Origin of the World Map
Below is the script for a video I made for fun. Here’s the video:
It started with a simple question. How was someone able to make this? [Show Catalan Atlas] It is absolutely awe inspiring. This was made in the 1300’s, way before satellite imagery. Before the Renaissance. I have trouble accurately placing a single city on a map when making videos, but this? Thousands of cities? Hundreds of ship paths? How was someone possibly able to pull this off? How were old maps created?
For some reason, some people aren’t obsessed with maps. I don’t know why.
Maps opened up the world. They transform a place from “Here be dragons” to here’s a whole new society. They were one of the first steps in connecting to other cultures, whether to trade or to win wars with. They literally shaped the path to growth.
They go all the way back, showing local rivers and distant lands. Homer was the first person we know to have described the world. [Show Homer Simpson] That doesn’t feel right. [Show Homer] There we go. And Homer, just sort of made it up. Other poets followed. Ancient guesses describing the world are wild.
The Greek, Anaximander was the first person to publish a measured detailed description of the layout of the world. Here’s a reproduction of what he described. It was believed that an ocean circled the world. But even this was an incredible accomplishment, roughed out by who knows how many explorers.
Over time, the ancient Greeks figured out the Earth was a Sphere. They looked at the Earth’s shadow cast on the moon, saw ships lower on the horizon, and also observed how constellations were different, depending on where you lived.
As explorers and conquerers like Alexander the Great expanded their reach, the Greeks and then Romans slowly honed in on each area, getting the borders more specific. The details, more in place.
Strabo, in Geographica, says he built off of “the works of his predecessors” as well as his own constant treks.
Pomponius Mela, a Roman geographer, continued to build on that. He wrote De situ orbis - an incredibly dry text, that described the world as they knew it, section by section, drawn out in this recreation. He brought together existing maps, and added incremental research, one journey at a time. This book set the foundation for the next 1500 years.
Marinus of Tyre was the first to think of how best to depict the globe on a flat surface - called equirectangular projection. He invented latitude and longitude lines and mathematical geography. Also, he showed the Romans that China exists.
Ptolemy built on this. His great work, Geographia used the latitude and longitude lines to index the location of…basically everywhere. And he popularized putting North at the top and East to the right. If you only learn two ancient map makers - Strabo and Ptolemy are the ones. Ptolemy did make plenty of mistakes, like miscalculating the size of the globe, something that didn’t bode well years later for Columbus, when he used a variation on Ptolemy’s measurements as his motivation to sail across the ocean, in an effort to reach India.
In the West, the next major innovation happens 600 years later, when Islam is going through its Golden age. By the 800’s, Muslim Cartographers had gone through Ptolemy’s Geographia and fact checked its 2,400 locations. They reconstructed the lost maps, projecting the world upside down from how we view it now. Over the next few hundred years, they calculated the size of the Earth by developing new trigonometric methods. Based on that, al-Biruni had theorized, in 1037 that there was probably another unknown land mass on the other side of the world.
By 1154, Muhammad al-Idrisi, had created this - again, upside down to us. Building on existing maps, he paid draftsman to explore new areas and estimated the earth had a 23,000 mile circumference, which is pretty close. And he charted it out in 70 sections. To quote
“For three centuries geographers copied his maps without alteration”
“Al-Idrisi's Nuzhat [...] served as a major tool for Italian, Dutch and French mapmakers from the sixteenth century to the mid-eighteenth century.”
Meanwhile, in Europe, they were still making maps of the world that had more in common with this than with anything happening in the Muslim world. This, in the year 1300, was their idea of a reasonable map of the world. Don’t get me wrong, mappae mundis, as they’re called, are awesome. But they didn’t come anywhere close to breaking boundaries and expanding the collective knowledge when compared to the Muslim advancements.
But the invention and popularization of the compass on ships in Europe revolutionized exploration. For one thing, it meant these maps weren’t going to cut it. In the 1200’s, Portolan charts started to be made. These were nautical maps that told ships how to sail from one place to another. Here’s what they looked like. Hold up. This looks like garbage. Let’s color in the water. Rotate it. There we go. That’s a map. They showed Windrose lines, the 16 directions (later 32) on a compass that a mariner could go.
So now you have these increasingly accurate drawings of the world on the Muslim side and on the Christian side, these game changing charts of how to travel by sea, and there was an evolution to merge this information.
Which brings us to the map that kicked this all off: The Catalan Atlas
It was made by the Majorcan Cartographic School, a quote “collection of predominantly Jewish cartographers, cosmographers, and navigational instrument makers.”
It’s interesting that they were mostly Jewish, as it put them in a unique spot to dip into both the Christian and Muslim worlds. So, they were able help combine the knowledge of both groups. In 1375 Abraham Cresques and his son made the Catalan Atlas. They were commissioned to make a set of nautical charts that would build on everything created so far, and also incorporate new knowledge like working in areas Marco Polo had recently explored. What makes it particularly notable is it was both accurate for the time, and towards the end of an era when little elements, gorgeous illustrations, were still woven in - like Kublah Kahn, Alexander the Great, the Tower of Babel, Mansa Musa, the Starbucks Mermaid, Noah’s Ark, the Crossing of the Red Sea, and so, so many other flourishes. It’s just really pretty.
Even the lines are fascinating to look at. Showing the first Compass Rose, it’s set up with a few center points, each with 16 points around them. There are 32 lines coming out of each of those points, which they needed to measure out incredibly precisely. If any of them were off even a bit, as you can see in my attempt to reproduce it here, it shows the errors. This reinforced just how precise it needed to be drawn. When done right, beautiful patterns emerge.
So how was the map made? It was the culmination of going from text describing what was where to more and more accurate guides based off of the work of an unbelievable amount of explorers and endless treks. And it was built on the shoulders of copying older maps, each built up in an effort for more accuracy over the course of thousands of years. Yeah. Truly awe inspiring.
Please like and subscribe. Leave comments and questions. All that junk helps. If you’d like a tour of the Catalan Atlas, section by section, check out the YouTube channel Flash Point History, shown here and linked below. He does an amazing job of going deeper into the various continents, showing what was known, and more interestingly, what was not. Thanks for watching.