ortelius abraham epitome of the theater of the world

After Toll’s vessel became trapped by ice in the New Siberian Islands, he and several colleagues used sledges and kayaks to head for Bennett Island, which tourists can now see on Arctic Ocean pleasure cruises. In the early 1900s, German explorer Baron Eduard Vasilyevich Toll led a mission to Sannikov Land, first reported by a Russian ship in 1810, about 430 miles north of mainland Siberia.

“Those expeditions were expensive, and in some cases dangerous, and finding out that they were sailing to a place that doesn’t exist was not good,” Wittmann says. These phantom islands spawned many problems for seafarers chasing these shadowy landmasses, according to Kevin Wittmann, a researcher at Spain’s Universidad de La Laguna, who completed his thesis on ancient maps. This task was complicated by optical illusions caused by light refractions, including the infamous fata morgana, which “presents itself as a distant strip of cape lying tantalizingly close, and yet always just out of reach.” Claiming shadowy lands They were only removed from maps after a ship visited the island’s listed location and confirmed its nonexistence, Brooke-Hitching says. Once a ghost island was born, it was hard to banish. Rumors and unconfirmed sightings, mistaken calculations-before longitude the locations of islands were recorded using dead reckoning, which was essentially guesswork-and even mythology were all incorporated by the mapmaker to publish the fullest picture of the newly unveiled world.” “Inevitably, phantom geography started to blossom on the page. “ was a competitive business, and cartographers were desperate for the latest information gleaned from returning explorers to fill the blank spaces,” says Edward Brooke-Hitching, author of the 2016 book The Phantom Atlas. Unauthorized use is prohibited.Ī rush of sea exploration by Europeans in the 1500s triggered a boom in mapmaking, which then sparked more expeditions, reports of which swelled atlases further. Many, as it turned out, existed only in this book. The atlas featured 70 detailed maps, which revealed a trove of unexplored islands. In 1570, Ortelius published the first modern atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theater of the World), copies of which can be viewed at many libraries, including the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Mapmaking boomĮach day, tourists in Brussels’ leafy Petit Sablon Square pass the statue of Belgian cartographer Abraham Ortelius, who inspired explorers to pursue geographic specters. The phantom Sannikov Land, in Siberia, even managed to vanish part of a Russian expedition crew.Īlthough such specters have been all but erased from maps, travelers can trace these mysterious tales by visiting cartographic libraries, monuments to explorers and mapmakers, and ghost islands that proved real. Gamaland, east of Japan, drew sailors in search of its legendary gold and silver. Hy-Brasil, supposedly located in the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland, was said to render visitors immortal. Up until the past decade, these erroneous listings prompted many futile and occasionally deadly ocean voyages by crews seeking treasure, fame, or virgin territory. Due to myth, miscalculation, optical illusion, or outright lies, hundreds of nonexistent landmasses were planted on maps, where some remained for centuries.

From the dawn of cartography, ghosts haunted our maps-until modern technology purged them like a scientific exorcism.

Ortelius abraham epitome of the theater of the world