Martin Waldseemuller and the Phantom Ocean

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World Map (detail)
Martin Waldseemuller, 1507

Last week I had to visit the Library of Congress, so I dropped in on the 1507 map by Martin Waldseemuller. The map, which was acquired by the Library in 2003, is tucked in behind an exhibit of mesoamerican artifacts, which seemed arranged specifically to baffle visitors. Both 1507 and 1516 maps by Waldseemuller are kept in large vertical cases at the back of the exhibit hall, invisible from the entrance; during my visit, only tourists shepherded by docents found their way around the other exhibit's margins and into the quiet, dim map room. This was fine with me, because I got to stare at the huge map in perfect privacy (well, it would have been private if not for the bored security guard).

Although one thousand of these maps were printed, the Library of Congress' is the only surviving copy. It survived because, as on my visit, it was largely overlooked, spending several hundred years tucked among the leaves of a book in a library in a castle in Germany. The map is most famous as the first document to give the name "America" (seen above) to the New World:

While it has been suggested that Waldseemuller incorrectly dismissed Christopher Columbus' great achievement in history by the selection of the name "America" for the Western Hemisphere, it is evident that the information that Waldseemuller and his colleagues had at their disposal recognized Columbus' previous voyages of exploration and discovery. However, the group also had acquired a recent French translation of the important work "Mundus Novus," Amerigo Vespucci's letter detailing his purported four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean to America between 1497 and 1504. In that work, Vespucci concluded that the lands reached by Columbus in 1492 and explored by Columbus and others over the ensuing two decades were indeed a segment of the world, a new continent, unknown to Europe. (source)

But the truly puzzling thing about Martin Waldseemuller's 1507 effort is the existence of the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific appears on no other maps of the time. Clearly Waldseemuller had little data on it - compare the featureless western shore of South America to the eastern side's fringe of calligraphic names. Balboa and Magellan hadn't even been there yet!

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World Map (assembled)
Martin Waldseemuller, 1507

So how did Waldseemuller portray South America, and the rest of the world, much as modern cartographers do? In the Cosmographiae Introductio, a guide to the 1507 map, Waldseemuller seems positively smug about his use of the very latest geographic and cartographic data to portray the world as accurately as possible - but what data did he have?

It's not clear who Waldseemuller's sources were, but just to add a little twist, he apparently had second thoughts about deviating from traditional European conception of the world. Just nine years later, in his "Carta Marina," Waldseemuller leaves off the western shore of South America, and thus the Pacific, as well as removing the word "America" - and he claims this 1516 map, which resembles much older Ptolemaic maps, is the most up-to-date! LoC's John Hessler, who has studied the map extensively using computer modeling, has results that suggest Waldseemuller used different sources and references for the two maps - they just don't line up at all. Talk about a do-over.

Why would Waldseemuller reverse himself like this? Did he really think his earlier, gutsy map was based on erroneous data? Or was he just placating his critics? Personally, I was reminded of Chaucer's retraction. . . and I don't trust such last-minute, PC changes of heart one bit. Like Stephen Colbert's mise-en-abime portrait over at the National Gallery*, the message may be ironic or sincere or both - it's simply impossible to be certain. Which makes it even more fun.

If you'd like your very own copy of the Waldseemuller map, you're in luck: a new facsimile was just published, edited by John Hessler. Plus, Hessler has an entire blog about his work on the Waldseemuller map, Warping Waldseemuller: Mathematical Methods in Historical Cartography, which details things like "polynomial warping" and formulae that I don't understand at all. However, even an arithmophobe like me can ooh and aah over this striking comparison of a projected South America with Waldseemuller's map:

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How did Waldseemuller get it that close to right?

More:

From the LoC: John Hessler's video lecture with much more detail on the 1507 map, the projection Waldseemuller used, and what it indicates about the mapmaker's intentions.

* Stephen Colbert's portrait is on the second floor, between the bathrooms - and it's only on display until April 1. So get over there!

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Thanks for this post, Jessica. I've been fascinated with ancient maps since I was a kid, and I enjoyed this post and the links you provided.

You should check out a recent book by Enrique Dussel, he explains that Waldseemuller's map is based on pre-existing Chinese maps

For further pronouncements about Martin Waldseemuller's map and the "carte palliografiche or mariane", see the works of Diego Baratono/Claudio Piani.

By Diego Baratono (not verified) on 08 Jun 2010 #permalink