Previously Hidden Text on a 500-Year-Old Map Reveals New Clues About the Cartographer's Sources and Its Influences on Important Maps That Came Later (nationalgeographic.com)

Greg Miller, writing for National Geographic: This 1491 map is the best surviving map of the world as Christopher Columbus knew it as he made his first voyage across the Atlantic. In fact, Columbus likely used a copy of it in planning his journey. The map, created by the German cartographer Henricus Martellus, was originally covered with dozens of legends and bits of descriptive text, all in Latin. Most of it has faded over the centuries. But now researchers have used modern technology to uncover much of this previously illegible text. In the process, they've discovered new clues about the sources Martellus used to make his map and confirmed the huge influence it had on later maps, including a famous 1507 map by Martin Waldseemuller that was the first to use the name "America."

Comments

Re:What about Leif Ericsson

[dargaud]

But they didn't draw maps and they didn't make this discovery known to the rest of the world. There's the difference.

Re:Can we...

[mrvan]

That's the state of the current web. :(

Try browsing with JS and all cross-site requests disabled, you'll quickly find that gopher was more informative than the mess we have now...