Map that named America is a puzzle for researchers

[Judi Lynn]

Map that named America is a puzzle for researchers
2 Jan 2008, 2005 hrs IST,REUTERS


WASHINGTON: The only surviving copy of the 500-year-old map that first used the name America goes on permanent display this month at the Library of Congress, but even as it prepares for its debut, the 1507 Waldseemuller map remains a puzzle for researchers.

Why did the mapmaker name the territory America and then change his mind later? How was he able to draw South America so accurately? Why did he put a huge ocean west of America years before European explorers discovered the Pacific?

"That's the kind of conundrum, the question, that is still out there," said John Hebert, chief of the geography and map division of the Library of Congress. The 12 sheets that make up the map, purchased from German Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wolfegg for $10 million in 2003, were mounted on Monday in a huge 6-foot by 9.5-foot (1.85 metre by 2.95 metre) display case machined from a single block of aluminium.

The case will be flooded with inert argon gas to prevent deterioration as it goes on public display. Researchers are hopeful that putting the rarely shown map on permanent display for the first time since it was discovered in the Waldburg-Wolfegg castle archives in 1901 may stimulate interest in finding out more about the documents used to produce it.

The map was created by the German monk Martin Waldseemuller. Thirteen years after Christopher Columbus first landed in the Western Hemisphere, the Duke of Lorraine brought Waldseemuller and a group of scholars together at a monastery in Saint-Die in France to create a new map of the world.

More:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/America_map_puzzle_for_researchers/articleshow/2669964.cms

[Lisa]

1. just think -- if things had gone a bit differently ...

... you'd be living in the United States of Vespucci right now!

[SpiralHawk]

4. Or Amerikua - the land of the 4 winds

That name was here long before Vespucci --

[sk8rrobert2]

2. just a theory but

Wouldn't the people of the west indies and china have gotten word that there was a new "world" then they say oh must be over there past the water where we can't see but before Europe and Africa or had word gotten around that the world was round yet? just thinking out loud

[baldguy]

3. Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii aliorumque lustrationes

[Judi Lynn]

5. Thanks for providing the image. Have never seen this. Amazing. n/t