Amazing Old Maps

a few videos ago I showed and talked about some of the world's most interesting maps and in this video I thought I would switch it up a little and take a look at old maps these are usually very interesting because there were sometimes kind of inaccurate when compared to the satellite images that we have today showing us how little we knew about the world back then this is what is seen as the world's first map that remained until today a Babylonian world map known as the imago Mundi it shows Babylon on the Euphrates River surrounded by a circular landmass showing Assyria and Armenia with an ocean around it but let's be honest here I don't think anyone really sees this on it I'm sure that it's there but it's somewhat indecipherable I just found this description online because from looking at it I would have no idea what is what one of history's more graphically pleasing first maps is this one the world according to hecka tells hecka tells of Miletus was a greek historian and geographer and he made this map in the 5th or 6th century bc hecka tells divides the world into three parts europe asia and libya centered around the mediterranean sea or especially centered in greece his world is a round disc surrounded by an ocean which is strange because how could he imagine that there was an ocean where the Sahara Desert is but he probably thought that somewhere beyond the desert there would eventually be a coastline and it's strange that he knew about the Caspian Sea but did not know about the part where it closes itself representing it as being open to a surrounding ocean by the way since a few of you asked last time I posted a link in the description with the high-resolution images of these maps in case you want to take a closer look moving forward in time a little we have the map of pomponius mela pomponius mela was a roman geographer in around 40 ad he created this map of Europe which is honestly one of the weirdest things I've the distortion of both Italy and Greece is just completely insane and Greece's islands stretch unbelievably north he also places a sea in the Sahara region and a strange Inland Sea oddly shaped like a human face with an island as an ear in the Arabia region it really looks as if the earlier cartographers used different scales within the same map for example the details on the African coast look way more amplified than those on the French one and also using different orientations while Greece and Italy seem to be facing one way Africa and the rest of Europe seem to be facing the other but I guess this was one of the most common issues with old maps being able to properly measure orientation and even distance which makes sense because they had no satellite images to verify no airplanes and they couldn't just hop on a bird and make sure that their drawings were correct now the issue of distortion was somewhat resolved with the introduction of longitudinal and latitudinal lines and maps and Ptolemy a greco-roman mathematician astronomer and geographer was the first to introduce these lines pretty much he was the first one that used math and geometry to develop a manual for how to map the planet using a rectangle and intersecting lines in this map of the known world which he created in 150 AD this map is unbelievably accurate at least to the standards of the time the amount of detail on the coastlines the shapes of the land formations and even the size proportion of areas like the Iberian Peninsula when compared to France or Greece is really impressive there's still some weird stuff in be scandinavian area and the far east looks nothing like we know it to be but given that he was a greco-roman citizen knowing about these regions which are further away would pose a much bigger challenge it's really interesting because we kind of get the opposite situation with this next map drawn by al-idrisi an arab muslim geographer and cartographers he made this map in 1154 ad and it was known as the tabula rasa Rihanna a name which comes from king roger ii of sicily since Ally Brizzy lived in palermo and worked in service of the king he based it on reports of Arab merchants who had traveled across the world and that justifies the accurateness of the Middle East and perhaps a more correct representation of the Far East while suffering in its representation of Europe especially the ridiculousness of perspective of the Adriatic Sea between Italy and Greece with the Greek islands also being very poorly drawn in both detail and size accuracy plus the variations on the North African coast look way to exaggerate it as well again the issue with a lot of these maps seemed to be the fact that perhaps unconsciously they used different scales within the same map despite this it was at the time the most accurate and extensive map of the world on the other side of the world we have this map of East Asia the Kang Neto world map was created by Korean officials in 1402 ad it focuses on Korea and is way more accurate in it than anywhere else although showing it disproportionately big in comparison to China moving on from the fact that it ignores japan's existence entirely its depiction of China is somewhat lacking although it presents a very rough representation of its coastline it does show a surprisingly detailed listing of China's rivers it said that the map was created by the joseon dynasty combining chinese maps with information about the western world gathered from the Mongolians on its west portion it also depicts something kind of weird ignoring the existence of Indochina and presenting either Burma or India in a strange shape full of lakes and islands now let's move on in time a little that a very early stages of European colonialism this map is a projection of the adapt fell globe the oldest surviving globe in history which was created by Martin Behaim in Germany in the year of 1492 it shows the world as a sphere but with the undiscovered America as an empty ocean this is interesting because it coincides with the idea that when Columbus discovered America he was actually trying to find another sea route to India not knowing that there was an entire continent in the way which some people say is the reason why Native Americans were also known as Indians but of course I'm not sure if this is true an interesting detail which you actually notice in a lot of other maps is that the Red Sea is actually displayed in red as if the color of the water was actually red the new world or the Americas stopped being in existence soon after this map from 1507 made by martin waldseemüller it's known as America's birth certificate since it is the first map to recognize the Pacific Ocean and a separate continent of America which waldseemüller named in honor of Amerigo Vespucci who identified the Americas as a distinct landmass a fun fact is that at the top on the left is a drawing of potala me whose map we saw earlier it doesn't show much only a little part of the eastern coast of the continents and a rough depiction of the Caribbean islands however if we turn our eyes elsewhere we notice Africa which is much more accurately shown with an impressive drawing of its coastline there are however some weird islands in the South Indian Ocean which I have no idea what they're supposed to be now if there is a single year we need to look at on this list of old maps it's 1569 because this is the year when Gerardo's market or made his world map this was the first world map that was adapted for navigation he wanted to present contemporary knowledge of the geography of the world and at the same time correct the chart to be more useful to sailors the straight lines which we see on this map while the maps geography has always been updated with modern knowledge its projection proved to be one of the most significant advances in the history of cartography and remains in use in the majority of maps that we use up to this very day about 100 years later in 1689 gerard von hagen drew this map at this point most of the large portions of the world had been discovered and mapped out pretty much all the Americas are depicted except a small part of Canada Australia is already present despite being a bit disproportionally big and the only thing that's missing is Antarctica given that he shows the North Pole here but a blank space in the South Pole oh and there's also no new zealand or maybe this island is supposed to be it and then we have Samuel Dunn's map a very similar map to the previous one but more updated and accurate it's from 1794 already depicting New Zealand for sure this seems to be the first or one of the first maps to depict the entire world with a pretty good level of accurateness obviously a few details may be off but for the 1700s it's a pretty good world map we have to keep in mind that these maps despite being obviously wrong in a lot of things are really impressive the fact that ancient geographers and cartographers were able to get anything right is already a feat of its own however there are a few maps that are just too insane for us not to find funny like this map which presents California as an island it was made by a French man called Nicholas Sanson a y/o geographer in 1656 it's incredibly detailed on the rest of North America especially the southeast but the west coast not so much however this was apparently not his fault it seems that it was a long-held Spanish misconception that California peninsula was not part of North America but rather a large island separated by a strait known as the Gulf of California the legend was initially California was a paradise life B Garden of Eden or Atlantis making this one of the most famous map errors in history and those were a few old maps that show us how little we knew about the world it's also amazing to see how century by century one by one the cartographers came up with incredible mathematical and astronomical ways to map our planet always improving the accuracy and usefulness leading all the way up to today when we have literal cameras in space providing us with the exact representation of our world thanks so much for watching this video if you know any other old maps that would be cool to talk about leave a comment below and also as always let me know your opinions and thoughts remember to subscribe and I will see you next time for more general knowledge

Channel: General Knowledge

Views: 795,134

Rating: 4.829524 out of 5

Keywords: generalknowledge, funwithflags, countriesthatdon'texist, old maps that show how little we knew about the world, funny old maps, crazy old maps, interesting world maps, map of the world according to, oldest world map, roman world map, greek world map, chinese world map, korean world map

Id: NiMobkyhP9E

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/YOUREABOT]

A second part... please :3