to the "Land of Gold"
BACKGROUND ON MAPS
|Map A||Map B||Map C||Map D||Map E||Map F||Map G||Map H|
Anaximander of Miletus is credited as being the first person to draw a
map of the world. This map by Hecataeus, also of Miletus, is similar
to the one described by Herodotus.
(Berthon, p. 19)
Herodotus had travelled extensively throughout the Mediterranean
and collected information about Asia. Beyond India lay unknown and uninhabited
deserts..."for the Indians live the furthest towards the east and the
sunrise of all the Asians with whom we are acquainted or of whom we
know by hearsay. Eastwards the country of the Indians is a sandy desert."
"I cannot help but laughing at the absurdity
of all the mapmakers--there are plenty of them--who show Ocean running
like a river round a perfectly circular earth, with Asia and Europe
of the same size." Herodotus said of the three known continents (Europe,
Asia, and Africa) "Europe is as long as the other two put together,
and for breadth is not, in my opinion, even to be compared with them."
Herodotus wrote about the Egyptian king Neco
who reigned from 616 to 600 B.C. and who sent out a fleet of Phoenician
ships to sail south on the Red Sea to attempt to sail around the east
coast of Africa. Although the Phoenician records are lost, the voyage
was said to have taken nearly three years before the ships entered the
Mediterranean at the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibralter). Said
Herodotus, "These men made a statement which I do not believe myself,
that they sailed on a westerly course 'round the southern end of Libya.
They had the sun on the right -- to northward of them." Herodotus could
not believe that Africa was so large as to extend into the southern
Because of the campaigns of Alexander the Great, knowledge of Asia greatly
increased during the century before Eratosthenes (334-323 B.
C.). As the librarian at Alexandria, his ideas were based on the records
of various government officials and envoys who had traveled as far as
India. This map clearly shows Sri Lanka, known as "Taprobane" as well
as the mouth of the Ganges River. Southeast Asia was not mentioned in
Eratosthenes was a brilliant mapmaker. He
was the first person to calculate the circumference of the earth based
on the position of the sun on the summer solstice and the location of
the cities Alexandria and Syrene. His result was within 200 miles of
what we know today: 24,862 miles around the earth.
Strabo's extraordinary writings in the seventeen-volume encyclopedia
Geography (18 A.D.) contained all the known information about
the human, animal and physical world. He believed that the inhabitable
world was twice as broad as it was long. Strabo did not believe ships
or humans could survive travel south into the "torrid zone" where seas
were so large they were uncrossable. From his travels he learned of
Meroe (Khartoum) and the "cinnamon country" to the south. He proposed
the idea that spices came from the
Indies, and he correctly described the shipping routes between the Mediterranean
Sea and India. (Berthon, p. 25)
In 43 A.D. the Roman geographer, Pomponius Mela, was the first
writer to make specific reference to Southeast Asia in his popular book
on geography. For the next thousand years his mention of Chryse
and Agyre were used to describe the legendary islands.
Claudius Ptolemy influenced geography for more than one thousand
years. Born in Egypt, he wrote two great works, the Almagest
(on astromomy) and Geography while librarian at Alexandria from
127 - 150 A.D. Knowledge of Asia, and the "Golden Peninsula" of Southeast
Asia in particular, was described by the geographer Marinus of Tyre.
Ptolemy used his writings as the foundation for his Geography. His work
in astronomy was largely based on the ideas of Hipparchus of Rhodes
(three hundred years earlier) who proposed divicding the length and
breadth of the world by 360 degrees. Miscalculations of the earth's
circumference by later geographers caused Ptolemy to use figures for
a much smaller world. This map shows lines of latitude and longitude
not accurate by today's coordi-nates. Ptolemy's map shows Africa extending
all the way to Asia, ending the idea that it was surrounded by water.
Instead the Indian Ocean becomes a vast inland sea. The region called
"Terra Incognita" was designed to balance the global landmass. Ptolemy's
achievement was to depict the earth as a sphere on a map with curving
coordinates of latitude and longitude. More than 1,300 years later,
his ideas were rediscovered during the Renaissance.
G: This summary of the world was made in the 2nd century,
A.D. by Dionysus Periegetes (Dionysus the Tourist) so that readers might
show "their superior knowledge among the ignorant." Precise locations
seem less important than the vivid descriptions he gives.
Medieval European maps, showing the Judeo-Christian belief in the bansishment
of Adam and Eve from Paradise due to Original Sin, depict Southeast
Asia as the site of the Biblical Eden. This early 13th century "Beatus"
map shows four rivers which were believed to flow from there, the Ganges,
Nile, Tigris and Euphrates. The islands of Chryse and Argyre are shown
directly off the coast of Paradise. Travelers' accounts of Southeast
Asia reinforced this idea.
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