The history of the creation of world maps. History of cartography The most interesting ancient maps
A person is always driven by curiosity. Thousands of years ago, discoverers, going further and further into unknown lands, created the first semblances of geographical maps, trying to put the relief they saw on sheets of papyrus or clay tablets.
Probably the oldest map found is from the Egyptian Museum in Turin, made on papyrus by order of Pharaoh Ramses IV in 1160 BC. e. This map was used by an expedition that, on the orders of the pharaoh, was looking for stone for construction. The map familiar to our eyes appeared in ancient Greece half a thousand years BC. Anaximander of Miletus is considered the first cartographer to create a map of the world known at that time.
The originals of his maps have not survived, but 50 years later they were restored and improved by another scientist from Miletus, Hecataeus. Scientists have recreated this map based on the descriptions of Hecataeus. It is easy to recognize the Mediterranean and Black Seas and nearby lands. But is it possible to determine distances from it? This requires a scale that was not yet available on ancient maps. For a unit of measurement of length, Hecataeus used “days of sailing” on the sea and “days of marching” on dry land, which, of course, did not add accuracy to the maps.
Ancients geographic Maps had other significant shortcomings. They distorted the image, because a spherical surface cannot be turned onto a plane without distortion. Try to carefully remove the orange peel and press it to the table surface: you won’t be able to do this without tearing. In addition, they did not have a degree grid of parallels and meridians, without which it is impossible to accurately determine the location of the object. Meridians first appeared on the map of Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC. e., however, they were carried out through different distances. It was not for nothing that Eratosthenes was called the “Father of Geography” as a mathematician among geographers. The scientist not only measured the size of the Earth, but also used it to depict it on a map. cylindrical projection. In this projection there is less distortion because the image is transferred from the ball to the cylinder. Modern maps are created in different projections - cylindrical, conical, azimuthal and others.
The most perfect maps of the ancient era are considered to be the geographical maps of Ptolemy, who lived in the 2nd century AD. e. in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Claudius Ptolemy entered the history of science thanks to two large works: the “Manual of Astronomy” in 13 books and the “Manual of Geography”, which consisted of 8 books. 27 maps were added to the Geography Manual, among them a detailed map of the world. No one created a better one either before Ptolemy or 12 centuries after him! This map already had a degree grid. To create it, Ptolemy determined the geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude) of almost four hundred objects. The scientist determined latitude (distance from the equator in degrees) by the altitude of the Sun at noon using a gnomon, longitude (degree distance from the prime meridian) by the difference in the time of observations of the lunar eclipse from different points.
In medieval Europe, the works of ancient scientists were forgotten, but they were preserved in the Arab world. There, Ptolemy's maps were published in the 15th century and reprinted almost 50 more times! Perhaps it was these maps that helped Columbus on his famous voyage. Ptolemy's authority grew so much that even collections of maps were called "Ptolemies" for a long time. It was only in the 16th century, after the publication of Gerardus Mercator’s Atlas of the World, on the cover of which Atlas was depicted holding the Earth, that collections of maps were called “atlases.”
Geographic maps were also created in Ancient China. Interestingly, the first written mention of a geographic map is not related to geography. In the 3rd century BC. e. The Chinese throne was occupied by the Qin dynasty. A rival in the struggle for power, Crown Prince Dan sent an assassin to the ruler of the dynasty with a map of his lands drawn on silk fabric. The mercenary hid a dagger in a bundle of silk. History tells that the assassination attempt failed.
During the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, images of America and Australia, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans appeared on world maps. Errors on maps often resulted in tragedy for sailors. Having explored the shores of Alaska, the large Kamchatka expedition of Vitus Bering in the 18th century did not have time to return to Kamchatka by the beginning of the autumn storms. The dreamer Bering spent three weeks of precious time searching for the mapped but non-existent Land of Gama. His sailing ship "St. Peter", broken, with sailors dying of scurvy, landed on a deserted island, where the famous Commander rested forever. “My blood boils every time,” wrote one of Bering’s assistants, “when I remember the shameless deception caused by an error on the map.”
Today, cartography is completely transferred to digital format. To create detailed maps, not only ground-based geodetic instruments are used - theodolite, level, but also airborne laser scanning, satellite navigation, and digital aerial photography.
Illustration: depositphotos.com | Kuzmafoto
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It is impossible to determine when a person made the first map. It is only known that many millennia BC, man already knew the area around him well and knew how to depict it on sand or tree bark. These cartographic images served to indicate migration routes, hunting places, etc.
Many more hundreds of years passed. People, in addition to hunting and fishing, began to engage in cattle breeding and agriculture. This new, higher level of culture was reflected in the drawings and plans. They become more detailed, more expressive, and more accurately convey the character of the area.
A very valuable ancient drawing of a hunting ground in the North Caucasus has survived to this day. This engraving was made on silver around 3 thousand years BC. e., i.e. This cultural monument of the inhabitants of the ancient Caucasus was found by scientists during excavations of one of the mounds on the bank of the river. Kuban near the city of Maykop.
In the ancient world, the compilation of geographical maps reached great development. The Greeks established the sphericity of the Earth and its dimensions, introduced cartographic projections, meridians and parallels into science.
One of the most famous scientists of the ancient world, geographer and astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who lived in Alexandria (at the mouth of the Nile River) in the 2nd century, compiled detailed map A land like no one had ever created before.
This map depicts three parts of the world - Europe, Asia and Libya (as Africa was then called), as well as the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean and other seas. The map already has a degree grid. Ptolemy introduced this grid to more correctly depict the spherical shape of the Earth on the map. The rivers, lakes, peninsulas of Europe and North Africa known at that time are shown quite accurately on Ptolemy’s map.
If you compare Ptolemy’s map with a modern one, it is easy to notice that areas located far from the Mediterranean Sea region, that is, known to Ptolemy only by rumor, received fantastic outlines.
What is especially striking is that Asia is not depicted in its entirety. Ptolemy did not know where it ended in the north and east. He also did not know about the existence of the Arctic and Pacific oceans. Africa continues on the map to the South Pole and turns into some kind of land connecting to Asia in the east. Ptolemy did not know that Africa ends in the south and is washed by the ocean. He also did not know about the existence of independent continents - America, Antarctica and Australia. Ptolemy depicted the Indian Ocean as a closed sea, into which it was impossible to sail on ships from Europe. And yet, in the ancient world and in subsequent centuries, until the 15th century, no one compiled best card world than Ptolemy.
The Romans widely used maps for administrative and military purposes; they compiled road maps.
During the Middle Ages, the achievements of ancient science were forgotten for a long time. The Church entered into a fierce struggle with scientific ideas about the structure and origin of the world.
In schools, fables were taught about the creation of the world by God in six days, about the global flood, about heaven and hell. The idea that the Earth was spherical was considered “heretical” by churchmen and was strictly persecuted. The idea of the Earth took on a completely fantastic form. In the VI century. The Byzantine merchant - monk Cosmas Indicoplov depicted the Earth in the shape of a rectangle.
The main type of maps is becoming rough, far from reality and lacking a scientific basis, “monastery maps”. They indicate the decline of cartography in medieval Europe. During this period, many small closed states arose in Europe. With a subsistence economy, these feudal states did not need connections with the outside world.
By the end of the Middle Ages, trade and navigation began to develop in European cities, and art and science began to flourish.
In the XIII-XIV centuries. compass and nautical navigation maps, the so-called portolans.
These maps depicted the coastline in detail and very accurately, while the interior parts of the continents remained empty or were filled with pictures from the life of the peoples inhabiting them.
The era of great geographical discoveries created the conditions for the rise of cartographic science: sailors needed a good, truthful geographical map. In the 16th century more appeared correct cards, built in new map projections.
Geographic maps include a lot of scientific material. If we compare various cards the same area, study them, you can get a very detailed understanding of this area.
Therefore, geographical maps are a huge source of knowledge. But a map can become a real source of knowledge only when you have a certain amount of geographical knowledge.
Anyone with knowledge of geography and the ability to read a map can accurately understand the terrain depicted on it, rivers, mountain lakes, high or low hills, cities and villages, railways.
Who made the ancient maps?Old maps contain images of a changing world. If you look at the maps of recent decades, it is easy to see how the administrative boundaries and names of states change, how some of them fall apart, like old pieces of paper. Over the centuries we will notice changes in riverbeds and coastlines. Over the millennia, entire civilizations with cities and arable lands are born and extinguished. Over tens of thousands of years, the climate changes noticeably, erasing Ancient world, with its own geography, flora and fauna. However, it is believed that it is impossible to see prehistoric realities on ancient maps, since people took up cartography only during the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and China, less than 4 thousand years ago. But sometimes in ancient atlases you can still find traces of incomprehensibly ancient eras...
The same one ancient map
Wet Sahara
The father of cartography is considered to be the astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who in the 2nd century AD in his “Manual for the Making of Geographical Maps” generalized and put it on a strict mathematical basis the results of the work of their predecessors. For fifteen hundred years his work was the basis for drawing maps. Numerous cartographers, from medieval monks to university professors, obediently depicted how the greatest desert, the Sahara, is crossed length and breadth by deep rivers flowing into non-existent lakes. After all, Ptolemy authoritatively wrote: “Very large rivers flow inside the country [Inner Libya].”.
Even modern geographers pretend that there is nothing strange about this, commenting on Ptolemy, for example, as follows: “Even at the beginning of our era, the western part of the Sahara had more favorable natural conditions. There were many significant rivers here. The Niger River received several tributaries from the north." However, Ptolemy described the Kynips and Gir rivers, as well as the Chelonid swamps in... Central and Eastern Sahara!
Six centuries before Ptolemy, Herodotus wrote about the places south of Sirte on the coast of Libya, where Ptolemy placed the trans-Saharan river Kinips: “The land is sandy, waterless and completely deserted... The whole country lying inside [Sirte] became completely waterless.” True, he mentions the small coastal river Kinip, which flowed into Sirte and was only 200 stadia (37 kilometers) long. But we were clearly not talking about the grandiose river system of Ptolemy with its sources in the Tibesti highlands, at a latitude of 21 degrees, 1000 kilometers south of its delta in Sirte!
The mystery is solved if you look at the map of the dry riverbeds of the ancient rivers of the Libyan basin. There you can clearly see the rivers flowing from the Tibesti Mountains, merging into one river, which flowed into the Gulf of Sirte Major (now Sidra) of the Mediterranean Sea. Space photography clearly shows a section of a giant channel with a diameter of 27 kilometers, located just above the ancient delta. Note that the maximum diameter of the Nile Valley is somewhat more modest - 23 kilometers in the area of the Fayum oasis...
When did the water flow there? Geologists believe that “this river disappeared under the sands of the Sahara somewhere around 12 thousand years ago, and with it the civilization that probably communicated with the Nile also died.” It turns out that the Sahara was not always a desert. Over the past half a million years, it has experienced long periods of rain 5 times, when rivers flowed in the Sahara for thousands of years, large lakes splashed, and primitive hunters hunted hippopotamuses, now unseen in the desert. These transformations of desert into savanna occurred over a period of about 100 thousand years.
When Homo sapiens appeared in Africa about 140 thousand years ago, the Sahara was a green plain around the giant Paleochad lake-sea and the comparable Lake Fezzan, of which now only a dry bed 400 kilometers south of Tripoli remains. In 2007, by penetrating the sands with the help of orbital radar, scientists discovered the shores and dry bed of another mega-lake in Sudan's North Darfur province. This lake splashed right in the area of the Chelonid swamps of Ptolemy! Apparently, the memory of the prehistoric Lake Fezzan has also been preserved. So Pliny the Elder (1st century AD) mentioned the Triton swamp, which “many place between the two Sirtes,” where Lake Fezzan was located. But the last lake sediments of the Fezzan date back to prehistoric times - more than 6 thousand years...
Another relic of the wet Sahara is the “Nubian” tributary of the Nile, a comparable river that flowed from the Sahara and joined the Nile near Aswan, just above Elephantine Island. Herodotus personally visited this island and became convinced that “not a single river flows into the Nile, not a single stream that replenishes its waters.” Even Ptolemy himself did not know this tributary, but European cartographers persistently drew it, starting with Mercator (1569) until the 18th century. When the Aswan Dam was built, Lake Nasser was formed and partially filled the ancient channel of the tributary in the form of a narrow bay that cuts into the Sahara for 35 kilometers. And in photographs taken from space, the Nubian tributary can be traced 470 kilometers from the Nile as a dark strip of dry riverbed, as a chain of salt lakes, and finally, as a “honeycomb” of fields around wells feeding them with water from an aquifer under the scorched surface of the Sahara.
Lake and rivers of the Arabian desert
The Arabian Desert is located next to the Sahara. It also repeatedly experienced rainy periods during interglacial warming periods. The last such “climatic optimum” took place 5 - 10 thousand years ago.
Surprisingly, on the maps built according to Ptolemy’s data, we see the Arabian Peninsula, cut by rivers and with a large lake at its southern tip, north of the city of Shabwa. But exactly where in the Ulm edition of Ptolemy’s geography (1482) there is a lake and the inscription “aqua” (water), there is now a dry depression 200 - 300 kilometers across, covered with sand. On its southwestern “shore” is one of the oldest cities in Asia - Marib, which arose around 1900 BC. 50 kilometers north of Marib, a wide (about 30 kilometers) dry river valley flows into the bed of an ancient lake from the west. A similar river appears on Ptolemy’s maps. That river and lake can be seen even on maps of the 17th century, for example, by De Wit (1680).
Where the cities of Mecca and Jeddah are now located, Ptolemy placed a large river 700 kilometers long. Photography from space confirms that there, in the direction indicated by Ptolemy, stretched an ancient river valley up to 12 kilometers wide and one and a half hundred kilometers long. Even the southern tributary, merging with the main channel at Mecca, is clearly visible. And where Ptolemy placed the sources of the river, now there are green fields among the sands, irrigated with water from wells.
Other big river The Ptolemy, which crossed Arabia and flowed into the Persian Gulf on the west coast of the United Arab Emirates, is now hidden under sand dunes. Relics of its delta may be narrow, river-like sea bays and salt marshes between the settlements of Al Hamra and Silah.
Strange Mountains of Ptolemy
Instead of the "East European Plain" of modern geography, maps of the 15th - 16th centuries depict a vast mountain system. For centuries, geographers persistently drew the Hyperborean Mountains, stretching along parallels 60°-62° from the Rybinsk Reservoir to the Urals. Now there are only hills about 150 meters high and traces of the outskirts of ancient glaciers that covered the northern territories in the Paleolithic. More than 20 years ago, a Lithuanian scientist specializing in paleogeography, A.A. Seibutis, identified the Hyperborean Mountains with the edge of the Valdai glacier glaciation 10 - 75 thousand years ago. After all, the edges of modern glaciers in the form of ice cliffs also resemble mountains. In this regard, let us pay attention to the fact that the maps of Nikola Herman (1513) depict the Hyperborean Mountains in the form of a cliff with lakes adjacent to its foot, which surprisingly resemble periglacial meltwater reservoirs. However, the version of the old maps may turn out to be even more scandalous.
From the Hyperborean Mountains, the Riphean Ptolemy Mountains extend to the southwest, stretching in the direction of the Crimea and, turning into the Amadoka Mountains, descend to a latitude of 50° in the area of the Borysthenes (Dnieper) Valley. The second spur of the Hyperborean mountains called Hippiti (or Hippici) montes stretches south to 52° latitude between the Don and Volga, along the “Oka-Don Plain” modern maps. Both directions of the pseudo-mountains do not correspond to the boundary of the Valdai glaciation, but formally coincide with the two tongues of the Dnieper glacier, which advanced as far as possible to the south to 48° - 50° latitude along the Dnieper valley and along the Oka-Don plain. But this was about 250 thousand years ago...
Independent confirmation of the glacial realities of old maps is the name of the Sea of Azov, drawn by Ptolemy in the 16th - 17th centuries: Palus Meotides (Sylvan 1511), Paludes Meotides (Herman 1513), Maeotis Palus (Ortelius 1638). The Latin words palus and paludis mean "swamp" and "marsh" respectively. With a maximum depth of only 15 meters, the Sea of Azov dried up when the sea level dropped by about 100 meters during the glaciation era, that is, more than 10 thousand years ago.
To the source of knowledge
Claudius Ptolemy was not a traveler, but he worked in the famous Library of Alexandria in Egypt and was familiar with the works of his predecessors that have not reached us. But what predecessors could describe the geographical realities of prehistoric eras, long before the invention of writing?
It is known that nomads and hunters (Indians, Polynesians, Eskimos) made plans and even maps, but always of small areas. From such Paleolithic cartographers, only controversial diagrams and drawings of small areas of the area have reached us. The first known map of the Universe from Babylon (500 BC) is only a rough diagram depicting the Babylonian kingdom. Cartography of vast spaces requires measurements and written recording of the geographical coordinates of many points. This type of activity is not known in primitive societies.
If someone in prehistoric times did something similar, then the fruits of his work could give rise to historical legends about ancient wisdom. It is interesting that it was in Egypt that the legend about the genius of geography of prehistoric times was preserved. It was Thoth, “the god who measured this Earth.” Specialist in historical metrology A.V. Klimenko presented interesting arguments in favor of the fact that ancient scientists, and after them medieval authors, knew the result of Thoth’s measurements.
For example, the Khorezm encyclopedist al-Biruni (beginning of the 11th century) wrote in his work “Geodesy” that the ancient Egyptian sage Hermes (Greek version of the name Thoth) measured the circumference of the Earth at “9,000 farsakhs, while farsakhs are 12,000 cubits” A.V. Klimenko came to an interesting conclusion: all the dimensions of the earth’s circumference mentioned by Aristotle, Archimedes, al-Idrisi, al-Biruni, apparently, are only attempts to convert Thoth’s 9,000 farsakhs into other units of length. In addition, al-Biruni wrote: “In accordance with the words of Hermes, one degree [on the surface of the Earth] will be equal to 25 farsakhs, which is 75 miles...” The size of the Roman mile is well known and is equal to 1481 meters. It follows that the circumference of the Earth, according to Thoth, is 39,987 kilometers, which is only 0.05% (!) shorter than the true value if the Earth is measured along the meridian. Note that in geodesy such accuracy was achieved only at the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries with the help of optical instruments and various tricks.
Thoth was considered the god of wisdom, counting and writing. Clement of Alexandria (2nd - 3rd centuries AD) wrote about 42 sacred books of Hermes-Thoth, which were kept in the temples of Egypt. Perhaps some of his legacy ended up in the Library of Alexandria, and from there to Ptolemy. All sources reflecting the opinion of the ancient Egyptians themselves (Turin Papyrus, Manetho, Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus) indicate that in Egypt they carefully kept records of the country's history for many thousands of years. If there was such a tradition, then oral, and then written, information from the times of the wet Sahara, where the ancestors of the Egyptians domesticated cattle, sculpted the first pottery and created the first mummies, could have been preserved.
But could information about glaciers in northern Europe get to Egypt? There was obviously some kind of connection between Ancient Egypt and the northern territories. It is known that Baltic amber was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. And in the first half of the 3rd century BC, in the festive procession of the king of Egypt Ptolemy II Philadelphus among exotic animals "one huge polar bear" walked.
On the fresco of another ancient Egyptian procession... dwarf form of mammoth. A population of such animals really existed and became extinct under the pharaohs - about 4 thousand years ago, but... on the distant Wrangel Island in the Chukchi Sea.
And yet the sophisticated surveyor Thoth looks like a stranger among the prehistoric tribes. They called him “the ruler of foreigners.” And he was also considered the god... of the Moon, from which our planet is visible in every detail, like a school globe. Isn’t it from the book of Thoth in the Library of Alexandria that the young traveler Plutarch (about 45 - about 127) learned about the “easy” life on the moon and the fact that “the Egyptians, I remember, claim that the Moon is the seventy-second part of the Earth” (more precisely, 1/81 by mass)?
The first geographical maps appeared on Earth almost simultaneously with the emergence of human drawing skills. True, these were not exactly maps, but their distant prototypes, but one thing is clear: as soon as a person began to move long distances, he began to try to comprehend his movement and, having a natural spatial sense, tried to display this in drawings. Maps in the form more or less familiar to us appeared much later, but also incredibly long ago - even before our era.
Prototype of an ancient map
Initially, the “ancestors” of cards looked like schematic drawings on the walls of caves, dwellings, ancient dishes (for example, plates), stone slabs.
For example, this “star” fresco, found by archaeologists, was created in ancient Jordan and, according to scientists, is a cosmological map. In the center are the "known world", "first ocean", "second world" and "second ocean". From eight points, which most likely symbolized the islands, were located the “transcendent world” and the “celestial ocean.” The rectangle located at the bottom right, according to historians, is not relevant - it is a drawing of some building (possibly a temple).
The oldest map of the world
One of the first surviving maps known to scientists is considered to be ancient relic, found in Iraq. This map, which became very famous and influenced people's ideas about the world, was created in Babylon.
The world on it is depicted as flat, round, and its center is, as you might guess, Babylon itself. The image, found on a piece of clay slab, dates back to the 7th century BC.
Anaximander was ahead of his time
A real breakthrough in the field of geography and cartography occurred when the map compiled by Anaximander of Miletus (610 - 540 BC) appeared. He imagined the earth in the form of an oval, which stretches from east to west.
Anaximander, whom Aristotle himself respected and considered a great sage, was not only a geographer, but also an astronomer. He tried to compare the Earth with other cosmic objects, and also thought a lot about the origin of the Universe, coming to the conclusion that it is born, reaches the peak of its development, dies, and then is reborn again.
Neither the world map itself, drawn by Anaximander, nor its copies have survived to this day, but Herodotus wrote that the ancient scientist depicted the world on it in the form of a drum, around which the ocean is located.
Information has also reached our days about the map of Hecataeus of Miletus, who lived around the same period, but a little later. According to it, the world consists of three parts - Europe, Asia and Libya. All three “continents” are located around the Mediterranean Sea. His map was made based on data from Anaximander.
The priest-encyclopedist Isidore of Seville depicted this idea of the world very similarly in his work “Etymology” (7th century). The "T" shape represents the sea, and the "O" shape represents the ocean. And there is already Africa here.
The father of geography (in fact, he was the first to introduce this term) is considered Eratosthenes, who in the 2nd century BC. wrote a three-volume work, which was called “Geography”. It indicated that the earth has the shape of a ball, and the scientist confirmed this statement with his mathematical calculations. Alas, this work has not reached modern scientists in its original form - it is known from retellings of Roman authors. The map of Eratosthenes has also not survived, but it had an invaluable influence on the research of medieval geographers.
By the way, it was Eratosthenes who was the first to designate meridians on maps - however, these designations were not yet so accurate. And it was he who divided the world into five climate zones.
The most interesting ancient maps
But this map was created in the 400s BC by the historian Herodotus:
The map of Pomponius Mela, the earliest Roman geographer who created the scientific work Descriptive Geography, divides the Earth into five zones, three of which are uninhabited. Mela believed that the southern lands of our planet were inaccessible to the northerners, since they were separated from the temperate latitudes by an arid territory of unbearable heat.
Like many of his predecessors, he considered the Caspian Sea to be a bay of the Northern Ocean. And this is no wonder, because in 43, when Pomponius Mela created his work, most of our planet was not studied.
Another interesting find, a mosaic map, discovered in Madaba (Jordan) during archaeological excavations of the early Christian temple of St. George, represents ancient Jerusalem. The panel was made around the 6th century. It depicts churches and other buildings. They are shown so realistically that modern scientists have even been able to identify them - for example, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher located in the center is clearly visible. According to scientists, this is the most old map Holy Land.
Ptolemy's map as a guide for posterity
The great scientist from Alexandria, Claudius Ptolemy, did a great deal of work. Around 150, he compiled a map of the world, which was accompanied by about 30 separate, more detailed maps. The entire treatise was called "Manual of Geography."
Ptolemy outlined the location of even very remote zones - from Egypt to the Scandinavian lands and from the Atlantic to Indochina. This relic was discovered many centuries later and for a long time, right up to the era of geographical discoveries, was the main cartographic document for travelers and scientists. It was subsequently improved.
Continents such as Asia, Europe and Africa became more formalized on the revised map, and instead of Babylon, Jerusalem was indicated as the center of the world.
Ptolemy's map is divided into equal parts by parallels and meridians. The Mediterranean zone and the Middle East are depicted more or less correctly, but as Ptolemy moves southward, Ptolemy's knowledge of other lands becomes more vague. For example, he designates the Indian Ocean as an inland sea, and the unexplored part of the African continent in the south expands and surrounds it, connecting with Asia. There are no ideas about Antarctica yet - it is an “unexplored land”. Well, Asia, in his opinion, was so huge that it even occupied the territory on which, as it turned out many years later, the Pacific Ocean was located.
Recently, the University of Chicago digitized all ancient maps and published a six-volume work on the history of geography and cartography with explanations. This large-scale project on ancient cartography began in the 1980s and, perhaps, it will still be supplemented by new archaeological and historical finds.
