Oldest Known Globe to Depict the New World Found Engraved on Ostrich Egg

Posted on August 22, 2013

The oldest known globe to depict the New World has been found on an ostrich egg. The discovery of the was announced today in Washington in The Portolan, a journal of cartography published by the Washington Map Society. The globe was made from the lower halves of two ostrich eggs. It dates from the early 1500s.

The Washington Map Society says in a release that the globe reflects the knowledge gleaned by Christopher Columbus and other very early European explorers including Amerigo Vespucci after whom America was named. The researchers say the globe was made in Florence, Italy and that the engraver may have worked in the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci, or been influenced by him.

Tom Sander, editor of The Portolan, who has personally inspected the globe, said, "This is a major discovery, and we are pleased to be the vehicle for its announcement. We undertook a very extensive peer review process to vet the article, which itself was based on more than a year of scientific and documentary research."

The globe contains ships of different types, monsters, intertwining waves, a shipwrecked sailor, and 71 place names. There is also one sentence, "HIC SVNT DRACONES," which means "Here are the Dragons." Only 7 of the names on the ostrich egg map are in the Western Hemisphere. There are no names shown for North America, which is represented as a group of scattered islands. Three names are shown in South America.

ARCHAEOLOGY