesn't show the americas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdapfel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdapfel
- altrego99 12y agoWhy obviously? How was America missed in earlier maps?
- trhway 12y agoi hope it was a joke :) Upvoted you back base on such hope :)
- 6581 12y agoColumbus discovered America in 1492.
- deadfall 12y agoArguable, some think that Viking explores like Leif Erikson discovered America first. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Erikson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Erikson
- 6581 12y agoYes - I didn't mean to imply Columbus was the first one, but regarding the question of why America was not on maps before, Columbus' discovery is the relevant one.
- flipped_bit 12y agoPossibly Polynesians might have landed in California earlier than the Vikings: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Did-ancient-Polynesians-visit-California-Maybe-2661327.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Did-ancient-Polynesians-v... There was a documentary about this too which raised some interesting points. There is one more potential location they would have sailed to - Chile in South America: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/polynesian-seafarers-discovered-america-long-before http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/storie...
- maaku 12y agoAnd the Native Americans arrived thousands of years earlier. But it's kinda irrelevant to the question of why European map makers didn't have the Americas on their globes until post-1493.
- silvio 12y agoBecause Europe didn't know about America until 1492.
- qnaal 12y agoOr more accurately, as that wikipedia page mentions, March 1493- when Columbus got back.
- jstalin 12y agoIt amazes me how maps like this were made... I presume it was using navigation tools to determine the place on the globe? I just can't imagine how to draw a map when having nothing but navigation tools.
- cafard 12y agoYou could do a pretty good job with latitude, between noon observations of the sun and Polaris at night. But it was the 1700s before anybody could work out accurate longitudes. So I suppose you worked with latitudes and compass routes when you mapped a coast.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- elwell 12y agoThe Original Size image is crashing my Chrome: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Waldseemuller_map_2.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Waldseemu...
- mryingster 12y agoTIL America used to be tiny!
- fhars 12y agoWhat with california being an island off its west coast: http://www.businessinsider.com/people-used-to-think-california-was-an-island-2012-8?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/people-used-to-think-californ...
- mryingster 12y agoI'd love to see this map projected onto a current map (or even satellite imagery) to see what sort of accuracy they were able to achieve back then. It is quite a feat to gather all that information and compile it into a single (large) image!
- abruzzi 12y agoI don't know if it has this map, but at one point, google earth allowed you to layer the satellite imagery with old historic maps.
- acdha 12y agoThere are a couple of projects which try to make that really easy by allowing you to georeference a map by matching some common places: http://www.oldmapsonline.org/ http://www.oldmapsonline.org/ http://www.georeferencer.org/ http://www.georeferencer.org/ http://maps.nypl.org/warper/ http://maps.nypl.org/warper/ If you want a desktop app (handy with e.g. massive high-res scans) there's a fairly polished QGIS plugin: https://www.qgis.org/en/docs/user_manual/plugins/plugins_georeferencer.html https://www.qgis.org/en/docs/user_manual/plugins/plugins_geo... Once you've georeferenced something it's a fairly straight-forward process to either export as KMZ for Google Earth, etc. or export tiles which can be used with something like LeafletJS. I've used a master -> QGIS -> GeoTIFF -> gdal2tiles -> mbutil path with fairly low hassle. I used this awhile back on http://www.wdl.org/en/item/2589/ http://www.wdl.org/en/item/2589/ and it was pretty interesting to see how the 1827 map was fairly accurate for the western part of the Russian empire but got significantly inaccurate as you headed to the northern or eastern frontiers.
- dalek2point3 12y agovery interesting. I've been meaning to do a study where I track maps over time to get a visual picture of how the world was "discovered". Have you seen anyone else that has done something similar or any references?
- acdha 12y agoI've certainly heard interest in that sort of thing but I don't follow it closely. It'd be a great project, particularly if it involved something like georeferencing TIFFs on the Wikimedia Commons.
- kylek 12y agoanother installment of slightlyinterestingwikipediaarticles.ycombinator.com
- gusario 12y agoAnyone know a good source for getting a high quality print of this image? Saw a few sources googling but not sure if I should trust them for print resolution/quality.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- mapt 12y agoThis is one of many interesting things hiding in the stacks of the maps division of the LOC, if you ever get an opportunity for a private tour - though I'm not sure if every one of those dips into the vault. My strongest memory is of the WW2 Normandy beaches invasion map, done as an architectural model. Also, in the reading room, they keep a personal presidential globe - http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/churchill/interactive/_html/wc0001_3.html http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/churchill/interactive/_html/wc00...