The Map That Named America

The BBC News Magazine has an article on the recent media interest in the first map to name America. It describes how the giant and revolutionary 500 year old ‘Waldseemuller map’ was the first to name America, show the New World as a separate continent, suggest the existence of the sea that what would be named the Pacific Ocean and reveal the full coastline of Africa – “the first document to depict the world roughly as we know it today”.



Image from Library of Congress website

The last surviving copy of 1000 printed was bought by the US Library of Congress for $10 million in May 2003.

Toby Lester’s book The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name is published in November – details on Amazon.

See also our Map of the Month July 2008 post on the naming of Antarctica.