Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Map
Most maps todays are on computer screens, which is just a newer format of the old paper maps that were impossible to refold. The word is a shortened version of the Latin “mappa mundi,” which by the ninth century was used to describe a representation of the known world. “Mundi” is Latin for “of the world” and “mappa” was originally a napkin, cloth or flag used to signal the start of games. Maps at the time were on cloth or parchment, although earlier maps have been found etched on clay tablets. Early maps were surprisingly detailed, although understandably flawed. Early mapmakers viewed their home country as the center of the world and land masses were not to scale. Land mass sizes remain distorted through modern maps because of the difficulty of representing a round globe on a flat surface. As a result, the size of landmasses become increasingly exaggerated towards the poles. On a typical flat map, Greenland appears nearly as big as Africa although Africa is 14 times larger.
Medieval mapmakers drew mythical creatures and sea monsters on unknown areas to represent unexplored and possibly dangerous territory, inscribing “hic sunt dracones” or “here be dragons” to indicate the unknown areas. When the Age of Exploration started around the 1400s, maps became a critical tool for discovering new trade routes and new lands. Columbus was guided by a copy of a world map created by German cartographer Henricus Martellus that showed the entire world as it was known to 15th century Europeans at that time. When Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas in 1492 after more than two months at sea, he thought he had reached Japan because that was what the map told him. He assumed that Cuba was China and America was the Indies, hence his term for the indigenous people. Columbus knew the earth was round, but didn’t realize there was land between Europe and Asia. He believed by sailing west, instead of east, around the coast of Africa, he would the find a shortcut trade route to the Far East. Three voyages later, Columbus continued to maintain that he had reached Asia despite growing evidence to the contrary. Up until he died in 1506, Columbus was still insisting he had found a new route to Asia, an early and extreme example of the male reluctance to ask for directions.
