These are the rare ancient charts used by ancient navigators to explore the Earth, and they are about to be sold in an auction in London and could sell for millions.
Thousands of years ago, explorers used whatever maps they could find to travel to places no one else had been.
Many explorers, including Cristopher Columbus, used rare maps to navigate Earths’ ocean and travel to different continents.
These maps have a mighty history behind them, as many of them were used by some of the most influential explorers from our history books.
Curiously, as noted by the MailOnline, many of these ancient charts are about to go on sale in an auction house in London, UK, and experts warn they could sell for millions, as people will recognize their incredible value.
The auction in London will feature around 400 maps. Among the hundreds of maps is a 1472 ‘T-O’ map, considered the first printed atlas of the planet, displaying how Earth was arranged, according to Christian beliefs.
The map seen here below is one of several ancient charts created by famed geographer and astronomer Claudius Ptolemaeus.
The map was published in an atlas from 1482 and is considered by experts as one of the earliest global maps ever created.
The map is especially known for being the first map to make use of latitude and longitude. According to experts, the origins of this map date back to the known world in the 2nd Century and, according to the MailOnline, it could sell for £80,000 ($110,000). The map shows three sections which are a representation of the world’s oceans and are believed to indicate the belief the Earth was spherical, and not flat.
The ancient chart shows the Mediterranean separating Europe from Africa, and the Red Sea and the River Don separating both from Asia. In addition to offering an extremely detailed map of our planet, the map also features the sons of Noah on Each Continent.
An Italian artist called Francesco Berlinghieri helped create the map and providing ‘considerable artistic appeal’ with the addition of the 12 wind-heads surrounding the ancient chart. This map is believed to have played a crucial role in Cristopher Columbus’ accidental ‘discovery of the new world.’
Although it is noteworthy to mention that Columbus was NOT the first explorer to reach to American Continent, and he didn’t have to discover anything, as the continent was long inhabited by different cultures. If anything, Columbus ‘introduced’ America to the rest of the world.
Speaking about the auction, and the different ancient maps, Cecile Gasseholm, Sotheby’s specialist, told MailOnline:
“Ptolomy made his calculations on the size of the Earth when creating the map with regards to dimensions of the world.”
“The measurements were widely taken as gospel for centuries and into the middle ages. Christopher Columbus, when he set sail in 1492 from the Spanish port of Palos, used these calculations to inform his navigation. To his dismay and later great reward, they turned out to be wildly inaccurate and resulted in the Spanish colonization of the Americas.”
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