================================================
MAPS-L ** MAPS-L ** MAPS-L ** MAPS-L ** MAPS-L
================================================

Rare Map Identifying 'America' on Auction

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 7, 2005
from the New York Times online

Filed at 2:28 p.m. ET

LONDON (AP) -- A nearly 500-year-old map from the first set to identify the New World as ''America'' and depict the Pacific Ocean is being auctioned Wednesday.

Scholars created the set of maps -- believed to be components of the earliest printed globe -- based on explorers' accounts and had to draw the Pacific Ocean before Europeans had discovered it. The work depicts a land mass labeled ''America'' that corresponds to part of South America.

Christie's auction house expects the map to fetch from $900,000 to $1.46 million, adding that it is one of only four known surviving examples produced by a group working under German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller.

The same group, working in northeastern France, also created the much larger and better known wall map bought by the Library of Congress in Washington for $10 million in 2003. That map, which also uses the name ''America,'' is sometimes called America's birth certificate. The woodcuts for the wall map, and for the map on sale at Christie's, were both made in 1507.

Waldseemueller's group derived the word ''America'' from the name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who was the first to argue that the land mass discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 was a new continent, and not part of Asia. Waldseemueller and his fellow scholars used an account of Vespucci's voyages to draw their new maps.

The work being sold at Christie's is known as the Waldseemueller Gores and portrays the Earth as a globe. It consists of 12 connected gores -- or sections of a curved surface -- printed on a sheet of paper measuring 7.2 inches by 13.8 inches. The gores were meant to be cut out and pasted on to a ball to form a globe.

There are only three other known examples of the Waldseemueller Gores: one at the University of Minnesota and two in German libraries.

Christie's said the map on auction belongs to a European collector who discovered it in his collection after reading about the subject in a newspaper two years ago. The auction house didn't identify the collector or say where he lived.

Peter Barber, head of maps at the British Library, said the Waldseemueller Gores and wall map were the first to use the name ''America'' and the first to depict the Pacific Ocean, even though it had not been discovered at the time.

''If America is a continent, it has to look like one, it has to be separate from a piece of land,'' Barber said. The scholars ''had to invent the Pacific Ocean before it was actually discovered.''

The Waldseemueller Gores form what is probably the earliest known printed globe, Barber said. But it is not the earliest depiction of a globe, he added, referring to manuscript and painted portrayals.

Barber said the wall map at the Library of Congress was likely printed around 1516, based on a 1507 woodcut. That map consists of 12 panels and covers 36 square feet.

Forwarded for educational purposes by

***********************************************

ANGIE COPE
American Geographical Society Library
2311 E. Hartford Avenue
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201

http://www.uwm.edu/Libraries/AGSL/index.html
Hours: 8:00am-4:30pm
[log in to unmask]
(414) 229-6282
(800) 558-8993 (US TOLL FREE)
(414) 229-3624 (FAX)

Map Librarian, MAPS-L Moderator
http://www.uwm.edu/Libraries/AGSL/welcome_to_mapsl%20forum.html

***********************************************