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Feb 1, 2024 · The origins of the United States of America can be traced back to the early 17th century when European settlers, primarily from England, began establishing colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America. Over the next century, the 13 American colonies developed distinct identities and economies, with tensions with Britain escalating ...
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The first map of the United States drawn and printed in America by an American was, until a few years ago, hardly known at all. Only seven original copies exist, and the best preserved is now on ...
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Click on the subject links below to see more historic maps of the world: Africa & Antarctica / Asia & Australia / Caribbean & Central America / Europe / South America. 2014. Click on the date links to see some of the oldest North America maps in our collection: North America 16th century 1550 17th century 1631 / 1639 / 1650 / 1669 / 1679 / 1680 ...
- The Babylonian World Map
- Ptolemy’s Geography
- The Peutinger Map
- The Tabula Rogeriana
- The Da Ming Hun Yi Tu
- The Cantino Planisphere
- The Waldseemüller World Map
- The Mercator Projection
History’s earliest known world map was scratched on clay tablets in the ancient city of Babylon sometime around 600 B.C. The star-shaped map measures just five-by-three inches and shows the world as a flat disc surrounded by an ocean, or “bitter river.” Babylon and the Euphrates River are depicted in the center as a pair of rectangles, while the ne...
Many elements of the science of cartography can trace their origins to the work of the Greek scholar Claudius Ptolemaeus, better known as Ptolemy. Around 150 A.D., he produced “Geography,” an eight-volume textbook that included some of the first maps to use mathematical principles. Ptolemy’s book has a few notable errors—the Indian Ocean, for examp...
During the days when all roads led to Rome, the so-called Peutinger Map would have served as a handy guide to the Empire’s transportation network. The oddly shaped map is 22 feet long and just one foot wide and depicts the course of more than 60,000 miles of Roman roads stretching from Western Europe to the Middle East. An additional section also s...
In the 12th century A.D., the renowned Muslim scholar al-Idrisi was invited to the court of the Norman King Roger II and asked to produce a book on geography. The result was the “Tabula Rogeriania,” also known by its longer title, “A Guide to Pleasant Journeys into Faraway Lands.” The book featured several regional maps as well as a projection of t...
One of the earliest surviving world maps from the Far East, China’s Da Ming Hun Yi Tu, or “Amalgamated Map of the Ming Empire,” was drawn on silk as early as 1389. The map spans the entire Eurasian continent from Japan to the Atlantic Ocean and includes detailed markings of mountain ranges, rivers and administrative centers. It is particularly nota...
The Cantino Planisphere was once at the center of an act of cartographic theft. In 1502, an Italian duke commissioned an agent named Alberto Cantino to acquire a map of the geographic discoveries of the Kingdom of Portugal, which was notorious for closely guarding the location of the new lands found by its explorers. Cantino succeeded in his missio...
Martin Waldseemüller is far from a household name, but perhaps he should be—he helped give the American continents their name. In 1507, the German cartographer produced the first map in history to depict the New World as a distinct landmass with the Pacific Ocean on its western side. In honor of the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci, who had first...
Once a staple of school classrooms the world over, the famed Mercator projection has also been the subject of considerable debate and controversy. The Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator first designed the map style in 1569 as a way of displaying the spherical Earth on a flat, rectangular surface. With this in mind, he drew a world map with para...
🇺🇸 United States historical map This map attempts to show all border changes for US States from 1790 to today. The changing boundaries are represented with a "lifetime" for each State, i.e. a start and end year. To make sure that each states's changing borders are shown only once, the state of the borders at the end of each year (31/12 ...
Dec 23, 2013 · North and South America. This map, drawn in 1540 by by Sebastian Münster, was the very first printed map that called the great body of water to the west of the land by the name Pacific. Orient ...
May 15, 2018 · The Library's copy of his 38 x 50 cm hand-colored map plate shows the new European colonies in North and South America as they existed in the first half of the 17th century, with two insets showing the North and South Pole. The territory of modern-day U.S.A. contains areas claimed by the monarchies of Spain, France, England, and the Dutch Republic.
