expert have restore one of the largest eff early single-valued function of the earth , and it ’s splendiferous , mythic animate being and all .
The hand - drawn map was create 430 years ago by Urbano Monte . 100 by and by , collector David Rumsey and his nephew have painstakingly scanned and digitally stitched together all 60 pages previously bound in an atlas vertebra , completing the map for the first time as it was originally intended .
While piddling is known about the sixteenth - century cartographer who made it , the newly bushel map gives insight into how hoi polloi at the time empathise the domain .
create in 1587 in Milan , Italy , it shows the world in great point , and was quite advanced for its day . The world as seen from above , looking down on the North Pole , was a perspective not usually used by mapmakers at the time . Monte ’s characterisation of Japan also shows a lot more topographic point names than map made by his contemporaries , likely because Monte met with Nipponese delegations when they visited Milan in 1585,David Rumsey writeson his website .
However , the mathematical function also shows some of the misconceptions illustrative of the clock time , from unicorns to ships being set on by mermen .
Google Maps this is n’t , but it is a fascinating look at how cartographers saw the world at the time .
The unusual physical body of the function , a rope from above , was because the mapping - Creator want to give an indication of the shape of the Earth .
" Monte want to show the entire world as tight as possible to a three - dimensional orbit using a two - dimensional surface , " Rumseyexplained . " His projection does just that , notwithstanding the distortions around the south celestial pole . "
When georeferenced and then laid out in a more intimate map shape , various distortions of the world can be seen , as well as some conversant and fairly accurate shapes . Antarctica is extremely prominent on Monte ’s map , which " give him a Brobdingnagian area to indulge in all the conjecture about Antarctica that proliferate in geographic descriptions in the sixteenth century " , accord to David Rumsey Cartography associate .
The whole of the single-valued function can be viewed onDavid Rumsey ’s blog , as well as a video of the map project onto a globe using Google Earth .
