Secrets of the Selden Map - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 147

Even the best and the brightest could find themselves caught halfway between
reaffirming the old and digesting the new. James Ussher, Selden's teacher of
Hebrew and Arabic and later his friend in scholarship, turned to ancient Hebrew
textsinordertodatethecreationoftheworldtotheearlyhoursof23October4004
BC . He embraced the new sources and experimented with the comparative method
that the greater knowledge of the world called into being, yet he drew from them
merely to confirm the Biblical account rather than to challenge it. It wouldn't take
long before scholars in the next generation found abundant evidence in Oriental
texts, especially Chinese texts, showing that the chronology of human history ex-
tended back well before 4004 BC . Had Ussher been paying closer attention to his
sources and less to his own assumptions, he could have saved himself from this
exercise in pious futility - although in that case no one today would have heard of
him. The Biblical account of the creation of the world was only one casualty of the
global enlargement of knowledge that inspired some thinkers to pry up the theolo-
gical floorboards of European thought. This is why the smart people were learning
Hebrew, Arabic and, eventually, even Chinese. There was important information
buried in those ancient languages; the codes had to be cracked. Orientalists were
the hackers of their generation.
Selden may have appreciated his 'Mapp of China' as evidence of advanced
knowledge on the far side of the world. But did he regard it as a document that
needed to be decoded? Was there something in it that he absolutely had to under-
stand? As he never commented on the map, we have no way of knowing. Still, I
amtemptedtospeculatethathedid,thatwithinthisimageofthefarendofAsiahe
sensed there were things worth learning that he could not have otherwise deduced.
The best I can offer in defence of this claim is a passage in Titles of Honor ,
Selden's highly regarded study of the history of aristocratic ranks and privileges,
andhisfirstmajorscholarlybookbeforehis Historie of Tithes gothimintotrouble.
The passage is not in the original 1614 edition but in a dedication he added to the
secondedition,of1631.Thereheobservesthat'allIslesandContinents(whichare
indeed but greater Isles) are so seated, that there is none, but that, from some shore
of it, another may be discovered.' Ready communication is to be expected among
islands: it is a simple observation. But is it an idea that European experience nat-
urally brings to mind? Contemplate a map of continental Europe and there is little
to inspire this insight. Yes, there are a few (British) isles at the edge of Europe, but
these have a history of resisting those coming from other shores. Contemplate the
Selden map instead and you find yourself gazing at a mosaic of islands, peninsulas