In short, it was the the mother of all modern maps: the first document to depict the world roughly as we know it today.Īmerica, named after Amerigo Vespucci.
#Abraham ortelius world map full
Perhaps most significant, it was also one of the first maps to lay out a vision of the world using a full 360 degrees of longitude. The map was one of the first documents to reveal the full extent of Africa's coastline, which had only very recently been circumnavigated by the Portuguese. The map was the first to suggest the existence of what explorer Ferdinand Magellan would later call the Pacific Ocean, a mysterious decision, in that Europeans, according to the standard history of New World discovery, aren't supposed to have learned about the Pacific until several years later. In addition to giving America its name, it was also the first map to portray the New World as a separate continent - even though Columbus, Vespucci, and other early explorers would all insist until their dying day that they had reached the far-eastern limits of Asia.
The map represented a remarkable number of historical firsts. Drawn 15 years after Columbus first sailed across the Atlantic, and measuring a remarkable 8ft wide by 4½ft high, it introduced Europeans to a fundamentally new understanding of the make-up of the earth. The Waldseemuller map was - and still is - an astonishing sight to behold. It's known today as the Waldseemuller map of 1507. Waldseemuller and Ringman in fact had written the Introduction to Cosmography merely as a companion volume to their magnum opus: a giant and revolutionary new map of the world.
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