john cabot was the explorer who accurately mapped the coasts of europe and north africa.
john cabot was the explorer who accurately mapped the coasts of europe and north africa.
the explorer accurately mapped the coasts of europe and north africa?
john cabot
the iberian peninsula and the coast of africa are rendered accurately; as for the americas, the northern portion of the south american coast is also fairly accurate and positioned correctly with respect to africa. much of the caribbean is also mapped fairly accurately and appears to reflect columbus's maps of the area. the area representing north america bears almost no resemblance to its real coastline except for one projection which might be newfoundland; an island labelled "antilia" may actually be nova scotia, since it has a note attached which refers to the legendary voyages of saint brendan. there is some suggestion that this area may represent the asian coast. island groups in the east atlantic are accurately placed, but are depicted out of scale.
piri reis map
geometry was essential to surveying and cartography. the earliest extant chinese maps date to the 4th century bce, yet it was not until the time of pei xiu (224–271) that topographical elevation, a formal rectangular grid system, and use of a standard graduated scale of distances was applied to terrain maps. following a long tradition, shen kuo created a raised-relief map, while his other maps featured a uniform graduated scale of 1:900,000. a squared map of 1137—carved into a stone block—followed a uniform grid scale of 100 li for each gridded square, and accurately mapped the outline of the coasts and river systems of china, extending all the way to india. furthermore, the world's oldest known terrain map in printed form comes from the edited encyclopedia of yang jia in 1155, which displayed western china without the formal grid system that was characteristic of more professionally made chinese maps. although gazetteers had existed since 52 ce during the han dynasty and gazetteers accompanied by illustrative maps (chinese: "tujing") since the sui dynasty, the illustrated gazetteer became much more common in the song dynasty, when the foremost concern was for illustrative gazetteers to serve political, administrative, and military purposes.
song dynasty