On this rare (400 year old) map, China is the center of the world - story with pic

[Kadie]

On this rare map, China is the center of the world
By BRETT ZONGKER, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, January 12, 2010


(01-12) 09:17 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --

A rarely seen 400-year-old map that identified Florida as "the Land of Flowers" and put China at the center of the world went on display Tuesday at the Library of Congress.

The map created by Matteo Ricci was the first in Chinese to show the Americas. Ricci, a Jesuit missionary from Italy, was among the first Westerners to live in what is now Beijing in the early 1600s. Known for introducing Western science to China, Ricci created the map in 1602 at the request of Emperor Wanli.

Ricci's map includes pictures and annotations describing different regions of the world. Africa was noted to have the world's highest mountain and longest river. The brief description of North America mentions "humped oxen" or bison, wild horses and a region named "Ka-na-ta."

Several Central and South American places are named, including "Wa-ti-ma-la" (Guatemala), "Yu-ho-t'ang" (Yucatan) and "Chih-Li" (Chile).

Ricci gave a brief description of the discovery of the Americas.

"In olden days, nobody had ever known that there were such places as North and South America or Magellanica," he wrote, using a label that early mapmakers gave to Australia and Antarctica. "But a hundred years ago, Europeans came sailing in their ships to parts of the sea coast, and so discovered them."


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/01/12/national/a001105S72.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0cQCzRMNQ


A detail from the China section of Matteo Ricci's 1602 map nicknamed the "Impossible Black Tulip of Cartography" is seen on display at the Library of Congress in Washington. The map is the first map in Chinese to show the Americas.

Photo: Jacquelyn Martin / AP

[Solly Mack]

1. Neat!

K&R

[mdmc]

2. thanks for posting..

[CBR]

3. Very cool. nt

[HopeHoops]

4. Is that from WalMart corporate headquarters?

:shrug:

[Goldstein1984]

5. We've learned so much in 400 years

I can't imagine a time when we didn't know that Wall Street is the center and capital of the world.

[MineralMan]

6. Interesting. Now, we'd never make a map like that.

Oh...wait...

[Confusious]

7. Every country that makes a map

Puts itself at the center.

[MineralMan]

8. Well, actually, most World Maps have

the middle east at the center, with Africa and Europe at the North and Southern centers. But, that's because map-making in the West was Eurocentric.

The North American centric map I posted is unusual in that respect.

But your point is a good one. I just thought it amusing that people were surprised that a Chinese map would have China at its center. What would one expect?