The Carta Marina at 500

>> From The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> John Hessler: Well, good afternoon, everyone. Hope everyone didn't have too big a lunch. This afternoon we've got a really great program for you, mostly focused on the Carta Marina and nautical charts. Obviously, the Carta Marina is, itself, a large printed nautical chart, very different from the 1507 map and to a certain extent is somewhat the understudied sister of the 1507 map, which has its own little nickname, The Birth Certificate of America, and various other sundry theories associated with it. The Carta Marina seems to have been largely ignored except for a few people who have actually done very intensive work on it. Our first speaker today, this afternoon, Joaquim Gaspar, is one of those scholars who not only does intensive and deep scholarship but one of those scholars who transform a discipline, transform the study of a particular type of object. Joaquim, whose Dissertation Committee I was on when he received his Doctorate, I'm not being one-sided here but it was a very good defense, basically has begun to apply very analytical tools to some of the interesting technical questions associated with not only things like Portolan Charts but also mysteries like the Mercator projection, how was it mathematically constructed. He's done a lot of work and published in many essays and in Amargo Mundi [Assumed Spelling] and several other journals. If you've never read his dissertation on Portolan Charts I would suggest it as required reading. He has just recently received one of the first Millionaire Research Grant from the European Research Council in the history of cartography since the European Research Council was founded to study the technical developments of the Portolan Chart. And so, without further ado, Joaquim? [ Applause ] >> Joaquim Gaspar: Thank you very much. Before I start, let me just say how wonderful I feel to be here and I have to thank John for inviting me. Well, the title is not exactly the same as in the program. Anyway, I probably should say it will be equally exciting. Can you hear me? Not too loud? No, okay. I'd like to start my talk by showing side-by-sides two different kinds of modern maps depicting the same region of the world, the well-known Chesapeake Bay. A nautical chart on the left and the topographical map on the right, the differences are obvious. In the topographical map the formation is concentrated inland leaving the wet areas almost totally empty. In the nautical chart most of the formation is located at sea and in the coastal areas closest to the sea, leaving the dry land virtually blank. The reasons for these differences are, of course, related to the different purposes of maps and charts. While topographical maps are intended to depict all kinds of general information relative to the surface of the earth, nautical charts are constructed with the specific goal of supporting marine navigation. But, of course, these are old news for those of you who are acquainted with maps and charts. However, when we look into the historical evolution of nautical cartography we realize that the differences between these two types of representations are much more profound than expected. This is the subject of my presentation today. I will show using examples taken from various periods that historically maps and nautical charts not only have different geneses but also were constructed with different purposes and according to different principles. The fundamental difference between maps and charts was in a limited way already expressed by the late American photographer, Hester Robinson [Assumed Spelling], who stated in his well-known book, Elements of Cartography and I quote - maps are to be looked at while charts are to be worked on. Although Robinson's definition is wonderfully expressive and synthetic it doesn't tell the whole story or even the most exciting parts. In my talk I will show how closely connected are the geometry and the construction processes of nautical charts throughout history to the navigational methods they were intended to support and how the confusion between what should be considered as an accurate map and accurate charts often led to misunderstanding and conflict between pilots, cartographers and cosmographers. Only in the present day can we see more clearly through the myths caused by some subtle technical questions that the protagonists of the past were unable to interpret and fully understand the reason for those misunderstandings, which is the intrinsically different nature of maps and charts. This is a nautical chart drawn by a generous cartographer named Angeli Locheti [Assumed Spelling] in 1339 depicting the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Atlantic coast of Europe and Africa. It is just one example of the many similar charts that were produced in the workshops of Genoa, Venice or Majorca from some uncertain date of the early 13th Century on, the so-called Portolan Charts of the Mediterranean. When we compare this representation with the typical world maps of the Middle Ages, usually drawn by aerodyglatics [Assumed Spelling], the differences in accuracy and detail are remarkable, so remarkable that the number of historians probably influenced by the old myth of the Dark Ages had fallen into the trap of considering that the accuracy of those charts was not within the reach of the medieval cartographers. The way out of this alley was to postulate that the medieval Portolan Charts were, in fact, copies of lost prototypes made by some ancient civilization using sophisticated chudatic [Assumed Spelling] methods. However, no piece of historical evidence has ever been produced in support of such extraordinary claim and the medieval origin of Portolan Charts is now conceptually accepted by most historians of cartography. Furthermore, the popular idea that Portolan Charts are extremely accurate by present day standards is not correct. Although the general outline of the Mediterranean with its bays, capes and islands is easily recognizable in them, a closer look into their overall geometry and detail reveals important inaccuracies. The most obvious, although by no means the only one, is the orientation of the Mediterranean, itself. When we compare the chart of Angeli Locheti and the modern representation of the Mediterranean, such as this one taken from Google Earth, we realize that the north-south direction in the old chart as defined by its vertical top-down lines is tilted counterclockwise by an angle close to 10 degrees. Why is that? Could the cartographers of the 14th Century make such a mistake when they were perfectly aware that the direction of the geographical map would be easily determined by [inaudible]? In the beginning of the 15th Century some 400 years after the first Portolan Charts were created Ptolemy's geography was translated into [inaudible] and maps of the known world based and its extensive list of coordinates were produced, like this one. Comparing the representation of the Mediterranean in the medieval editions of Ptolemy's geography with the corresponding representations in the contemporary Portolan Charts one realized that while Ptolemy's maps are correctly oriented to geographical maps, like this one, Portolan Charts continued to be tilted counterclockwise as in the chart of Angeli Locheti. Once again, or could the cartographers persist on the same mistake, this time defined the recognized authority of Ptolemy. The enigma is even more perplexing when you realize that the overall accuracy and detail of the Portolan Charts, except for this particular feature, was much better than the one of Ptolemy's maps. The explanation for this apparent inconsistency is that we are comparing two distinct cartographical models. While most of modern maps and Ptolemy's representation of the world on the left are based on the geographical coordinates of the places, latitudes and longitudes, Portolan Charts on the right were based on navigational information collected at sea, course between ports measured with a magnetic compass and distances estimated by the pilots. Let me underline the following point, which is critical for understanding the argument of my old [inaudible], the geometry of a map constructed on the basis of latitudes and longitudes is usually very different from the one of a chart by its magnetic courses and distances between places. Let me explain. As we all know, the direction indicated by the North Pole of a magnetic compass, the red one in the figure, does not usually coincide with the direction of the true north, the geographical north, to the angle between the two directions, the angle delpha in the figure we call magnetic declination [Assumed Spelling]. At the time the earliest Portolan Charts were constructed during the 13th Century the average value of magnetic declination in the Mediterranean was about eight to 10 degrees, which is also the average tilt of those charts. This is not by chance, of course, because charts were oriented with the compass top north on top. Not only charts were constructed using the courses between ports measured with the magnetic compass at sea, but also they were used to support navigation exactly the same way. Putting things in simple terms, the course actually steered by a ship, navigating from one port to another as indicated by the magnetic compass should match the corresponding ports measured on the chart. That would not be the case if a common map were used. Thus, both Ptolemy's representation of the world and the modern map on the left are not directly comparable with the Portolan Chart on the right because they belong to distinct cartographic paradigms. While the first two are intended to represent the landmasses of the world as flexible as possible using whatever map projection is considered the more appropriate, Portolan Charts were specifically conceived to support the practice of navigation. Can we say that Portolan Charts were inaccurate because the direction between places measured on them did not match the true geographical directions? It is the very concept of accuracy which is at stake here. In the present day a map is considered accurate when the coordinates of the places, the latitudes as well as the longitudes, are accurate. Can we apply this same concept to a medieval nautical chart which was not made on the basis of the latitudes and longitudes of the places? If not, what criteria should we apply to assess the accuracy of those charts? Taking into account the fact that Portolan Charts were constructed with the purpose of supporting navigation the natural way would be to evaluate to what extent they would fit to that same purpose. Let me give another example taken from a different period. This is, of course, the Cantino Planisphere, drawn by an anonymous Portuguese cartographer in 1502 and immediately taken to Italy by an emissary of the Duke of Fihad [Assumed Spelling], Alberto Cantino. The Cantino Planisphere is one of the most precious monuments of our cartographic heritage, depicting the world as it became known to the European nations after the great discoveries of the 15th Century, to Africa, Newfoundland, Central America, Brazil and India. Notice how these regions are already represented in their approximate geographical locations and how much detail some of them show. Also, and following the introduction of astronomical matters of navigation during the second half of the 15th Century this is the earliest [inaudible] chart where places were represented according to their latitudes. With the Cantino Planisphere a new cartographical standard was established, promptly adopted by many other world maps of the beginning of the 16th Century. Like the Caveri Planisphere and the two printed world maps of Martin Waldseemuller engraved in 1507 and 1516 now kept in The Library of Congress, of course. Once more, the question I would like to propose regarding these early nautical Planisphere is the following, how accurate are they? Very often historians have tried to give an answer to this question by comparing the coastlines depicted on these maps with those of modern representations. If we apply the procedure to the outline of Africa in the Cantino Planisphere on the right by using a satellite image of the earth as the model on the left the result is surprising. Notice how in the old charts the contour of the Continent appears grossly displaced and stretched into east-west direction, making the Isthmus of Suez look enormous. How can we explain this mistake, which was replicated in all cartography of the 16th Century and beyond, including Waldseemuller's Carta Marina. Various explanations were given by the historians. Some have considered that the apparent distortion of Africa is the normal result of the poor surveying techniques of the time when longitudes could not be determined accurately. Others postulated that the exaggeration was to the extent of the Continent was copied from Ptolemy's geography. We will see that both explanations are wrong. In order to put ourselves firmly within the navigational and cartographical reality of the time and avoid inaccuranism let us imagine the following experiment. Suppose that we take part in the surveying maritime expedition in the beginning of the 16th Century with the purpose of representing the coast of Africa on the chart. Departing from Lisbon the idea is to sail around the African Continent up to Cape [inaudible] keeping the ship as close to the coast as possible. All we have available as navigational instruments is a magnetic compass to steer the ship and the nautical astrolight [Assumed Spelling] to observe the sun and determine latitude onboard. We are further requested to keep a navigational record containing the courses steered and the latitudes determined along the route, as in this table. After the trip is completed the next step will consist in representing graphically the ship's tracks on the modern map using the courses and the latitudes noted in the ship's log. The first track in the log is the one connecting Lisbon to the Island of Matheta [Assumed Spelling]. The course is approximately southwest and the latitudes of Matheta is 32 degrees north. The second is between Matheta and the Island of Timoleaf [Assumed Spelling] in the Caribbean Islands. The third between Timoleaf and [inaudible] Islands and so on around the southern tip of Africa and back to Cape [inaudible]. The result is totally unexpected as it seems to contradict our direct experience. The coastline was in sight most of the time and Cape [inaudible] was, indeed, reached at the end of the voyage. Something went very wrong, but what? Well, knowing that our experiment has taken place in the 16th Century and that we have used an ordinary magnetic compass to measure the courses it is expected that those directions were affected by magnetic declination. If that were not the case the track recorded in our log would look like this, of course. However, in the beginning of the 16th Century magnetic declination had the peculiar special distribution in the area, it was east in the Atlantic Ocean and west in the Indian Ocean. This made all compass courses in the Atlantic to have negative errors causing the corresponding tracks to appear rotated counterclockwise. And all compass courses in the Indian Ocean to have positive errors making the corresponding tracks to appear rotated clockwise. This fully explains why the route that we have to insert from the ship's log to the modern map looks distorted. Thus, can we conclude that our compass was faulty? Not really, because it behaved exactly how it was supposed to behave. Although the pilots of the 16th Century were perfectly aware of the phenomenon of magnetic declination no corrections were made to the courses measured by the compass. More importantly, and this is a critical point to understand the nautical cartography of the time, no corrections were made to the directions used to make the very charts. Thus, it won't come as a surprise that our track around the African Continent, which was determined with a magnetic compass, almost exactly matches the coastline in the Cantino Planisphere. Now coming back to the initial question about the accuracy of this chart, it seems now clear that once again the usual criterion of cartography accuracy on the latitudes and longitudes of places should not be applied here. That was a mistake not only of the present day historians, but also of the cosmographers of the 16th Century, as we will see next. Around 1560 the Portuguese cartographer, Lopo Homem, in a note addressed to The Crown harshly complained about the new official cartographic pattern that was enforced by the [inaudible], the Mathematician [inaudible]. According to him such a pattern was prepared using the eclipses of the sun and moon in order to show that from Lisbon to India and to [inaudible] there was less distances than shown on the traditional charts. However, and these are the words of Lopo Homem, the charts made according to the new pattern and I quote, were so widely distanced from all truth and navigational science that many ships had been lost and the pilots were forced to buy their charts in Castile. At the time this letter was written everybody knew that the longitudinal distance between Lisbon and India as shown in the contemporary charts was exaggerated. In a treatise written some 30 years before the same [inaudible] had already complained about the fact which he attributed to the incompetence of the pilots, although [inaudible] was absolutely right about the exaggerated longitudinal distance between Lisbon and India, he was absolutely wrong that the pilots were to blame. In 1547 he was appointed as cosmographer major becoming responsible for the royal cartographic pattern. Then he finally had the opportunity to correct what he considered to be a major mistake and so he did by ordering the longitude of [inaudible] in India to be determined by astronomical methods. The result was a new representation in which the longitudinal distance between Lisbon and India was substantially shortened as in [inaudible] himself. Why did the cartographer consider this model widely distant from all truth and navigational science? What kind of effort would make a chart so unfit for navigation? Clearly, he was not referring to the distances. Usually not to trust on the contemporary charts, but to the orientation of the coastlines, which no longer reflected the compass courses between places. Who was right and wrong in this dispute? He would use scientific methods to determine the longitude of India and then forced his interpretation onto the official cartographer, Lopo Homem, who complained directly to The Crown and supported his position with practical arguments concerning the safety of navigation. The answer to this question depends on the use of charts. If they were, indeed, intended to support navigation then [inaudible] was wrong and Lopo Homem was right. In no way could the two be reconciliated at the time. In 1569 Mercator presented his map of the world with the revealing title from the Latin, New and Improved Description of the Earth Properly Adjusted for the Use of Navigation. And in his map meridians and parallels from a regular mesh of rectangles where the spacing between parallels increases with latitude in such a way that the [inaudible] lines or lines of constant course are represented by straight segments making the correct angle with all the meridians. In theory the solution would facilitate enormously the planning and execution of navigation. But was Mercator's world map truly adapted to navigation at the time it was proposed? As a matter of fact, it was not. More than 200 years had still to pass before the novel perception could be fully adopted by the pilots, not because the pilots were conservative or ignorant but owing to its incompatibility with the navigational maps of the time still based on latitudes and magnetic courses. Only after the longitude problem was solved and the distribution of magnetic declination was known could the old cartographic model originated in the Cantino Planisphere be abandoned for good and replaced by the Mercator projection. But the story is not over, when we look closely into the geographical content of Mercator's world map we realize that places are not really represented according to their latitudes and longitudes as they should. If we compared its depiction of Africa on the right with the one on Mercator's map on the left we realize with amazement that the same old east-west displacement is still present. How should we interpret this unexpected mistake? The fact is that Mercator could do no better than transferring directly the coastlines of the maps and charts of this time to the novel perception with no concern for their distortions, assuming wrongly that both the latitudes and the longitudes of the places were approximately correct. Could he have made a better chart? Not really, in order to construct an accurate Mercator representation a new survey was required, this time based on the latitudes, the longitudes and the true direction between places. As we know, such an endeavor could only be started after the longitude problem was solved near the end of the 18th Century. And then coming to the end of my presentation, three different navigational cartographic models were developed throughout history. The Portolan Chart based on magnetic courses and estimated distances. The Latitude Chart based on magnetic courses and latitudes. And the Mercator Chart based on geographical coordinates and true [inaudible] line directions. Not only were these three models were designed to support specific and distinct navigational methods, but also they were mutually incompatible. We know that the content of nautical charts was routinely used to construct lavish depictions of the world to be offered to emperors and popes and to be employed by them as symbols of glory and national power. At the time, however, none of those people were aware of the fact that such representations were not real maps and that the continents, the islands and the coastlines were distorted in weird unsuspected ways. These distortions were noticed by the [inaudible] who insisted to have them corrected, being systematically opposed by cartographers and pilots who invoked the safety of navigation. Only today can we fully understand the subtle technical reasons behind these disputes and conclude, first, that historically nautical charts can only be understood in the context of the navigational methods they were intended to support and, second, that a nautical chart should not be considered as a [inaudible] geographical map but as a diagram to support navigation. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> John Hessler: Well, we will move on from nautical charts to actual navigation. Our next speaker, Don McGuirk, is a retired Physician, has been a map enthusiast for a very long time. He has published extensively in things like Terra Incognita. He's been a long-term member of The Phillips Society, the Washington Map Society, and the Society of History of Discoveries. His talk today is going to focus on the Carta Marina and Columbus. Don? [ Applause ] >> Don McGuirk: Good afternoon. These lights are bright. Can you hear me okay like this? Okay, are my slides up? Thank you. So our topic this afternoon will be how the Waldseemuller Carta Marina answered perhaps the great - start again. [laughter] How the Waldseemuller Carta Marina answered perhaps the greatest unsolved cartographic puzzle of the period. And this quote was by a friend of many here in the audience, Ken Nebanzol [Assumed Spelling]. And what was that great unsolved cartographic puzzle? The Northwest Continent on the Carta Marina. Now this Northwest Continent was on several earlier maps than the Carta Marina, the Cantino, the Caveri, the Waldseemuller 1507, and the Ruysch map. Now if you look at North America and you look at the Carta Marina this certainly does look like North America. You can understand how many people feel very strongly that this represents the geography of North America. It just looks right, but you have to be careful and I agree 100% with one of the earlier presenters who said you've got to be very careful about what you say is correct geography when you look at early maps. And I'll give you an example here, so here is North America and here is a chart showing some geography. And I will tell you that this geography is directly west of Spain and a little south, and on this map I believe you can see Cape Cod, the Peninsula of Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, and you can even see the Mississippi and the Rio Grande. And yet this is not North America, this is the Asian coast on the Fra Mauro map. So you have to be very careful. And if you take a close look, some people might say, well, maybe it was North America. Well, this North America, the Gulf of Mexico actually says the Gulf of the Ganges, and North America is populated with a number of Chinese cities, so don't think so. So let's look at the 1507 first. You can look at both of them upstairs, if you wish. And on the 1507 map you notice that the continent isn't named and just southeast of this continent, the northwest continental landmass, you see an island named Isabela. Now, on the other hand, if you go to the 1516 Waldseemuller there's been some changes. Now you can see that the continent has been named, it's named Cuba, and Columbus discovered Cuba and he actually said it's part of Asia, and that's what this map says. And if you look at the Island of Isabela it's no longer named. Now I think a logical conclusion might be, it doesn't have to be but might be that between 1507 and 1516 Waldseemuller or one of his cohorts discovered information that suggested to him that this was Columbus' Cuba, this giant continental landmass. Now I understand it seems a little unlikely, if you will, that this giant continent represents the small Island of Cuba, but there are a number of individuals who have held the minority opinion that it is. And here's a list of 17 of those, starting very early. The most outspoken of these 17 was George Nunn, who wrote several articles on this topic. And some of the names on this list are sitting here in the auditorium, and I can only hope they haven't changed their minds since the last time I talked to them. So instead of making assumptions let's create a map using information contemporary to Columbus' first two voyages to test the minority opinion that this northwest landmass represents Cuba. So here we are in our Lisbon studios and we're going to make a map, and we have found three pieces of information that are going to help us make this map. In other words, recreate what Columbus said about Cuba. And those three pieces of information are, number one, the Diario or the log of his first voyage, number two, a group of letters that Columbus wrote to the King and Queen of Spain and we'll just call the collection the Libro Copiador, and the third is a manuscript document written by a gentleman named Fernan Perez de Luna and we'll name is document Informacion y Testimonio. So from these three we will exact the following geographic information regarding the land that Columbus named Cuba - the shape of Columbus' Cuba, the size of Columbus' Cuba, the relative position of Columbus' Cuba with the Island of Isabela that we've already looked at. So, first, let's talk about the shape of Columbus' Cuba. In letter four of the Libro Copiador work we read, these coasts run, and he's talking about the continental landmass or, I'm sorry, the Cuba that he's discovering, these coasts run to the west, the one trending away from the Arctic and the other toward it which begins narrow and widens out as one proceeds much like the sail of a lateen rigged caravel. Well, here's an image of a lateen sail and here's our Carta Marina. From Perez de Luna, from his Informacion y Testimonio, he says Cuba is shaped like a triangle and he calls it un giron, extending from east to west and the point is in the eastern part. Here is a picture of a giron and here's our Carta Marina. So if we combine these two descriptions into a sketch map, because we're going to do a sketch map before we do the real thing, Columbus' Cuba might look something like this. Second, the size of Columbus' Cuba, north and south, let's talk about the north extent first. From his log of his first voyage he says I am distance from the equatorial line 42 degrees and again he says the same thing, I was 42 degrees north of the equatorial line. Now you know and I know that there's no way he could be at that latitude, but you're in your studio reading the information that he has written down and that's what he's saying. Anyone recognize this memorial? Plymouth Rock. Anyone want to guess where 42 degrees north latitude is on the east coast? Plymouth, Massachusetts. But there's more, from the first, letter one of the Libro Copiador he said I traveled along the north shore of Cuba and the northwest region still lay before me at least another 50 or 60 leagues. Now from Plymouth you see another 50 or 60 leagues northwest or north you're going to start seeing signs that read this, that's how far north he's saying he thought this Cuba reached. How about the southern extent? Well, this is a little bit trickier, but here at La Isabela, which is a city, quote-unquote, on Hispaniola we are more than 26 degrees above the equatorial line, so a little above the Tropic of Cancer. Now on a second voyage he comes back, he leaves Isabela and he goes on to sail west along the south coast of Cuba, so the south coast of his Cuba should be a little bit above the Tropic of Cancer. So now a sketch map might look something like this, Carta Marina. Okay, returning to the shape of Columbus' Cuba we have some more information from da Luna. He says Cuba - I'm sorry, Columbus pronounced it to be continental land, Asia, by its shape. This statement by de Luna strongly suggests that it was this same shape, a triangle, that Columbus expected to find on the coast of Asia close to the Tropic of Cancer. Now does this shape occur on the east coast of Asia on maps and globes contemporary to Columbus? Yes, it does. So here's some images of the east coast of Asia about the time of Columbus' sail, the Yale Marteles [Assumed Spelling] map shows the peninsula shaped landmass just north of the Tropic of Cancer. Here's a better view of that same geography. Thank you, Chet, for allowing me to use this image. And the Behaim globe also shows a triangular shaped landmass on the coast of Asia right at the Tropic of Cancer. Waldseemuller, Carta Marina, Behaim globe, not dissimilar. So does Columbus believe he has discovered an anticipated Asian peninsula or is there additional information recorded that he thought he was coasting this very specific Asian peninsula, the Mangi peninsula? Such information is available, again, from his log from his first voyage. While he's on the north shore of Cuba he states and it is certain that this is tierra firma, continental land, and that I am, he says, off Zayto and Quinsay, 100 leagues more or less from one and from the other. Well, let's go back to our Behaim globe. Here is Zayto and here is Quinsay on that very peninsula, not exactly where they're supposed to be but on that peninsula. If we go to the recreated map from the Toscanali [Assumed Spelling] letter here's the Mangi peninsula, here's Zayto - I'm sorry, here's Quinsay and there's Zayto. Well, you could ask the question, well, did Columbus ever even see any globes or world maps? And from this first log we find out that while discussing Japan and in the spheres that I saw and in the world maps it is in this region, so he's seen both globes and world maps. And any of those at this particular time in history almost certainly would have had the Mangi peninsula that we've already shown. Well, let's talk a little bit about this Island of Isabela and its relationship to Columbus' Cuba. From Perez de Luna, Columbus came to seek the land of the said Cuba nearest to the Island of Isabela. Now this is an important statement, he calls it the land of Cuba, not the Island of Cuba, and he says that Isabela is the island closest to it. but Columbus in his log of his first voyage states that Hispaniola, Haiti and the Dominican Republic is the island closest to Cuba. So now you, as a young cartographer, have a problem. There appears to be a contradiction here. Two possibilities I would suggest, either de Luna or Columbus has renamed Hispaniola, Isabela, or there is another island named Isabela that is even closer to Cuba than Hispaniola. Well, the answer to this question can be found in both letters to and letters for the Libro Copiador. And within those two letters Columbus uses the name Isabela 15 times when discussing the Island of Hispaniola. Columbus has renamed Hispaniola, Isabela, on his second voyage. Some additional proof that this is Isabela, that Hispaniola is Isabela is found on this title page of a book on Marco Polo's travels. And on this title page about halfway down on the left-hand side there's a woodcut of a city and this information above the city. Santo Domingo on the Island of Isabela. Now if we look at a modern map of Hispaniola we find out that Santo Domingo is still there, it's still the capitol of the Dominican Republic. So Santo Domingo was founded by Bartholomew Columbus in 1496 and it was the first seat of Spanish colonial rule in the New World, so it was a very important city. Now if you understand that Hispaniola is Isabela then your maps look something like this, King Hamy map 1502 Cuba, Isabela, Maggiolo map of 1511, Cuba, Isabela, Leonardo da Vinci mappamundi of 1514, Cuba, Isabela, Maggiolo Naples 1516, Cuba, Isabela. Now if you don't understand that Hispaniola is Isabela then your maps look something like this, Cuba, Isabela, Hispaniola. Waldseemuller 1506, Carta Marina, Cuba, unnamed Isabela and Hispaniola, and it might be that Isabela is now unnamed because with this additional information Waldseemuller doesn't know what to do with that landmass in between Cuba and Hispaniola. Several other maps appear to confirm the hypothesis that the northwest landmass represents Columbus' Cuba, the Ruysch map and the Piri Reis. Let's start with the Ruysch map and on this map there is a continental landmass, but on this map it's much smaller than the other maps. And if you look closely at this northwest landmass on the Ruysch you will see that it wasn't the first geography on this part of the map. If you look very closely you can see that before the triangular landmass was there was another geography there that has been pounded out of the brass plate or copper plate and has been replaced. And if you look very carefully it says to Cuba. And here is a recreation of I assume it was isla to Cuba, it might have been tierra to Cuba, but I assume it was isla to Cuba, that was there before the triangular landmass. Now there are some historians who claim that Ruysch forgot to put Cuba on his map. Well, this erasure proves that there's no way that happened, he just chose to use the triangular shaped landmass to represent Cuba. I want you to look quickly at this toponym [inaudible] and we'll come back to that in just a little bit. How about the Piri Reis map of 1513? And I might need to thank Greg McIntosh [Assumed Spelling] for giving me this slide because what he's done is translated some of the toponyms into Spanish. And you can see at the top it says this is Asia and Asia is labeled Cuba. There are two place names or toponyms on this map, Puerto Grande and Punta de Hornofay, both names that Columbus used while he was discovering the south coast of Cuba. And to the east Hispaniola, looking a lot like Japan on early maps, and the first, quote, city, end quote, of the New World Navidad. So this would suggest that the mainland was Cuba. So what are the other toponyms on the continental landmass? If this continental landmass is meant to represent Columbus' Cuba the toponyms of this continent should be associated with his exploration of Cuba. There is one place name in particular that we want to take a look at and that's Cavo doffim de abul, Cape of the end of April. Now this toponym strongly suggests that the explorer of this landmass discovers an eastern cape on this continent on April 30th, makes sense. And here we have that same toponym on the Waldseemuller 1507 with the Island of Isabela. No less than the great historian, Henry Harrisse, declared this toponym could not possibly be associated with Columbus. Those quotations prove conclusively that the inscription Cape at the end of the April has nothing whatever to do with the Island of Cuba or any part thereof. Well, let's test Harrisse's assertion. From the Libro Copiador, letter four, on April 30th I reached Cabo alpha et omega, the easternmost cape of Cuba are also called Cabo Maisi, and I sailed west along the southern coast of Cuba as far as the port I called Grande. And here's a map of the east end of Cuba and here's Cabo Maisi defined by Punta Maisi and Punta Camato [Assumed Spelling]. And to the far left of the map Biea Guantanamo [Assumed Spelling], the Bay of Guantanamo. So on April 30th Columbus sailed from Maisi all the way to Guantanamo, and look at the geography in between, okay? Returning to Columbus' log of his first voyage on 5 December 1492 he departs from Cuba on his way to Hispaniola and he says, that one passed Cabo Maisi, he saw that the coast turned south and trended southwest and he soon saw a handsome and high cape in the same direction and it was distant from the other one, Cabo Maisi, seven leagues. In other words, about 18 nautical miles from southwest of Cabo Maisi there was a handsome and high cape. Well, let's go back to our geography here of east Cuba, Cabo Maisi, Guantanamo Bay, and here is another cape defined by Punta Negra and Punta Caleta. This is the handsome and high cape. And if you look at a map of Cuba showing elevations you can see that Cabo Maisi is very shallow or very low lying, whereas, the southwest cape is quite high. So here we have a photograph of Cabo Maisi and you can see that it's very flat. And if you look to the far left skyline you can see what appears to be a high cape, right there. And if you take a photograph from the road on that cape and looking back at Cabo Maisi you can see how shallow it is, how flat it is. So now we get to the question, this is the Caveri world map and outlined here is the Cape of the end of April. Now I would ask you does that toponym name Cabo Maisi, which many historians have thought was the case, or instead does it really represent the handsome and high cape to the southwest that he passed and perhaps named or someone in his entourage named Cape of the end of April? I would suggest the latter is probably more likely. There are other toponyms on this landmass that appear to support Columbus' exploration of this landmass, and I will go through three of them quickly. First, Costa Alta, now this toponym is very difficult for people who say that this continental landmass represents North America because there are no high coasts in the southeast coast of North America, there are just none. On the other hand, on arriving at Cuba on October 28th, 1492 he says all this land is high, uses the word alta, like Sicily. And here is an image of the coast of Sicily and here is an image of Cuba at about the same place that Columbus first arrived at Cuba. Las Cabras, the goats, now this has to be or very likely a misspelling, which happens a lot on these early maps for the toponyms, because there were no goats in the New World and Columbus says that. So I would suggest to you that this toponym was originally Las Abras, literally translated, the opens. And on his first forage Columbus used the term abras twice while sailing the north coast and in each case Columbus was referring to an opening to the sea between mountains. And here is an image of what that geography would look like. Finally, Rio de las Almadias, River of the Dugouts. In Columbus' log of his first voyage he uses the word almadia or almadias 24 times when referring to the vessels of the natives. And specifically on November 1st he says more than 16 dugouts, almadias, came to the ship and the river that he was in was very deep, Rio de las Almadias. And so these four toponyms match very well with Columbus' voyage to Cuba and also matches the placement of Spanish flags noting a discovery for the King and Queen of Spain displayed on both Waldseemuller maps. To review information from Columbus' exploration of Cuba matches well with the shape of the northwest landmass, the size of the northwest landmass, the position of the northwest landmass with respect to the Island of Isabela, and matches the toponyms reviewed, especially the toponym Cape of the end of April at the eastern end or the northwest landmass. Hopefully, the above information may have convinced you of the fact, not fiction, that the northwest landmass depicted on the Waldseemuller Carta Marina and other early world maps is representative of Cuba, a/k/a Columbus' Asia, what Taviana [Assumed Spelling] called Columbus' erroneous opinion of reality. If it has I'm sure Columbus would be quite pleased. Thank you for your kind attention. I'll be happy to answer questions later. [ Applause ] >> John Hessler: Well, our next speaker, Chet Van Duzer, needs no introduction to this audience for the most part. Chet has been studying the Waldseemuller maps for many, many years. I first knew of Chet probably a decade ago when he gave a talk at the first Waldseemuller conference. He was recommended to me by someone who had seen him give a talk on the subject in Europe and I had never heard of him. Most people in cartographic circles at that point had never heard of him, but he has made a significant impact on the discipline now. Chet and I were Kluge fellows together and we worked on a book together on the Waldseemuller maps, and during that period of time we kind of outlined what we thought were the central research problems that were still left in Waldseemuller scholarship. During that period I felt a little bit like, there's a book actually by the novelist Thomas Bernhard, which details the exploits of a pianist who winds up accidently being in a piano class with Glenn Gould and he decides at that point that he needs to relegate all of the playing of the piano to Glenn Gould. At the time I was a Kluge fellow, I realized that I needed to relegate all of the possible solutions to the Waldseemuller questions to Chet, and that is what I have assigned him tonight, so. [ Applause ] >> Chet Van Duzer: Well, that's a lot to live up to. Thank you, John, and thanks to The Library for organizing this conference. And I'd also like to thank the Kislak Foundation for bringing the Carta Marina to The Library of Congress and also for funding the fellowship through which I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time studying the map. Here it is, as the title of my talk indicated I'm going to address two particular aspects of the map this afternoon. The first is the originality of the Carta Marina, both as a departure from the 1507 map, so I'm going to contrast it with the 1507 map, and also as an independent creation, look at all the work by Waldseemuller that went into its creation. And then also we'll look at the diffusion of the Carta Marina. So it's ben claimed that the one surviving copy, which is here in The Library of Congress, is a proof and that the map did not circulate, and I hope to provide some evidence to show that that's not the case, that it did in fact circulate. So beginning with the originality of the Carta Marina versus the 1507 world map, so again the Carta Marina is a departure from the 1507 world map. The 1507 map is based on Ptolemy's geography. Here's the map, I think we're all familiar with it by now. He proclaims his debt to Ptolemy in its title, A Map of the Whole World According to the Tradition of Ptolemy and the Explorations of Amerigo Vespucci and Others. As we perhaps, most of us know at the top of the map there are portraits of Ptolemy and Vespucci, indicating his debt to both of them, Ptolemy is on the left there. Here is a Ptolemaic world map, just so we can know what we're talking about when we talk about a debt to Ptolemy. And just orient ourselves briefly. Here's Europe, North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian Ocean. And, in fact, the 1507 map is based on a particular map, which is also based on Ptolemy, namely the world map by Henricus Martellus at Yale, which was made in about 1491. And just to look at this process of movement from, if you will, from Ptolemy through Martellus to Waldseemuller, we can see that Martellus has expanded the area of the world depicted on his map with respect to Ptolemy. So he shows the southern part of Africa, which Ptolemy does not show. He extends this geography all the way to the North Pole, which Ptolemy did not do, and he shows not only the eastern coast of Asia but further out to the east, all the way to Japan. So instead of showing 180 degrees of longitude he shows 270, so a substantial expansion of the part of the earth's surface depicted. If we compare the Martellus world map and Waldseemuller's world map, of course, the main difference is the addition of the New World and also Waldseemuller very boldly on his 1507 map portrays all 360 degrees of the earth's circumference. These two maps are very similar and the similarities were noted when the Martellus map surfaced in Bern in the late 1950s. They are of similar dimensions, both cartographers take advantage of the lower margins to include large text blocks. The depictions of North Africa are very similar, that's not too surprising as both are based on Ptolemy's geography, but the depiction of eastern Asia on the two maps is very - the similarity of the depiction of eastern Asia on the two maps is very striking, indeed. As a couple speakers mentioned earlier, Marco Polo does not give latitudes and longitudes, and on both maps eastern Asia is based on Marco Polo. And it's supremely unlikely that two people would extrapolate Marco Polo's data so similarly when Marco Polo says such city X is 15 days' journey west of city Y, that leaves a lot of room for interpretation and it's very unlikely two cartographers would interpret that information similarly. So we can see some dependence here, and both cartographers also placed the Island of Japan at the eastern edge of the map. So in other work I've shown an even close relationship between the Martellus map and Waldseemuller's 1507 map. I don't have time to go into those details today, but I would like to look at the part of Waldseemuller's 1507 map that does not come from Martellus, which is the New World. And what Waldseemuller did is took the New World from the chart of Caverio and adjusted that data to the Ptolemaic projection he was using. So what I'm saying, to sum up a little bit, is the 1507 map is basically information from two maps joined into one. So it's the Yale Martellus map, information from that map, and the depiction of the New World taken from Caverio's chart. So the Carta Marina, moving on to the issue of originality, is based on an entirely different cartographic system. So in the course of nine years Waldseemuller decided that the Ptolemaic system was not the best system to use in representing the world. He chose instead to use nautical chart cartography, so an entirely different cartographic foundation. Here, again, is the Carta Marina. And he proclaims this difference in the title, it's called a nautical chart that comprehensively shows the Portuguese voyages in the shape of the whole known world, its regions and its limits as they have been determined in our times, and how they differ from the tradition of the Ancients and also areas not mentioned by the Ancients. So it's very clear that he's setting aside Ancient cartography here and I think we can read into that Ptolemy, he is setting Ptolemy aside. So he says it's based on nautical charts and, in fact, we know which nautical chart it's based on, it's based on the Caverio chart. That's a bold claim, how can we know that he had this specific chart in his workshop? In fact, if one looks at some of the place names they're copied from this chart, even down to spelling errors and corrections. And if we compare the two charts we can see that what Waldseemuller has done in implementing this new cartographic system is follow the outlines of the Caverio chart very closely. So the outlines and position of Greenland are just about identical, the Island of Pseudo-Labrador just about identical, the coast of South America very similar, the non-Ptolemaic shape and central location of Africa. These two south Asian peninsulas are just about identical in outline, and the nodes of the rhumb line network, a characteristic feature of nautical charts, are in identical positions on the two maps. So we can see this outline, he's copied the outlines and format of this chart, this nautical chart very closely. So in making a world map based not on Ptolemy, but rather on nautical charts he's set aside one of the figureheads of his 1507 world map. As we heard earlier from Don, in the Carta Marina he follows Columbus' thought quite closely, and on the 1507 map he names the New World after Amerigo Vespucci. As Don said, the name America does not appear on the Carta Marina, so he's come to realize that Columbus' role in the discovery of the New World was very important and so he set aside Vespucci, as well. So in the course of nine years he's set aside the two figureheads of his 1507 map and this is, again, a really powerful indication of how far he had come in these nine years and what a departure from the 1507 map the Carta Marina is. While I have said that the Carta Marina is original, but I've just shown that he followed the outlines of Caverio chart very closely, so how is the map original? If we zoom in a little bit we can see that on the Caverio chart there's really just about zero geographical detail in the interior. I'm now going to switch to exactly the same part of the Carta Marina. There's geographical detail everywhere, and that's where the originality of the Carta Marina resides. He took the outlines from Caverio's chart, but all this information, all these details he's filled in was the fruit of his own research. And, as you can see, I'll switch between those images again, Caverio and the Carta Marina, it is a very rich collection of information. And, again, this is where the originality resides. So let's look at where he gathered some of that information. Looking at the whole chart, there's a large text block in the lower left in which Waldseemuller goes through some of his sources, lists some of his sources. And what I'm going to do now, so he tells us where he took some of the information, he doesn't tell us everything, but what I'm going to go through and show is which parts of the map come from which sources. So one of the sources that he mentions is Marco Polo, the famous Venetian traveler of the 13th Century, who left descriptions of the Middle East, Central Asia, China and the Indian Ocean. On the 1507 map all of the eastern Asian part of the map came from Marco Polo. The situation on the Carta Marina is very different, there's just a few sparse legends, which I've indicated with red dots, that come from Marco Polo and this is another indication of the radical departure that the Carta Marina is from the 1507 map, a completely different use of sources. One of his other sources was John of Plano Carpini, who as a Papal Legate took a northern route to go see the Great Khan in the 13th Century. It's unlikely that - I'm sorry, here we have - there's a problem here. Yes, so I'm sorry, here are the legends that come from John of Plano Carpini. It's likely that Waldseemuller took this information not directly from Plano Carpini, but rather by excerpts from Plano Carpini that appear in Vincent of Beauvais. There are very few manuscripts of Plano Carpini's work. There are many more manuscripts of Vincent of Beauvais and his book was published in Strasbourg in 1473, so it's a much more readily available source for the same information. Another of his sources was Odoric of Pordenone, an Italian missionary and diplomat who traveled to China in the early 14th Century. And here I show a map of the places visited by Odoric, and what we'll see that you can see clearly that the places he visited are southern Asia. When we look at the texts on the Carta Marina that come from Odoric we can see that they are not in southern Asia, and what we are to conclude is that Waldseemuller had a better source for southern Asia, a more recent source so that in southern Asia rather than use Odoric, whom he did use for some information, he chose a more recent source who we'll get to later. Another of his sources was Pierre d'Ailly, a French Cardinal, theologian and cosmographer who wrote a book called the Amago mundi in 1410. Waldseemuller used that book as a source for his description of the Caspian Sea and also for some of the monstrous races in India and I'll zoom in here and show some of the illustrations of those monstrous peoples. Another of his important sources was a book called Paesi novemente retrovati or Newly Discovered Countries, a collection of travel narratives that was first published in Italy in 1507. One of the works in that book was the travel narrative of Alvise Cadamosto, a Venetian merchant and navigator who explored the western coast of Africa for Portugal in the middle of the 15th Century. And, as we would expect, the text from Cadamosto are on the western coast of Africa. Another source that appears in that same book is the narrative of Joseph the Indian or Priest Joseph, a Christian priest from India who sailed back to Portugal with Cabral [Assumed Spelling], and I've highlighted the texts that come from Joseph the Priest. One of those is the description of Calicut that's included on the map, the long text block there. The same book, the Paesi novamente retravate [Assumed Spelling], was the source of a large text block in the lower right-hand corner of the map that goes through the prices and sources of spices available in Calicut. And I think that text is very interesting in terms of indicating the practical orientation of the Carta Marina. Another of his really crucial sources was Ludovico de Varthema, the Italian traveler and a keen observer who visited Egypt, the Middle East, India and the Islands of the Indian Ocean early in the 15th [Assumed Spelling] Century. His narrative appears in the Paesi novamente retravate, but I'm quite confident that the edition, well at least one edition of the work that Varthema consulted was this illustrated edition of 1515. We can see here the long texts on the map that come from Varthema, and we see that they are concentrated in southern Asia and this gives us a hint as to why Waldseemuller did not use much text from Odoric because he had a better, more recent source of information in southern Asia. So in addition to looking at the sources of some of the text on the Carta Marina, I'd like to look at some of the sources of images. So, again, looking at the originality of the map, looking at the research that Waldseemuller, himself, did to compile the information that appears in the map. This is the image of Mecca on the Carta Marina. It comes from precisely that 1515 edition of Varthema that I mentioned earlier. You can see the strong similarity of the buildings. And, again, the book was published just one year before the Carta Marina was printed so Waldseemuller was using the most recent sources available to him. This image of suttee in India, the practice whereby a wife was supposed to join her husband on his funeral pyre, again, comes from the same book, the illustrated edition of Varthema. One clue that confirms that is the presence of this demon in the two illustrations. Here's a rhinoceros on the Carta Marina. We're all familiar with the 1515 Dur [Assumed Spelling] illustration of the rhinoceros, some little details indicate that his source was rather Burgkmair's print of the rhinoceros, which was also printed in 1515. I'll just put them side-by-side there. So, again, making use of not only the most recent text, but also the most recent illustrations. And looking now at the southern part of the Carta Marina there's a wonderful illustration of King Manuel riding a sea monster and this proclaims visually a symbolic indication of Portuguese control of the sea route around Africa from Portugal to Asia. And the source of that image I suspect was Jacopo de' Barbari's View of Venice, where if we zoom in a little bit we have Neptune riding a sea monster as protector of Venice. But there's an additional significance to the image of King Manuel that I want to touch upon here. If we go back to Waldseemuller's 1507 map there are texts about sea monsters, there are no images, and the texts come from medieval sources and they're the sort of thing one would expect, they don't indicate - they indicate that the ocean is a dangerous place to travel. This image is entirely different, it proclaims human control of sea monsters and, thus, symbolic human domination of the seas. And I would suggest that this contrast suggests a change in Waldseemuller's conception of the ocean from a place of danger to a place across which human trade can be conducted. And in, again, just nine years that's a remarkable shift. So that's what I have to say about the originality of the Carta Marina. I want to move on to the fusion of the Carta Marina and this suggestion, which was made by Joseph Fisher, that the map did not circulate, that the one surviving copy that was in the Schoner Sambelband [Assumed Spelling] that is now at The Library of Congress was a proof sheet. And one argument in favor of that understanding is that there is only one copy of the map, why is it that we have only one copy? And the same question holds true for the 1507 map? But, in fact, that's a very common condition of 16th Century maps. So I've compiled a little list here of 16th Century maps that survive in either 01 or 02 exemplars. So Giovani Contarini, Waldseemuller owned 1511 Carta intineraria, Rosselli's printed nautical chart. You can read through the list. This list was very easy to compile and makes no pretense at completeness. It's very common that 16th Century printed maps survive in 01 or 02 exemplars, and just to continue to list through the end of the century. Again, I could have made this list much longer. So even some copies of the Carta Marina printed by Lorenz Fries survive in 01 or again 1 exemplar. It's a very common condition, so I don't think that can be taken as any evidence whatsoever that the Carta Marina did not circulate. Well, what about providing some evidence that it did circulate? Well, the Carta Marina was used as a model for Lorenz Fries' maps of 1525, 1530 and 1531, so three different editions, reprintings, if you will, with some modifications of the Carta Marina. There's no exemplar of the 1525 edition that survives. We can look and compare one sheet of the Waldseemuller 1515 map with the 1530 edition by Fries, we can see they're very similar. So Fries went to the trouble of printing another edition of the Carta Marina, and it strikes me as supremely unlikely that he was using the one copy that was also preserved by Johannes Schoner. And just to show there's only one surviving exemplar of the 1531 edition by Fries, again, I think the fact that the map was seen as popular enough to reproduce this way indicates that there was more than just the one copy that's come down to us. We can also see some interesting hints of the availability of Waldseemuller's Carta Marina to Norman cartographers at the middle of the 16th Century. So if we look at eastern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula and the Vallard Atlas of 1547, which is in the Huntington Library in California, and we zoom in on the Arabian Peninsula here is what's probably Mecca in that chart and it is very similar, indeed, to Mecca on Waldseemuller's Carta Marina. And I want to point out the crescent at the top of both buildings, so we know that Waldseemuller took his image from the image of Medina in the 15 edition of Varthema, is it possible that that image was rather the source for the Vallard Atlas? But given that it does not have the crescent at the top I think the answer is no. And is it possible that the source was rather the image of Mecca from one of Fries' reprintings of the Carta Marina? And, again, I think the answer is no. The image of Mecca in the Vallard Atlas is more complex architecturally than the image in Fries' Carta Marina. So I think Waldseemuller's Carta Marina is the only plausible source for this image and this indicates the map had circulated to France. Looking at another similar example, this is Pierre Desceliers' 1546 world map at John Rylands Library, and I want to zoom in on the image of suttee in India. Here it is, the image is a bit indistinct so this piece of evidence is not as strong I think as that of Mecca, but I want to point out we can see the woman in the fire raising one of her arms and we now have multiple other sources, potential sources to compare. So here's the image of suttee in the 1515 Varthema, it doesn't strike me as a very close correspondence, the woman is facing the other way, is raising her other arm, for example. Here's the image on the Carta Marina, Waldseemuller's Carta Marina, again, I think this image is much closer, there's just two people around the woman, she's raising the same arm, her attitude seems very similar. Here is the image on Fries' copy of Waldseemuller's Carta Marina, the woman's attitude is quite different, her arm is down instead of up. And, finally, the image in the 1522 Ptolemy, which was also based on Waldseemuller's Carta Marina and the image here is entirely different. So really the image on Waldseemuller's Carta Marina seems like the most plausible source for the image on the 1546 map and, thus, further evidence that the Carta Marina was available to Norman cartographers. One more Norman example, here's Pierre Desceliers' 1550 world map. We zoom in on North America, this is a representation of Roberval's Fort in Canada and it's familiar. It seems to have been copied from the image of Mecca on Waldseemuller's Carta Marina. And we can go through again, I want to highlight the presence of the buttresses there, and we can go through the other candidates and I think it's fair to say, again it's not completely solid evidence, but I think it's fair to say that Desceliers' image most likely comes from Waldseemuller's Carta Marina and not from any of the derivative images of the city. And one more piece of evidence that the Carta Marina did circulate appears in Abraham Ortelius' the Theatrum orbis terrarum, first printed in 1570. Ortelius includes in the work a catalog of his sources and I've showed the first page of that catalog here. And zooming in on this entry we can see that he cites Martin Waldseemuller, universal navigation chart, which many call a marine chart, published in Germany, and he adds that he thinks this Waldseemuller is the same as the aforementioned ilacomylus, which is Waldseemuller's Latin pen name. So Ortelius cites the Carta Marina as one of his sources, that proves that the chart did, in fact, circulate. So a few conclusions. I think the development in Waldseemuller's cartographic thought in the course of nine years is something that's really remarkable and the originality and all the work that went into the Carta Marina is also quite impressive. The combination of research, of not only textual sources in a substantial library of contemporary geographical thought, but also research for images, not only in texts, in printed books, but also in other maps is quite impressive. And, again, I think I've been able to show, I hope I've been able to show that the map did, indeed, circulate, that it was not confined to the single copy that's come down to us. What we have was not maybe a proof copy, but the map had a broader printing history and it did circulate. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> John Hessler: If the speakers want to come up we can take some questions? Are there any questions? >> This is for Chet Van Duzer. What's remarkable about the 1507 map is the presence of the Pacific Ocean and a well-defined west coast of South America, but the 1516 map, which is a nautical chart, lacks that. So how do you explain that omission and the fact if it's designed for sailors it doesn't have what he knew in 1507? >> Chet Van Duzer: Yes, I would say that it's not actually an omission, it's a reflection of a difference in intended audience and purpose for the two maps. So the Carta Marina in general depicts less of the earth's surface, not only in the West but in all its other corridors. And I think that Waldseemuller decided to make a more practical and less theoretical map, one that showed the parts of the earth that people were actually visiting or that there was an immediate prospect of visiting and also a greater emphasis on where trade was being conducted. Hence, I think the long list of spices with their prices and sources in the lower right-hand corner of the map is a strong indicator of what I see as a greater interest on practicality of the Carta Marina. So, again, I think the fact that he doesn't try to show the West coast of the New World is sort of a frank admission that he doesn't know about it and trying to create a world map that focuses more on practical matters, I would say. >> Don McGuirk: I'd like to add that on that far Pacific coast there is a notation that says beyond here is unknown, so it doesn't necessarily mean that that's the West coast, the cartographer just doesn't know whether beyond that there is land or sea or whatever. So if you take a close look that notation is there and that may very well be what he means, he doesn't know what's beyond here. >> John Hessler: Bill? >> Yes, my question is for Chet, but I'd be interested if any of the other speakers have any opinion. What is your speculation as to why there are only zero or one or two of so many important maps that presumably were relatively expensive and required a great deal of effort to produce and have essentially disappeared? >> Chet Van Duzer: Wall maps, in particular, don't survive well. So not for Waldseemuller's Carta Marina but for the Fries' re-editions, if you will, they came with a pamphlet that has instructions for pasting the sheets onto the wall. So one pastes the sheets onto the wall and 15 years later or less or more, it doesn't matter, but one remodels and the map goes away. And so the only reason the Carta Marina has come down to us was because it was preserved in a different way, placed into a codex by Johannes Schoner. Not all the maps I listed were wall maps, a large portion of them were. They were all large, I believe, and large maps in general, aside from the question of pasting them to walls, just don't survive well, yes. >> John Hessler: You can also bring that up-to-date today, a map is only as good as sort of the modern information that kind of flows into it. Without some historical sense that we need to keep these for historical purposes they quickly became obsolete and probably used to start the fire. So it's just like now, a 1972 roadmap, who cares? So I think a lot of it has to do with just the obsolescence of the information on them. You know, Schoner had a different purpose, he used those maps for probably astrological purposes as opposed to geographical purposes and he basically tells us in his bookplate that he was saving them for posterity. So he very well knew what he was doing with them, so without a bunch of Schoners around it's, you know, they just go to the wind. >> I think that's an interesting discussion, but unfortunately we also have information that suggested a thousand copies of the 1507 map were produced. That's a huge number to be destroyed indiscriminately it seems to me. >> John Hessler: Assuming you take him at his word. And what cartographer doesn't lie or perhaps blow it out of proportion what he was doing? And even on that text block we're not really sure exactly what he's referring to, you know, was he referring to the 1513 Ptolemy, a thousand copies of the maps that were in there, you know, that sort of thing? The bigger questions with this map that we didn't touch on, at all, and maybe Chet will touch on a little bit of work that we had started doing, is we don't know where either of these maps were printed. We don't know who did the wood blocks. There's lots of mysterious things doing with the type faces on the map. These look like they weren't these small little projects that we have imagined them to be. This little teeny group of cartographers in Santiae [Assumed Spelling] working away on these maps. Just the sources that Chet has identified, and that's only a few of the many, many, many, many other sources that he pointed out, the access to this information had to be someplace else besides this little village. And so if you want to say a little something about the type face research, just to show the kind of big project this was? >> Chet Van Duzer: Well, when I was at The Library working on my fellowship and John was right across from me in The Kluge Center we got started looking at the type faces and there are implications for where the maps were printed, but I don't think we were able to really take it as far as we should have. >> John Hessler: No, we weren't, but it turned out that there were some 22 different printer type faces on that map. In other words, the type faces are usually associated with a single printer at this time and there's 22 different type faces associated with different printers that appear on the Carta Marina. And then there was some symbology that was also somewhat strange, there's a backslash which we could only find used by one printer who didn't really seem to have anything to do with this group. So there's a lot of mystery about these two maps. For me there are always going to be these bizarre perfect filogical [Assumed Spelling] objects, there's just enough information to kind of grasp both the scholars and the crazies who think that it was ancient aliens. But when you start looking at it just the sand just goes through your hands and it's very frustrating. Any other - Wes? >> This one is at least, first, for Dr. McGuirk. When you look at the place names on what at first looks like Florida, but you're arguing is Cuba or at least as thought by Columbus, do any of the place names there line up with any of these Asian sources that Chet talked about or are they all following Columbus' records of his voyage? Because you only hit a few place names, but there's an awful lot there. >> Don McGuirk: No, I think, and I don't know if Chet has looked at this or not, but I think the first, the northern three or four are probably either from Marco Polo or from voyages by the English or maybe even Portuguese [inaudible]. You get to a certain point and it lines up very well with Columbus but, no, my thought was that the top three or four were probably Portuguese or English or even Marco Polo. There's one that I'm pretty sure was Marco Polo. >> Chet Van Duzer: I haven't looked at them, but that would certainly be a lot of fun. >> John Hessler: Ben? >> You showed how the distortion of Africa is from the problem of using the magnetic declination, so when you look at those maps Brazil is also very distorted, so do you think you could apply the same analysis to the distortions of Brazil to explain them on those maps? >> Joaquim Gaspar: I'm not sure I understood perfectly. You are talking about the misrepresentation of Brazil or the misplacement of Brazil? >> And misplaced. >> Joaquim Gaspar: And stretched? >> And stretched. So do you think if you did that same kind of nice analysis you did to explain that for Africa, you could also do the same for Brazil? >> Joaquim Gaspar: Yes, absolutely. Well, there was a Portuguese nobleman who made the voyage to Brazil, is called [inaudible]. He was also a viceroy of India during the middle 16th Century. He explained in detail, it's amazing his explanation, the reason for the misplacement and the stretching and Africa and the misplacement of Brazil. He interprets correctly that was the affect of magnetic declination on the [inaudible] measures by the pilots and transferred directly to the charts. That happens exactly with Brazil, Brazil is closer to Lisbon than it should be because of magnetic declination, yes. Not only Brazil, but Newfoundland. >> This is a question for Chet or any of you. obviously, all of these maps are coming out of the European Christian tradition, but Chet showed a number of these representations of the Caba and Mecca and literally the Islamic passion for calculating correctly the qibla from anywhere in the world, latitude and longitude, to point towards that, is there any evidence for Islamic sources connected with the qibla feeding into this grand plan in any way? >> Chet Van Duzer: I would have to say, no. There's a tradition in nautical charts of representing the tomb of Muhammad as floating in the air and it was believed, the texts on the nautical charts indicate that Muslims went to Mecca to worship the tomb of Muhammad, which of course is not in Mecca. So I would think that if any information had been flowing from Islamic sources about Mecca they certainly would not have made that mistake. In fact, Varthema, the one traveler that Waldseemuller may have had a use of was the first European I believe to have visited Mecca and written about it. So if you're interested in the history of European knowledge of Mecca Varthema would be a good source to consult. >> John Hessler: Les, go ahead? >> Yes, this is for Mr. Gaspar. The question is with respect to the magnetic declinations off of the coasts of Africa what was - did you measure what that declination would be based upon, you know, your analysis of those areas? >> Joaquim Gaspar: We have two sources, one historical source, which is the [inaudible] has just mentioned in 1538 from Lisbon to Indian. It is the first known exact observations of magnetic declination. It's about 40 or 50 [inaudible]. Those were my preferred values for making the calculations, but we have other sources which are not historical which are the outputs of more than geomagnetic models that are based on the few measurements of old values of magnetic declination. They measure it on the lava flows and all the sedimentary deposits in lakes, et cetera. And I would say they are very accurate, but they are accurate within two, three or four degrees. So my modeling was based on these two sources. But you asked something about the values of magnetic declination. Well, we have a hint, we have a historical hint, which is the name given to a Gulf in the Cantino Planisphere near the very southern tip of Africa, Gulf desgulish [Assumed Spelling], Gulf of the Needles, that was the place where the magnetic needle pointed exactly to the north. We are absolutely sure about that because several sources at the time referred to it. And we also know from [inaudible] that the values of magnetic declination in the Atlantic, in the south Atlantic were very high, up to more than 20 degrees eastward. And that on the other side in the Indian Ocean they reach about 15 degrees west, the maximum value in the Indian Ocean, and about 20 or 22 degrees in the eastern side in the Atlantic, and about zero in the Cape of Good Hope. >> Mr. Gaspar, how do you reconcile when you go all the way around Africa and you are in the Red Sea, which is beautifully colored red, the Portuguese makes its entry so that you have this distortion, you refer to the declination of the magnetic needle. However, when the Portuguese make it into the Gulf of Suez or into the area of Suez and depicting it on the map far distorted to the east, however, knowing that Alexandria [inaudible] and other places in the Mediterranean are far more west, didn't they discover that on a short distance which was known to them already in the time that it couldn't be such a long stretch or didn't it occur to them? I'm just curious. >> Joaquim Gaspar: You had the microphone to close your mouth, so I couldn't understand the words. I'm sorry. >> Okay, the short version is the Red Sea was navigated by the Portuguese, as well. Can you hear me now better? Okay, it's now better? Now better? [laughter] Okay, just tell me how should I hold it? Okay, the question is when the Portuguese are in the Red Sea defining Suez or defining Akaba [Assumed Spelling], places like this, which were already known about where the relative position is to the Mediterranean and when you have distortion over in reality a short distance but on the map a very wide distance did anybody notice that this can't be? >> Joaquim Gaspar: Of course, they knew they were distorted. They knew in the Mediterranean, they knew to determine exactly the direction of the north, the direction of the pull. And I talked a little bit about that. Not only before the translation of Bartholomew's geography, they already knew where the north is, but after Bartholomew's geography they had to have a very strong reason to defy the authority of the classics and maintain the Mediterranean tilted. And the very strong reason was navigation. So only in the end of the 17th Century was the tilt of the Mediterranean corrected. That one thing, yes, they knew. Maybe they didn't know the reason, but they knew it was distorted, they knew it was tilted. The same thing for Africa, not only for the stretching and the distortions of the coastlines but also for the mismatch between Africa and the Mediterranean. Of course, the Isthmus of Suez was enormous, but those charts were intended not to depict the world, not to depict the landmasses, but to navigate. So the orientation of the coastline had to match the orientation of the compass. >> John Hessler: I think what is unique in some ways about Joaquim's work and maybe this isn't coming out clearly is Joaquim has basically put forth an instrumental theory of the Portolan Chart. In other words, you can't look at the Portolan Chart like it's a geographic map. If you look at a Portolan Chart you've got to realize what the technology of navigation was. This was supporting the technology of navigation, so it doesn't matter how the chart looks. It could look totally baffling to us as far as accuracy and distances, but when then you took it and you used it with the tools that were available for navigation it worked as a diagram. And all of these things have to be brought together into the discussion of what is principally a nongeographic instrument, and that really is the difference in his work. He has taken this out of the history of cartography and put it where it should be into the history of navigation and technology. And so all of those old filogical tools, what the shape of the coastline was, all that kind of stuff are very immaterial to these charts when you put them in the context of navigation, and that's the departure and that really is the central - when you look at Joaquim's very technical work and when he backs this up with his mathematics it is 100% convincing that to a certain extent we had been looking at these things in very primitive ways for very long. And so you can't throw out all of the filogical and toponym work, but really this technical instrumental thing has kind of revolutionized the study of what a Portolan Chart is. And I think you had a question? [ Applause ] >> Joaquim Gaspar: I couldn't say it better. Well, but this is not an easy question. The way charts were constructed it's not easy, it's not immediate, it's not by chance that historians didn't reach the right explanation before the present day. Because it's a subtle technical question, you've got to know about navigation, about theoretical cartography and about history, of course. >> John Hessler: And, by the way, Joaquim before he got his Ph.D. was a naval navigator in the Portuguese Navy so, hence. The microphone? >> Related to that question and because I'm not technical I can't answer this, but if they got to the same location in Egypt or in that general area by going through the Mediterranean and also by navigating around Africa are the errors offsetting in that or would they actually get two different locations for the same point? >> Joaquim Gaspar: That is an excellent question. Thank you. Well, they would get different things, of course. They got different things, as a matter of fact, because the eastern side of the Mediterranean didn't match the tip of the Red Sea, didn't match the Isthmus of Suez. Firstly, because of magnetic declination, but not only because there is another problem is even a more subtle problem which is the fact that the earth is round and they didn't consider the roundness of the earth. So everything you put on the plane, every measurement you make in the spherical earth and put on the plane is geometrically inconsistent. And the final position of some port depends on the way you use to plot that part on the chart. Did I answer your question? >> John Hessler: And one last question? Arthur, go ahead? >> I'm a little confused at the end of all of this. >> John Hessler: You're where you started then? >> Well, I've come full circle to back where I've begun. The [inaudible] map was 270 approximately degrees and one of the revolutions of the Waldseemuller 1507 map was that it was a 360-degree view. When we go to the 1516 map and we're maybe somewhere in between 270 and 360 degrees. It's obviously not a 360-degree map. So all this is quite clear. Also, the fact that the area that you've identified as the Asian Peninsula on the 1516 map is very similar and probably copied from the 1507 map, is that correct? But then we get to the two cartouches [Assumed Spelling] which clearly show two separate hemispheres, I think, in the 1507 map, an eastern hemisphere and a western hemisphere. The western hemisphere shows what is apparently South America and something else north. If you look at the eastern cartouche it also shows a fairly complete picture of what was purported to be Asia with a vast distance between that and Chibango [Assumed Spelling] or Japan. How do you reconcile those cartouches with the other information that you're presenting? >> Chet Van Duzer: Well, I will give you one example. For instance, when you look at the 1507 it shows a fairly large continent. That continent is only there, that space is only there so you can put the toponyms there. Anyone that explored that coast would not have gone more than half a mile inland. So on the 1507, although it looks like a fairly significant strip of land there, it's only there to allow space to put the toponyms in. And, again, on the west coast of that it says they don't know what's beyond here. So really from that point to the end you don't know whether it's land, you don't know whether it's sea. So when you combine those two it really isn't a - he put 360 degrees there, but he didn't put 360 degrees of information there. Does that make sense? >> John Hessler: So, Arthur, are you really asking what the retraction is? Is there some sort of backward movement here or? [ Inaudible ] >> To the east of that there's the Island of San Paolo and then to the east of that there is Asia or what purports to be Asia I mean in contemporary vision, and I just don't understand how you reconcile that with your arguments? >> Chet Van Duzer: With the arguments that it's ... >> That it's Asia? >> Chet Van Duzer: That it's Asia - oh, okay, now I understand your question. >> And, also, I mean if you - and this is according to my conversations with John Hessler, if you re-project the Ptolyemaic view to a more regular view, to the one that's portrayed in the cartouches those two are the same shape. The shape of that what you call narrow landmass, which is now re-projected to become the larger mass in the right-hand cartouche, that's pretty close to what we might consider to be the shape of South America. >> Chet Van Duzer: Yes, let me - and I can only talk to the northwest continent - so if you take Columbus' concept of the size of the earth it's much smaller. Martellus, right, wasn't that the gentleman, he believed that - he did his own research on how many miles there were to a degree and his was much shorter. I can't give you the exact numbers, but we could talk about it later, I can find it for you. So if you take his concept of how big, the circumference of the earth, number one, and then you take his concept of how far east Asia extended, he believed along with Martellus that Asia extended much further east. So if you take Columbus' view of the size of the earth plus the eastern extent of Asia, that triangle of Asia is right where Florida is. >> John Hessler: Well, I guess we will leave it at that, and you can see that we've solved all of these riddles of cartography today. I just want to invite all of you, this evening is the annual, 2016 annual JI Kislak lecture. It is going to be given by the writer and renowned historian, David Sobel, who is sitting in the audience right here. It is going to be on mapping the southern hemisphere, another mystery of cartography and astronomy. And I would love for all of you to come. At the present moment, however, I can invite all of you to go out the door and make a left directly into the Widdall Pavilion and help yourselves to a glass of wine. And thank you, all, for coming. [applause] >> This has been a presentation of The Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.

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Published: Mon Feb 13 2017