Infinitum

hic sunt dracones

“Here be dragons” is a phrase used to denote dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of the medieval practice of putting sea serpents and other mythological creatures in blank areas of maps.

The only known historical use of this phrase is in the Latin form “HC SVNT DRACONES” (i.e. hic sunt dracones) on the Lenox Globe (ca. 1503-07). Earlier maps contain a variety of references to mythical and real creatures, but the Lenox Globe is the only known surviving map to bear this phrase.

The term appeared on the Lenox Globe around the east coast of Asia, and might be related to the komodo dragons in the Indonesian islands, tales of which were quite common throughout East Asia.

The classical phrase utilized by ancient Roman and Medieval cartographers used to be HIC SVNT LEONES (literally, Here are lions) when denoting unknown territories on maps.

Dragons on maps

Dragons appear on a few other historical maps.

• The T-O Psalter map (ca. 1250 AD) has dragons, as symbols of sin, in a lower “frame” below the world, balancing Jesus and angels on the top, but the dragons do not appear on the map proper.
• The Borgia map (ca. 1430 AD), in the Vatican Library, states, over a dragon-like figure in Asia (in the upper left quadrant of the map), “Hic etiam homines magna cornua habentes longitudine quatuor pedum, et sunt etiam serpentes tante magnitudinis, ut unum bovem comedant integrum.” (“Here, indeed, are men who have large horns of the length of four feet, and there are even serpents so large, that they could eat an ox whole.”) The latter may refer to the dragons of the Chinese dragon dance.
• A 19th-century Japanese map, the Jishin-no-ben, depicts a dragon associated with causing earthquakes.

Other creatures on maps

• Ptolemy’s atlas in Geographia (originally 2nd century, taken up again in the 15th century) warns of elephants, hippos and cannibals.
• Tabula Peutingeriana (medieval copy of Roman map) has “in his locis elephanti nascuntur”, “in his locis scorpiones nascuntur” and “hic cenocephali nascuntur” (“in these places elephants are born, in these places scorpions are born, here dog-headed beings are born”).
• Cotton MS. Tiberius B.V. fol. 58v (10th century), British Library Manuscript Collection, has “hic abundant leones” (“here lions abound”), along with a picture of a lion, near the east coast of Asia (at the top of the map towards the left); this map also has a text-only serpent reference in southernmost Africa (bottom left of the map): “Zugis regio ipsa est et Affrica. est enim fertilis. sed ulterior bestiis et serpentibus plena” (“This region of Zugis is in Africa, it is truly fertile, however it is full of beasts and serpents.”)
• The Ebstorf map (13th c.) has a dragon in the extreme south-eastern part of Africa, together with an asp and a basilisk.
• Giovanni Leardo’s map (1442) has, in southernmost Africa, “Dixerto dexabitado p. chaldo e p. serpent”.
• Martin Waldseemüller’s Carta marina navigatoria (1516) has “an elephant-like creature in northernmost Norway, accompanied by a legend explaining that this ‘morsus’ with two long and quadrangular teeth congregated there”, i.e. a walrus, which would have seemed monstrous at the time.
• Waldseemüller’s Carta marina navigatoria (1522), revised by Laurentius Fries, has the morsus moved to the Davis Strait.
• Bishop Olaus Magnus’s Carta Marina map of Scandinavia (1539) has many monsters in the northern sea, as well as a winged, bipedal, predatory land animal resembling a dragon in northern Lapland.

Tags: Maps, Mythology

Henry the Navigator

The Infante Henrique, Duke of Viseu (Porto, March 4, 1394 – Sagres, November 13, 1460); pron. IPA: [ẽ'ʁik(ɨ)]), was an infante (prince) of the Portuguese House of Aviz and an important figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire, being responsible for the beginning of the European worldwide explorations. He is known in English as Prince Henry the Navigator or the Seafarer (Portuguese: o Navegador).

Prince Henry the Navigator was the third child of King John I of Portugal, the founder of the Aviz dynasty, and of Philippa of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt. Henry encouraged his father to conquer Ceuta (1415), the Muslim port on the North African coast across the Straits of Gibraltar from the Iberian peninsula, with profound consequences on Henry’s worldview: Henry became aware of the profit possibilities in the Saharan trade routes that terminated there and became fascinated with Africa in general; he was most intrigued by the Christian legend of Prester John and the expansion of Portuguese trade.

It is a common conception that Henry gathered at his Vila on the Sagres peninsula a school of navigators and map-makers. He did employ some cartographers to help him chart the coast of Mauritania in the wake of voyages he sent there, but for the rest there was no center of navigational science or any supposed observatory in the modern sense of the word, nor was there an organized navigational center. In “Crónica da Guiné” Henry is described as a person with no luxuries, not avaricious, speaking with soft words and calm gestures, a man of many virtues that never allowed any poor person leave his presence empty handed.

Resources and income

On May 25, 1420, Henry gained appointment as the governor of the very rich Order of Christ, the Portuguese successor to the Knights Templar, which had its headquarters at Tomar. Henry would hold this position for the remainder of his life, and the order was an important source of funds for Henry’s ambitious plans, especially his persistent attempts to conquer the Canary Islands, that the Portuguese claimed having discovered before the year 1346.

Henry also had other resources. When John I died, Henry’s eldest brother, Duarte became head of the castles council, and granted Henry a “Royal Flush” of all profits from trading within the areas he discovered as well as the sole right to authorize expeditions beyond Cape Bojador. He also held various valuable monopolies on resources in the Algarve. When Duarte died eight years later, Henry supported his brother Pedro for the regency during Afonso V of Portugal’s minority, and in return received a confirmation of this levy. Henry also promoted the colonization of the Azores during Pedro’s regency (1439–1448).

Until Henry’s time, Cape Bojador remained the most southerly point known to Europeans on the unpromising desert coast of Africa, although the Periplus of the Carthaginian Hanno the Navigator described a journey farther south about 2,000 years earlier.

As a second fruit of this work João Gonçalves Zarco, Bartolomeu Perestrelo and Tristão Vaz Teixeira rediscovered the Madeira Islands in 1420, and at Henry’s instigation Portuguese settlers colonized the islands.

In 1427, one of Henry’s navigators, probably Gonçalo Velho, discovered the Azores. Portugal soon colonized these islands in 1430.

Gil Eanes, the commander of one of Henry’s expeditions, became the first European known to pass Cape Bojador in 1434. This was a breakthrough as it was considered close to the end of the world, with difficult currents that did not encourage commercial enterprise.

Henry and the navigators in the monument to the Portuguese discoveries, Lisbon

Henry also continued his involvement in events closer to home. In 1431 he donated houses for the Estudo Geral to reunite all the sciences — grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music and astronomy — into what would later become the University of Lisbon. For other subjects like medicine or philosophy, he ordered that each room should be decorated according to each subject that was being taught.

He functioned as a primary organizer of the Portuguese expedition to Tangier in 1437. This proved a disastrous failure; Henry’s younger brother Fernando was given as a hostage to guarantee that the Portuguese would fulfill the terms of the peace agreement that had been made with Çala Ben Çala. The agreement was first broken by the Moors, who attacked the Portuguese and captured the Portuguese wounded when they were being carried to the ships, killing those who tried to resist. The Archbishop of Braga and the count of Arraiolos refused to approve the terms in the reunion of the Portuguese Cortes, thus condemning Fernando to remain in miserable captivity until his death eleven years later. Henry for most of his last twenty-three years concentrated on his exploration activities, or on Portuguese court politics.

Henry’s tomb in the Monastery of Batalha.

Using the new ship type, the expeditions then pushed onwards. Nuno Tristão and Antão Gonçalves reached Cape Blanco in 1441. The Portuguese sighted the Bay of Arguin in 1443 and built an important fort there around the year 1448. Dinis Dias soon came across the Senegal River and rounded the peninsula of Cap-Vert in 1444. By this stage the explorers had passed the southern boundary of the desert, and from then on Henry had one of his wishes fulfilled: the Portuguese had circumvented the Muslim land-based trade routes across the western Sahara Desert, and slaves and gold began arriving in Portugal. By 1452, the influx of gold permitted the minting of Portugal’s first gold cruzado coins. A cruzado was equal to 400 reis at the time. From 1444 to 1446, as many as forty vessels sailed from Lagos on Henry’s behalf, and the first private mercantile expeditions began.

Alvise Cadamosto explored the Atlantic coast of Africa and discovered several islands of the Cape Verde archipelago between 1455 and 1456. In his first voyage, which started on March 22 1455, he visited the Madeira Islands and the Canary Islands. On the second voyage, in 1456, Cadamosto became the first European to reach the Cape Verde Islands. António Noli later claimed the credit. By 1462, the Portuguese had explored the coast of Africa as far as present-day nation Sierra Leone. Twenty-eight years later, Bartolomeu Dias (can be spelt Diaz) proved that Africa could be circumnavigated when he reached the southern tip of the continent. This is now known as the “Cape of Good Hope.” In 1498, Vasco da Gama was the first sailor to travel from Portugal to India.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_the_Navigator

Tags: 15th Century, Maps, Navigator, Portugese

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus (Italian: Cristoforo Colombo) (1451 – May 20, 1506) was an Italian navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean—funded by the Spanish crown—led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. Though not the first to reach the Americas from Afro-Eurasia — preceded some five hundred years by Leif Ericson, and perhaps by others — Columbus initiated widespread contact between Europeans and indigenous Americans. With his several hapless attempts at establishing a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, he personally initiated the process of Spanish colonization which foreshadowed general European colonization of the “New World.” (The term “pre-Columbian” is usually used to refer to the peoples and cultures of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and his European successors.)

His initial 1492 voyage came at a critical time of growing national imperialism and economic competition between developing nation states seeking wealth from the establishment of trade routes and colonies. In this sociopolitical climate, Columbus’s far-fetched scheme won the attention of Queen Isabella of Spain. Severely underestimating the circumference of the Earth, he hypothesized that a westward route from Iberia to the Indies would be shorter and more direct than the overland trade route through Arabia. If true, this would allow Spain entry into the lucrative spice trade — heretofore commanded by the Arabs and Italians. Following his plotted course, he instead landed within the Bahamas Archipelago at a locale he named San Salvador. Mistaking the North-American island for the East-Asian mainland, he referred to its inhabitants as “Indians”.

Tags: 15th Century, Explorer, Maps, Navigator, Spain

Dieppe Maps

Dieppe Map

The Dieppe maps are a series of world maps produced in Dieppe, France, in the 1540s, 1550s and 1560s. They are large hand-produced maps, commissioned for wealthy and royal patrons, including Henry II of France and Henry VIII of England. The Dieppe school of cartographers included Pierre Desceliers, Johne Rotz, Guillaume Le Testu and Nicholas Desliens.

Because many of the inscriptions on the Dieppe maps are written in French, Portuguese or Gallicised Portuguese, modern historians generally accept that the Dieppe school of mapmakers were often working from Portuguese sources that no longer exist. There seems to be convincing evidence that Portuguese cartographers were bribed for information of the latest discoveries, despite the official Portuguese Politica de sigilo (policy of silence). An example of this is the Cantino map of 1502 (not a Dieppe school map) which clearly shows evidence of second hand Portuguese sources.

A common feature of most of the Dieppe world maps (see Vallard 1547, Desceliers 1550) are the compass roses and navigational rhumb lines, suggestive of a sea-chart. However, they are best understood as works of art, clearly intended to be spread out on a table, and containing information on the latest discoveries, side by side with mythological references and illustrations. For example, the Desceliers 1550 map carries descriptions of early French attempts to colonise Canada, the conquests of Peru by the Spanish and the Portuguese sea-trade among the Spice Islands. On the same map can be found descriptions of legendary Cathay, king Prester John in Ethiopia, and the race of Amazons in Russia. Other Dieppe maps also carry fictitious features such as the Marco Polo inspired Zanzibar/Îles des Geanz. (see Vallard 1547, Rotz 1542 and Dauphin c1536-42). As with other maps made before the seventeenth century, the Dieppe maps show no knowledge of longitude. While latitude could be marked in degrees as observed by astrolabe or quadrant, easting could only be given in distance. Mercator’s projection first appeared in 1568-9, a development too late to influence the Dieppe cartographers .

Tags: 16th Century, Maps, Portugese, unsolved

Library of Constantinople

The Library of Constantinople, in the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, was the last of the great libraries of the ancient world. Long after the destruction of the library of Alexandria and the other ancient libraries, it preserved the knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans for almost 1,000 years, until it was mostly destroyed during the Fourth Crusade in 1204.

The fourth century was a critical time for the classical literature of Greece and Rome. Written on papyrus, manuscripts were gradually crumbling away and threatened to sink into oblivion unless transferred to parchment. Constantine the Great had begun that process by having the books of Holy Scripture copied, and his son the Emperor Constantius II undertook to continue the effort. The result of his initiative was the first imperial library of Constantinople, which contained more than 100,000 volumes. The leader of the project was Themistios, who commanded a considerable team of calligraphers and librarians.

Collection

One of the main problems was, as it is today, to choose what to save, for it was impossible to save everything. First, Themistios and the Emperor chose to save older literature–Homer and other great authors of the golden age of Greece. Themistios seems to have been uninterested in Latin authors. He did not, and did not want to, understand Latin. He was an arrogant Greek who regarded all other peoples, including Romans, as simple barbarians. But the emperors were Romans and Latin speaking, so Constantius saw that Roman classical literature was also transferred to parchment.

Although the older literature was regarded as more valuable than contemporary work, no one any longer spoke the Greek of the great Attic authors. So it was necessary to save commentaries and works of grammar as well as the texts of Sophocles, Plautus and other classical authors. From the record, we can see that Themistios knew many more classical authors than we have today. For instance, he mentions a triad of Stoic philosophers whose work is completely lost to us except for a few citations by other classical authors and some scraps among the carbonized remains at Herculaneum.

Themistios also had a remedy for the papyrus rolls that could not possibly be transcribed. He tried to delay their decay by putting these rolls into parchment coverings, rather like our attempt to encase brittle books in special envelopes or boxes.

Destruction of the library

The greatest enemy of ancient literature was not time but fire. Several fires in the Constantinople library eventually destroyed much of the collection over the centuries, but Themistios’ efforts had not been wholly in vain, for visitors came to the library from throughout the provinces to consult and transcribe the works, and some of the copies were themselves recopied. Without the efforts of Constantius and Themistios our knowledge of Greek and Roman classical literature would certainly be even less than it is today.

However, by and large, the library remained intact until, in 1204, the knights of the Fourth Crusade decended upon and sacked the city. Most of the library’s books were burnt or sold off by the Latins. Much of it, however, was saved or copied, and in that way much ancient literature did survive. What little remained of the library was afterwards absorbed into the Ottoman library, when the Turks captured the Constantinople after a long seige in 1453.

Tags: 13th Century, 4th crusade, Constantinople, Library, Maps

The 4th Crusade

There was something very odd about the 4th crusade (1202-1204).

For one – they didn’t head for the Holy Land, choosing instead to go after Constantinople, then Capital of the Byzantine Empire. Which was virtually entirely christian at the time, it was seen as one of the final acts in the Great Schism between greek and roman catholic churches. It has been often described as one of the most profitable and disgraceful sacks of a city in history.

One of the most important events in the sacking of the city was the destruction of the famouse Imperial Library, which held some of the most ancient texts in christendom. Many were saved but many more were lost in the fire.

Tags: 13th Century, Crusade, Library, Maps

Piri Reis Map

In 1929, a group of historians found an amazing map drawn on a gazelle skin.
Research showed that it was a genuine document drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet in the sixteenth century.
His passion was cartography. His high rank within the Turkish navy allowed him to have a privileged access to the Imperial Library of Constantinople.
The Turkish admiral admits in a series of notes on the map that he compiled and copied the data from a large number of source maps, some of which dated back to the fourth century BC or earlier.

Piri Reis Map

The Controversy The Piri Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica. The northern coastline of Antarctica is perfectly detailed. The most puzzling however is not so much how Piri Reis managed to draw such an accurate map of the Antarctic region 300 years before it was discovered, but that the map shows the coastline under the ice. Geological evidence confirms that the latest date Queen Maud Land could have been charted in an ice-free state is 4000 BC.

On 6th July 1960 the U. S. Air Force responded to Prof. Charles H. Hapgood of Keene College, specifically to his request for an evaluation of the ancient Piri Reis Map:

Tags: Antartica, Book, Maps