Father of America, born today

[digitS']

The father of the name, altho that was not his doing ...

Amerigo Vespucci was born in Florence, Italy the 9th of March, 1454.

Between 1499 and 1502, he sailed west. On the first of these voyages he was aboard the ship that discovered that South America extended much further south than previously thought. On his third voyage, his ship sailed south along the coast of South America to Rio de Janeiro's bay.

These events were hardly mundane or inconsequential. On his return to Europe, Vespucci wrote in a letter stating that the land masses explored were much larger than anticipated. They were different from Marco Polo's description of Asia and therefore, must be a New World.

In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the new continent America.

Steve

 

[Collector]

Nice bit of history trivia. I learn something new everyday. Before this all I knew was in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. I think it was 1492 any way.

 

[valley ranch]

We can't count that mapmaker, bragging son a ma gun ```

Columbia ~ The Gem Of The Ocean ~ No, No !! you can't count Amerigo ```

I learned in school he was a bull shiping map maker ~ who wrote his name across the newly discovered glop of land ~ that was thought to be the Indies ```


But look here ~ they say he actually got in a boat ```

What do you think ~ did he truly sail across the Atlantic ~ shall we have a show of hands ```
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America was named after Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator and explorer who played a prominent role in exploring the New World.
Synopsis
Explorer Amerigo Vespucci was born March 9, 1451, (some scholars say 1454) in Florence, Italy. On May 10, 1497, he embarked on his first voyage. On his third and most successful voyage, he discovered present-day Rio de Janeiro and Rio de la Plata. Believing he had discovered a new continent, he called South America the New World. In 1507, America was named after him. He died of malaria in Seville, Spain, on February 22, 1512.

 

[valley ranch]

The Map That Named America
Library Acquires 1507 Waldseemüller Map of the World

By JOHN R. HÉBERT

In late May 2003 the Library of Congress completed the purchase of the only surviving copy of the first image of the outline of the continents of the world as we know them today— Martin Waldseemüller's monumental 1507 world map.

The map has been referred to in various circles as America's birth certificate and for good reason; it is the first document on which the name "America" appears. It is also the first map to depict a separate and full Western Hemisphere and the first map to represent the Pacific Ocean as a separate body of water. The purchase of the map concluded a nearly century-long effort to secure for the Library of Congress that very special cartographic document which revealed new European thinking about the world nearly 500 years ago.

Prince Waldburg-Wolfegg speaks about his family's ownership of the Waldseemüller map in the Great Hall at the reception for the opening of the Lewis and Clark exhibition.

The Waldseemüller world map is currently on display in the Library's Thomas Jefferson Building in the exhibition honoring the Lewis and Clark expedition, "Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America." It will remain on display, either in the original or with an exact facsimile, until Nov. 29. A permanent site for the display of this historical treasure will be prepared in the Thomas Jefferson Building within the next year.

Martin Waldseemüller, the primary author of the 1507 world map, was a 16th-century scholar, humanist, cleric and cartographer who was part of the small intellectual circle, the Gymnasium Vosagense, in Saint-Dié, France. He was born near Freiburg, Germany, sometime in the 1470s and died in the canon house at Saint-Dié in 1522. During his lifetime he devoted much of his time to cartographic ventures, including, in the spring 1507, the famous world map, a set of globe gores (for a globe with a three-inch diameter), and the "Cosmographiae Introductio" (a book to accompany the map). He also prepared the 1513 edition of the Ptolemy "Geographiae"; the "Carta Marina," a large world map, in 1516; and a smaller world map in the 1515 edition of "Margarita Philosophica Nova."

Thus, in a remote part of northeast France, was born the famous 1507 world map, whose full title is "Universalis cosmographia secunda Ptholemei traditionem et Americi Vespucci aliorum que lustrationes" ("A drawing of the whole earth following the tradition of Ptolemy and the travels of Amerigo Vespucci and others"). That map, printed on 12 separate sheets, each 18-by-24-inches, from wood block plates, measured more than 4 feet by 8 feet in dimension when assembled.

The large map is an early 16th-century masterpiece, containing a full map of the world, two inset maps showing separately the Western and Eastern Hemispheres, illustrations of Ptolemy and Vespucci, images of the various winds, and extensive explanatory notes about selected regions of the world. Waldseemüller's map represented a bold statement that rationalized the modern world in light of the exciting news arriving in Europe as a result of explorations across the Atlantic Ocean or down the African coast, which were sponsored by Spain, Portugal and others.

Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wolfegg points out a detail on the Waldseemüller map to Christoff Meran of the Embassy of Austria.

The map must have created quite a stir in Europe, since its findings departed considerably from the accepted knowledge of the world at that time, which was based on the second century A.D. work of the Greek geographer, Claudius Ptolemy. To today's eye, the 1507 map appears remarkably accurate; but to the world of the early 16th century it must have represented a considerable departure from accepted views of the composition of the world. Its appearance undoubtedly ignited considerable debate in Europe regarding its conclusions that an unknown continent (unknown, at least, to Europeans and others in the Eastern Hemisphere) existed between two huge bodies of water, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and was separated from the classical world of Ptolemy, which had been confined to the continents of Europe, Africa and Asia.

While it has been suggested that Waldseemüller incorrectly dismissed Christopher Columbus' great achievement in history by the selection of the name "America" for the Western Hemisphere, it is evident that the information that Waldseemüller and his colleagues had at their disposal recognized Columbus' previous voyages of exploration and discovery. However, the group also had acquired a recent French translation of the important work "Mundus Novus," Amerigo Vespucci's letter detailing his purported four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean to America between 1497 and 1504. In that work, Vespucci concluded that the lands reached by Columbus in 1492 and explored by Columbus and others over the ensuing two decades were indeed a segment of the world, a new continent, unknown to Europe. Because of Vespucci's recognition of that startling revelation, he was honored with the use of his name for the newly discovered continent.

The Waldseemüller map introduces the Lewis and Clark exhibition in the Northwest Gallery.

It is remarkable that the entire Western Hemisphere was named for a living person; Vespucci did not die until 1512. With regard to Columbus' exploits after 1492, i.e., his various explorations between 1492 and 1504, the 1507 map clearly denotes Columbus' explorations in the West Indies as well as the Spanish monarchs' sponsorship of those and subsequent voyages of exploration.

By 1513, when Waldseemüller and the Saint-Dié scholars published the new edition of Ptolemy's "Geographiae," and by 1516, when Waldseemüller's famous "Carta Marina" was printed, he had removed the name "America" from his maps, perhaps suggesting that even he had second thoughts about honoring Vespucci exclusively for his understanding of the New World. Instead, in the 1513 atlas, the area named "America" on the 1507 map is now referred to as Terra Incognita (Unknown Land). In the1516 "Carta Marina," South America is called Terra Nova (New World) and North America is named Cuba and is shown to be part of Asia. No reference in either work is made to the name "America."

The only surviving copy of the 1507 world map by Martin Waldseemüller, purchased by the Library of Congress and now on display in its Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C. The term "America" can be seen in continent on the lower leftmost panel. Vespuci is pictured on the top panel of the third column.
More:https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0309/maps.html

 

[digitS']

Hero-worship is obvious and nearly exhausting. Extravagant waving of flags, one risks becoming a caricature and Justice for All becomes a trite nothingness.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."~ Isaac Newton, 1675

Waldseemüller put Amerigo's name on his, Waldseemüller's, map. And, what of the ancestors of the indigenous Americans ↑↑↑? Millennia had passed since they had populated the continents of North and South America.

Claudius Ptolemy ↑↑↑; c. AD 100 – c. 170) a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer.

Marco Polo ↑↑↑ 1254 – 1324 an Italian merchant, explorer, and writer, born in the Republic of Venice.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

silly, the historians seem to not mention how many people were already here back then. estimated now to be several tens to perhaps even several hundred million if you see the extent of the changes they made to the jungles. there is even a good case to be made that the Little Ice Age was caused by the deaths of many millions of people (diseases introduced by the early explorers) and the tropical jungles reclaiming the areas they'd kept clear (trees sucking up a lot of the CO2 as they grew back in).

this is conjecture and speculation, but somewhat likely.

 

[valley ranch]

Many successive migrations form Asia and Eastern Europe over the the land bridge ```

Have anything else in mind ~ genetic wo wo by those things from other planets ```

 

[digitS']

Air miles from Moscow to Vladivostok is right at 4,000 miles and 3,000 of those air miles are above Asia.

Then, it's over 3,000 miles from Vladivostok to Ancorage ... so, 7,000 miles plus.

It's only 3,600 air miles for Moscovites to fly to Canada. I suspect that if Aliens want to fly Europeans to the Americas then it might make sense for them to fly west instead of east with their spacecraft.


Steve

 

[valley ranch]

They could just jump off the ground and the earth ~ rotating below them ~ many jumps ~ but save on air travel ```