Medieval Map on Display

One of the finest maps from the middle ages is on display at the World Festival of Maps in Chicago.

The map, known as Mappamundi, depicts the world as it was known to some in 1452, which consisted of only Europe, Asia and Africa. Drawn up in a T-O configuration, where an imaginary capital ‘T’ inside a circle separates the three continents, Mappamundi was not designed for navigational purposes, but rather to be consistent with a medieval church that placed Jerusalem at the center of the world.

It is also the oldest original map in the American Geographical Society’s Library holdings.  

Other artifacts from the holdings featured at the festival include a 1910 map of the Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay that was drawn from memory by an Inuit and a map showing the worldwide distribution of sperm and right whales in 1851.

The exhibit runs through Jan. 27, 2008.

—LiveScience Staff

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