There seem to be a number of complementary reasons behind illustrations of sea monsters or other exotic creatures in the field of cartography. For mapmakers the idea was:

• to liven up the image of the world with decorative features,
• to fill empty spaces with information,
• to draw attention to the vitality of the oceans and the variety of creatures living in them,
• to suggest that the oceans and uncharted lands could be sources of danger,
• to serve as the graphic memory of literature on the subject,
• to provide points of reference in a geography of the marvellous,
• to draw attention to the artistic talent of the cartographer, who could then sell his work at a higher price, depending on the quality and quantity of the illustrations.

Sea and land creatures

For historians, three representations of sea monsters are predominant in Renaissance cartography: Olaus Magnus‘s Carta Marina (1539); the Monstra Marina & Terrestria map (1544) by Sebastian Münster, partly inspired by Olaus Magnus; and the Islandia map by Abraham Ortelius, published in Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1586) and inspired by the two previous works.

Gerardus Mercator was particularly influenced by Magnus’ Carta marina, which contained the largest, most varied and most comprehensive collection of sea monsters of the day.

Mercator’s terrestrial globe is illustrated with eleven sea monsters, seven of which were taken from Magnus’s Carta marina and two others from Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo‘s Historia general de las Indias (1535), a book that represented the very first images of animals in America. Mercator no doubt used both Magnus and Oviedo to demonstrate his ability to combine the most recent sources in a nutshell. In addition to the sea monsters he included one terrestrial animal.

The monsters in cartography provides a detailed roundup of Mercator’s sources and inspirations for the twelve sea monsters and opossum.

In his treatise De mundi creatione ac fabrica Liber, Mercator strove to prove the existence of a fifth continent that he called Quinta. For him and other scholars of the time, this landmass was necessary to counterbalance the weight of Europe, Africa and Asia, mainly situated in the northern hemisphere. For the world to be in kilter, Quinta had to be as large as all its antagonists put together. Mercator thus represented the fifth continent as stretching around the entire globe with a very uneven coastline.

With no maritime discoveries to guide him, we can see that Mercator committed the same error as other geographers of his period by believing in the existence of a wondrous southern land as vast as the Old World. This was represented with a host of variations by 16th-century cartographers, in all shapes and sizes depending on their beliefs and on interpretations of the voyages of Magellan, Marco Polo and others.

We can hardly criticise Mercator for depicting in 1541 imaginary lands which, according to Jocodus Hondius, were still totally unknown in 1617.

QUINTA haec, et quidem amplissima pars, quantum conjectare licet, nuper orbi nostro accessit verum paucis adhuc littoribus explorata.	This Fifth Part, assuredly the largest to the extent that it can be conjectured, was recently added to our world. So far, however, little of its coastline has been explored
Beach provincia aurifera	Beach, the gold province Below the island of Java Major, the gold province of Beach covers a large peninsula extending up to the 16th latitude south.
Vastissimas hic esse regiones facile credet qui 11 et 12 caput lib. 3 M. Pauli Veneti legerit collato simul 27 capite libri 6 Lud. Rom. Patricii	Anyone who has read chapters 11 and 12 of book 3 by Paulus Venetus and compared them with chapter 27, book 6 by Lud. Rom. Patricius, will easily believe in the vastness of these regions. Mercator refers here to the cartographer Paulus Venetus (1369-1429), whom he mentioned a number of times on his globe, and to the Italian traveller Ludovico de Verthema (c. 1470-1517). The latter’s account of his journeys in Arab lands was very popular. It was included in Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum, a famous collection of texts on exploration published in Basel in 1532.
Psitacorum regio a Lusitanis anno 1500 ad milia passuum bis mille praetervectis sic appellata quod psitacos alat inauditae magnitudinis, ut qui ternos cubitos aequent longitudine	The Land of the Parrots was so called by the Portuguese sailors who skirted between 1000 and 2000 podes of its coastline in 1500 because of the unbelievably large parrots – three cubits long – that nested there. The Land of the Parrots, placed below Cape of Good Hope, actually seems to refer to an alleged discovery by the Portuguese mariner Pedro Alvares Cabral (c. 1467-1520), who saw such birds when he landed on the coast of Brazil in 1500. His observation was later misinterpreted.

List of inscriptions

Close

Mercator’s America is a largely unexplored continent whose outline are still uncertain. The western shorelines of North America and the southern shores of South America appear uncharted, with no place names, contrasting sharply with the rich toponymy of the eastern coastlines, the Caribbean and Central America. These were already well documented by the great contemporary discoveries.

South America is shown wider than its actual east-west dimension and too short north-south. To fill part of the vacant space in the interior, Mercator drew an opossum, an animal that symbolised the tropics. Yet this image, inspired by other maps, is neither properly proportioned nor very realistic: here the opossum’s pouch sits at shoulder level, not at its hips.

While the shape and position of the Americas are incorrect, one wonders how Mercator was able to convey such a complete and fair image of continents that were still largely unexplored. His representation is innovative and almost faithful to reality compared with the misshapen attempt by a contemporary cosmographer, Sebastian Munster. Even maps published a century later in Holland would not be as precise.

Despite the Spanish and Portuguese courts’ censorship of details about their maritime expeditions, and despite the absence of newspapers, Mercator managed to glean an incredible amount of information. It was almost as if, map in hand, he had followed the mariners on their voyages of discovery and published the findings at the same time they were made known to the monarchs who had commissioned the expeditions.

North-West PassageTierra del FuegoThe coasts of America

By Mercator’s day, explorers had already been seeking a passage over North America to the Pacific Ocean for some time. On the face of it the German-Flemish cartographer changed his mind about its existence sometime during his career. On his 1541 globe, the landmass continues with no break between North America and the Arctic. But on the map published the year after he died, in 1595, he drew a strait separating California and the North Pole.

While Mercator did not give the North-West Passage a name, the Spaniards called it the “Strait of Anian”. Several expeditions were already mounted to search for it throughout the 1700s. But despite the many attempts to find it over the centuries, the route would not be mapped out at last until 1906 by Roald Amundsen.

In 1519 Ferdinand de Magellan, sailing westward from Sevilla, reached the Moluccan Islands. After descending the coast of Brazil, he and his crew wintered in Patagonia and, in search of a passage leading to the other side of South America, they entered a strait that would later bear Magellan’s name. In this labyrinth of fjords, reefs and rocks bordered by steep cliffs, the mariners could see great spouts of fire and thick smoke rising from the land.

Christened Tierra del Fuego, the region seemed to spell bad luck for succeeding expeditions that would venture through it. Tierra del Fuego long remained an enigma and the cartographer Johann Schöner believed that another huge landmass lay south of the strait. The myth of this southern continent, conceived by the Greeks in Antiquity and handed down by medieval scholars, continued to be represented in the 16th century, for example on Oronce Fine‘s 1531 world map and on Mercator’s 1541 terrestrial globe.

It would not be until the 1580s that an expedition disembarked on the desolate shores of Tierra del Fuego.

The Caribbean islands opened the gates of the New World to Christopher Columbus. Mercator’s terrestrial globe lists all the places that Columbus discovered, beginning with the islands where he landed in 1492: Lucayo and its neighbour Guanao.

General view of the Caribbean

List of islands and places

Lucayo Guanao	Lucayo Guanao The Bahamas
Hayti nuc Hispaniola	Haiti now Hispaniola The island of Saint-Domingue
Cuba	Cuba
Iamaica insula nunc S. Iacobi	Jamaica now Saint John
Boriquen nunc S. Ioannis	Boriquen maintenant Saint-Jean Puerto Rico
Trinitatis insula	Island of the Trinity Trinidad
Barmuda sive Garca	Bermuda or Garça
Hujusmodi alit haec terra animal sub pectore habens receptaculum quo foetus recondit quos non nisi lactandi gratia promit	This land nourishes an animal under whose chest is a receptacle where its babies are safely hidden and only come out to be breast fed.
C. S. Augustini	Cape Saint Augustine in Brazil
Fretum Pathagonicum sive Magellanicum	The Strait of Patagonia or Magellan Strait of Magellan discovered by the Portuguese mariner in 1520
Peru quae et Nova Castilia omnium auro ditissima	Peru and New Castillia, the richest region of all in gold
	California not yet named but already drawn as a peninsula, whereas a number of other 16th-century cartographers represented it as an island
Hispania nova	New Spain Mexico
Florida	Florida
Hispania major capta anno 1530	Spain Major conquered in 1530
Insulae Corterealis	Corte Real islands The Corte Real brothers were 15th-century Portuguese explorers
Baccalearum regio	Cod region Newfoundland

List of islands and places

Close

Paulus Venetus (1369–1429)

The difficulty of reconciling Ptolemy’s view of South Asia and recent discoveries there was likely the main reason that prompted Mercator to produce his own terrestrial globe. He strove to adapt the representation of the Earth inherited from the ancient geographers to the findings of the 16th century.

Even so, there are still numerous errors in Mercator’s portrayal of the Asian continent: it stretches too far to the west. Other inaccuracies stem from a misinterpretation of Marco Polo’s travelogue.

In various insets illustrating Asia, Mercator refers to Paulus Venetus, or Paul of Venice, an Italian philosopher whom he also used as a source.

ChinaCeylonJapan

People travelling the Mongolian routes in the Middle Ages crossed a region whose inhabitants were called Khitans or Kitai. This gave rise to the name Cathay, which at the time designated a territory corresponding roughly to China.

Twenty years before Marco Polo, Guillaume de Rubrouck, a Franciscan monk originally from Flanders, provided the first-ever description of Chinese, Uyghurs, Tanguts, North Tibetans and Koreans.

Other clergymen sojourned in Armenia, Persia, Mongolian China and Cathay in the 12th and 13th centuries, but it was mainly thanks to the writings of Marco Polo Cathay would become a legendary land.

The island of Ceylon was initially known by the enchanting name Trapobana. This word evoked the island’s shape (tamraparni in Sanskrit) as well as the colour of its earth (tambapanni in Sinhalese).

For Greek sailors Trapobana was the Antipodes, i.e. the land at the end of the Earth. It was reached by the fleet of Alexander the Great in the 6th century BC. Much later a number of rich Venetians would visit the island and the neighbouring areas.

Trapobana was not only fabled for its riches but also because, since the voyage of the merchant Suleiman in the 6th century, it was said that Adam and Eve had found refuge there. Many Christian authors would therefore stubbornly imagine Trapobana as Heaven on Earth.

While the Far East had always been imagined since Antiquity as lying at the gates of Paradise, it was because of the writings of Marco Polo that Japan (then called “Zipangri” or “Cipango”) became truly fabled as a wonderland.

Although Polo never set foot there, Zipangri frequently filled his dreams and fantasies. It thus came to represent all that is most fabulous about the Orient, stirring the fancy of travellers, merchants and cartographers across the West. It was in an attempt to reach these regions that Christopher Columbus sailed west, in 1492, and would only admit after his third voyage that he never arrived there.

The Land of the Rising Sun was finally reached by the Portuguese in 1543. However, the archipelago’s composition and coastlines remained obscure until the late 16th century. The first more or less accurate map of Japan would not appear until the dawn of the next century.

According to historians the main source for Mercator’s representation of Africa was Martin Waldseemüller’s Carta marina navigatoria (1516), particularly as regards the network of waterways and the northern interior. This work had been practically ignored by Gemma Frisius.

The outlines of the African continent on Mercator’s globe are rich in detail and toponyms, representing major changes compared with Frisius’ globe. But even so little was known about the interior for a long time. Only the coasts were well explored and dotted with trading posts. The circumnavigation of Africa by Portuguese sailors in the late 15th century would roll back the frontiers of the oecumene to some extent, but the hinterland would remain unexplored and unknown. It would not be until the end of the 18th century that expeditions ventured further inland.

Although the broad outline of Arica seems about right at first glance, overlaying the current projection points up major differences on a general scale.

Sources of the NileCape of Good HopeMadagascar

Pinpointing the sources of the legendary Nile River was a goal that stirred the imagination of travellers, cosmographers and cartographers for centuries. The riddle would not be solved until 1863.

Martin Behaim, Mercator’s forerunner in Germany, put the sources of the Nile in the vast stretches of Ethiopia. Mercator himself preferred to situate them south of the equator, projecting them as being fed by two subequatorial lakes surrounded by a network of mountains. This followed Ptolemy’s conception.

Mercator took great care to represent every segment of the Nile’s course, from its delta divided into seven mouths up to the two lakes where it rises. In order these segments are called Alcair, Apollinis, Syene, Berethis, Sacala and Zoquila. On the branch that flows out of the western lake we find Neli, Zodiata, Ithia, Gorala, Gaida, Chaga and Meraga. On the branch flowing from the eastern lake are Bersera, Haba, Singa, Caigra, Baricia, Ropoga, Uque, Heicer, Buatili, Sesila, Losa, Caba, Girat and Bara. Several of these names are taken from Ptolemy.

When Portuguese mariners began exploring the western coastline of Africa, they proceeded from one cape to the next.

In 1488 Bartolomeu Dias came to a headland swept by ferocious winds. He had reached the most southerly point of the African continent, which he named Cape of Storms. It was rechristened Cape of Good Hope to herald the proximity of the Indies. In 1497 Vasco de Gama would sail all the way around Africa to India.

Below the southern tip of Africa, beyond the Cape of Good Hope, Mercator called a part of the Antarctic continent Psitacorum regio, “Land of the Parrots”.

The islands dotting the Gulf of Arabia, to the east of Africa, are taken from Ptolemy. Mercator provides a detailed representation of Madagascar, whose outline apparently came from Portuguese sources, and a number of neighbouring islands.

Mercator corrected a major error in Ptolemy’s conception of the longitudinal reach of Europe. He contended that the continent lay much farther east and thereby also rectified the latitude of the Canary Islands. This resulted in a reduction of the Mediterranean’s overextension by Ptolemy. Even though its proportions were still far off the mark, this correction nevertheless represented a major stride forward, especially for navigation.

NomenclatureNorthern EuropeThe Arctic

Given the density of place names in Europe, Mercator had to list certain cities in a separate inset, replacing them with a mere number on the globe.

Europae aliquot insigniorum civitatum nomina, quae suis inferi locis angustia operis prohibuit

Europae aliquot insigniorum civitatum nomina, quae suis inferi locis angustia operis prohibuit

Here are the names of a few famous cities in Europe that lack of space prevented Mercator from indicating below their position.

Albionis (England)
1 Saltzburgum (Salisbury)
2 Bristou (Bristol)
3 Vestchester
4 Chester (Chester)
5 Jorc (York)

Scotiae (Scotland)
6 Edinburgum regia (Edinburgh)
7 Catnes

Hyberniae (Ireland)
1 Unflor
2 Solli
3 Dondal (Dundalk)
4 Dubelyn (Dublin)
5 Wacfort (Wateford)
6 Lamerich (Limerick)
7 Galuei (Galway)

Hispaniae (Spain)
1 Bermeo (Bermeo)
2 Soria olim Numantia (Soria formerly Numance)
3 Burgus (Burgos)
4 Compostella (Compostella)
5 Marbella (Marbella)
6 Bera
7 Carthago nova (Cartagena)
8 Valentia (Valencia)
9 Tarracon (Tarragona)
10 Barsalona (Barcelona)

Galliae (Gaule)
1 Monspessulanus (Montpellier)
2 Tullium (Toul)
3 Roari (Rouen)
4 Verodunum (Verdun)
5 Sedunum (Sion)
6 Basilea (Basel)
7 Colonia Agrippina (Cologne)
8 Gandanum (Ghent)
9 Amsterodamum (Amsterdam)

Germaniae (Germany)
1 Marcheburgum olim Amasia
3 Francofordia (Frankfurt)
4 Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg)
6 Norenberga (Nuremberg)
7 Praga (Prague)
8 Erfordia (Erfurt)
9 Brunsuiga (Brunswick)
10 Hamburgum (Hamburg)
11 Copenhaga metropolis Daniae (Copenhagen capital of the Danes)
12 Arhusen (Aarhus)
13 Schlesibyc (Schelswig)
14 Lubecum (Lübeck)
15 Stetin (Szczecin)
16 Brandenburgum (Brandenburg)

Italiae (Italy)
1 Patavium (Padova)
2 Aquilegia (Aquila)
3 Florentia (Florence)
4 Perusium (Perugia)
5 Sessa
6 Policastro (Policastro Bussentino)
7 Brundusium (Brindisi)
8 Adria

Greciae (Greece)
1 Messena (Messina)
2 Corinthus (Corinth)
3 Athenae (Athns)
4 Ambracia nunc Narta (Ambracie now Nartë)
5 Thessalonica (Thessaloniki)
6 Philippipolis
7 Adrianopolis (Edirne)

Mercator made sweeping improvements to the cartography of Northern Europe by drawing on the Carta Marina by the Swedish writer Olaus Magnus. Finland extends all the way up to the White Sea, however, no doubt in reference to the map of Scandinavia drawn by Jakob Ziegler. But Mercator mainly strove to correct the area between Greenland and the Ural Mountains including :

• Ukraine and southern Russia (Scythia),
• Lithuania and Moscow more or less (Sarmatia),
• Scandinavia (Scandia),
• Scotland (Scotia),
• Iceland (Islandia),
• the islands in the Sea of Norway (Deucaledonius maris)

On Mercator’s globe the regions of the North Pole include only Island insula olim Thyle, Grimse insula, Groenlandia, its neighbour Margaster and a few smaller islands situated along the southern coast of Groenlandia. Greenland is part of the continent of North America. Its uninhabited portion extends beyond the pole and measures nearly 30 degrees at its widest point.

The rest of the Arctic area is shown as seas, of which Mercator distinguishes Tabin Mare and Mare Cronium vel Amalchium hoc est congelatum.

Greenland, with its two settlements Alba and Solotobab inhabited by the Screlingers, its mountain chains and its Diver and Thor Rivers, occupies almost half the circumpolar regions.

The northern tips of Norway, with its province Scricfinnia, of Russia, with Juhra regio ex qua Hungaros prodiisse volunt, and of Asia, with the Tabin headland and the Belgian desertum, extend up to the latitude of the inhabited part of Groenlandia. They could therefore also be considered as forming part of the northern regions on Mercator’s globe.

We should not be surprised by the various representations of the circumpolar areas. In 1572 Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598) noted that nothing was yet known about the regions near the North Pole, or whether they were made of land or ocean, and that a host of tales were told about these remote climes. On his planisphere in 1569 Mercator would depict the arctic regions quite differently.

If you, reader, wish to know the distance to certain places, measure it as adjusted by the compass placed on the equator; the distance will be 18 Spanish miles, 20 French miles, 15 German miles, 60,000 podes, 500 stadia.

This comparison of measurements suggests that it was Mercator himself who calculated the conversions, though he did not mention this anywhere. Nor did he explain the method he used to arrive at these results.

In a period marked by diverging views regarding the actual size of the Earth, Mercator estimated its circumference to be 21,600,000 podes or 180,000 stadia. The globe’s scale is roughly 1:30,000,000.

On his terrestrial globe, Mercator divided the known world into five parts: Europe, Africa, Asia, America et la Quinta, a recently discovered southern continent. New Guinea does not appear. Nor do Australia and New Zealand, which would not be discovered until the wave of expeditions to the South Seas in the 18th century.

Mercator was influenced by Ptolemy and Marco Polo but he did not bow to them. He knew how to use their writings while also rectifying and surpassing them, integrating the pragmatic knowledge gleaned from recent discoveries into his work.

Claudius Ptolemy

Almageste influenced Mercator’s representation of the outline of the Mediterranean basin, the interior of Europe, the islands dotting the Gulf of Arabia, the sources of the Nile, the mountains of Africa, the waterways that empty into the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, those that cross Asia, the Indus and Ganges Rivers on the Indian subcontinent and a few other rivers in China and Siberia.

Yet Mercator added considerable breadth and depth to Ptolemy’s legacy. He represented the recently discovered American continent, raised Africa from beneath the blank Southern Ocean all the way to the Cape of Good Hope and revealed new parts of Asia between Cape Comorin and the Malacca peninsula. Groenlandia, Islandia, Norvegia, Livonia and many other names of cities and kingdoms were also new, replacing the ones used by Ptolemy in his day.

Robinson projection of Mercator’s terrestrial globe with an overlay of Ptolemy’s map. @ UNIL

Mercator’s terrestrial globe shows most of the discoveries or geographical reconnaissance reported by contemporary mariners and great explorers. Obviously, these features did not appear in Ptolemy’s work. Mercator thus went a long way towards discrediting the Greek geographer, whose writings were gradually consigned to the dustbin. Mercator can be regarded as the agent of this change and as the founder of modern geography.

Marco Polo

In 1271 Marco Polo left Venice to explore the Orient. Accompanied by two other Venetian merchants, he crossed the high Anatolian plateaus, Iran, Upper Afghanistan, Pamir and Chinese Turkestan, finally arriving in Beijing. He remained in China for sixteen years, travelling extensively around the country. On his return journey he visited Indochina, Ceylon, the shorelines of India and other regions unexplored until then such as the Arabian coast, Ethiopia and the African seaboard down to Zanzibar. Polo’s 20-year odyssey was related from 1298 in The Description of the World, also called The Book of the Marvels of the World.

Mercator drew heavily on this compendium. His globe features a host of islands, kingdoms, provinces and places in the locations cited by Polo, sometimes even with the same spelling.

List of islands

Cacotoria ins[sula] olim Dioscoridis	Cacotoria Island, formerly called Dioscures
Zamzibar visa insula sed nondum perlustrata	Zanzibar, seen but net yet explored Zanzibar is shown, as on Behaim’s globe, south-east of Madagascar
Insulas hic uspiam esse testatur M. Paul. Venetus in quibus certo anni tempore ruc avis apparet tam vastae magnitudinis ut elephantem in sublime attollat	Marcus Paulus Venetus states that there are islands somewhere in this area. At certain times of the year one can observe the rokh, a bird so large that by accounts it can lift an elephant into the air. Several nameless islands below Zanzibar are mentioned in this reference.
Seylan insula	Seylan Island Ceylon, placed in the Gulf of Mohabbat
Java major, cujus incolae antropophagi sunt	Java Minor, divided into eight kingdoms No doubt Borneo
Java minor in octo divisa regna	Java Minor, divided into eight kingdoms No doubt Sumatra or Bali
Petan	This island, located near Java Minor, is undoubtedly Bintam or Bintang, at the tip of the Malaysian peninsula.
Lequeos	Lieu-Kieu, in the Bay of Bengal (Gangeticus sinus)
Zipangri insula gemmis atque auro longe ditissima frustra obsidione tentata a magno Cham Cublai Tartarorum 6 Imp[erator] anno 1289	The island of the Cipanguese, the richest by far in gems and gold, threatened in vain in 1289 with a blockade by the great Kublai Khan, sixth emperor of the Tartars. The archipelago of Japan

List of islands

Close

List of kingdoms and provinces

Mangi nobilissima provincia 9 habet in se regna & 1200 civitates, evicta est a Tartaroru[m] Imp[eratore] Cublai anno 1268. Inter Mangi aute[m] et Zipangri insulam 7448 numeratas ait a nautis insulas M. Paul. Venetus lib. 3 cap. 8.	Mangi, the noblest of the provinces containing nine kingdoms and 1200 towns and cities, was defeated by the Emperor of the Tartars, Kublai, in 1268. Paulus Venetus says in book 3 chapter 8 that between Mangi and the island of Cipango the sailors counted 7448 islands.
Sian regnu[m]	Kingdom of Siam
Cathay regnum opulentiss[um]	The very rich kingdom of Cathay

List of kingdoms and provinces

Close

List of cities

• Milapar (Mylapore)
• Camul
• Ezina
• Siudu
• Canfu (Ganfu)
• Chyna
• Carocoram
• Calacia
• Camballu (Beijing)
• Lop
• Callecut (Calcutta)

List of cities

Close