First map to mention America goes on permanent display in US
WASHINGTON (AFP) — A 500-year-old map of the world that is the first to mention the name "America" goes on permanent display Thursday at the Library of Congress in Washington.
Often dubbed the birth certificate of America, the map was drafted in 1507 by German monk Martin Waldseemueller in the tiny village of St Die, in what is now the French province of Lorraine.
Five-hundred copies of the map were made at the time, but the only one that has withstood the passage of the centuries is the one that begins a new life in the New World on Thursday.
The historic map had been carefully preserved by a German princely family, who kept it in their castle library for nearly 400 years.
It was rediscovered in 1901, and sold to the Library of Congress in 2003 for 10 million dollars.
"It's the first map to depict a separate and full western hemisphere with the two oceans that will become the Atlantic and Pacific, and it's the first document of any kind on which the name America appears," John Hebert, head of the geography and map division at the Library of Congress told reporters.
The map, which measures eight feet by four feet (2.32 meters x 1.20 meters) is made up of 12 panels.
It sits in the Library of Congress behind a sheet of laminated, tempered, non-reflective glass for protection.
The accuracy with which the map portrays the Americas still surprises experts.
"It's 80 percent correct," Hebert said.
"At the equator, the map is only within a 70-mile margin of error," he added.
Waldseemueller probably used information gleaned from the transatlantic voyages of Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci -- after whom America is named -- and unknown Portuguese and Spanish sources, to draw the map, the first to depict a new continent, not attached to Asia, between two oceans.
"I suspect there must have been multiple expeditions between 1492 and 1506, and that the Spanish and Portuguese probably went around the bottom of South America and came to the west coast," Hebert said.
Historians have also long wondered why Waldseemüller used the name America only on the 1507 map, dropping it later for "Terra Incognita".
They also ponder why he named the new continent for Vespucci and not Columbus, who 'discovered' America in 1492.
Jay Kislak, a banker who has given part of his map collection -- including a 1516 Waldseemueller -- to the Library of Congress, offered a possible explanation.
"Vespucci had better contact with the press than Columbus, he had better public relations people. He was a better writer, he was from the upper class, a navigator, worked for the Medici, and wrote very well," Kislak said.
"That's why we are America, not Columbia. That's the power of the press," he said.
