Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
(a)
(b)
FIGURE 4.2.
Early European maps. (a) A twelfth-century diagrammatic T-O map.
Orthodoxy was more important than accuracy. (b) The Catalan Atlas of 1375. For the
first time in over a thousand years, Europeans were beginning to produce maps that
rivaled those of Ancient Greece.
(a) From
Etymologies
by Saint Isadore, Bishop of Seville.
(b) From Wikipedia.
The mapmakers, historian Daniel Borstin notes, ''found little that was
useful in all the speculations of Christian theologian-cosmographers. But
they gradually incorporated the piecemeal everyday findings of working
mariners'' (1983, p. 147). The impressive Catalan World Map of 1450—
most definitely not a T-O map—was based upon earlier portolan maps.
The earlier Catalan Atlas of 1375, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de
France and shown in fig. 4.2b, illustrates how progress had been made;
note the Iberian connection, soon to change the world.
