Australian.Geographic_2014_01-02

January–February 2014 33

 F

ROM ANCIENT imaginings of

the medieval world – where

Jerusalem lay at the centre of

creation – to sumptuous wall charts

proclaiming the might of European

empires, a series of maps on display

at the National Library of Australia

(NLA) takes us through centuries of

geographical speculation about the

Southern Hemisphere.

With more than 130 maps, globes,

manuscripts, paintings and objects –

many of them on loan from the great

libraries of Europe – the Mapping Our

World: Terra Incognita to Australia exhibit

tracks the unveiling of the Great

South Land as it moved from abstract

conjecture to familiar outline.

But, if you thought all medieval

Europeans believed the Earth was

flat, think again. The idea of a flat

Earth is actually a misconception of

recent popular culture, and the early

documents show how sophisticated

the era’s geographical knowledge was.

Based on the rediscovered work

of the influential second-century

Alexandrian astronomer and

geographer Claudius Ptolemy, the

Ulm Ptolemy World Map of 1482 pieces

together more than 8000 coordinates

first noted up to a millennium earlier.

“Such a wonderful thing that this

information could find its way into

print. It was all based on the idea

from the ancient world that you can

calculate your position from the stars,”

says Martin Woods, curator of

maps at the NLA. And there along

the bottom of Ptolemy’s map is the

earliest hint of a southern land.

From the mid-15th century, the

hand-painted Fra Mauro Map of the

World displays a vast amount of

knowledge of coastal navigation,

accumulated since Roman times.

As the colonial and trading reach of

Europe extended into the previously

unknown Southern Hemisphere,

geographical knowledge of it became

a commercially valuable commodity.

So sensitive was this information

that the Dutch East India Company

had a secret atlas documenting its

discoveries in the Indian Ocean and

South-East Asia.

Original outline. Blaeu’s Archipelagus (1659 -

63) – the basis for many New Holland maps

• was carefully restored at the National Library.

HISTORY

SEE the National Library work on preserving the

map that fi rst showed much of Australia’s true

shape. Download the free viewa app and use

your smartphone to scan this page.

COURTESY OF THE NLA