Talk:Fra Mauro map

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A fact from Fra Mauro map appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 4 April 2005. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the 1459 Fra Mauro map reports that "a junk from India" rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1420, around 70 years before the navigations of Vasco da Gama?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2005/April.

Wikipedia

[Untitled][edit]

Thanks for the article! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.248.164.223 (talk) 08:32, 4 April 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"The map was completed on April 24, 1459, and sent to Portugal, but didn't survive." It didn't survive to present days or it didn't survive enough to reach Portugal? --201.1.188.4 17:16, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Name and merge[edit]

What does "Fra Mauro" mean? Add to the article, please Shandris^the ^azylean 16:29, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since Wikipedia is not a universal directory of names, it doesn't aid the reader to have a separate article for Fra Mauro, who is only encyclopediable for this map. I suggest the material there be merged here, and Fra Mauro be made a redirect. --Wetman 01:35, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unclear linking of word[edit]

The word ”miglia” links to an article that does not explain the word. Did he mean a Roman mile or what?

2009-02-21 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

Is this map really from 1450 (or earlier?) or is this a copy? (or even a hoax?)[edit]

For the 15th century, the Fra Mauro map is very detailed and colorful. Obviously the layout is odd, but at least the cartographer got the Mediterranean area nearly perfect. If I'm reading the article correctly, a copy was made from this particular map and lost. So this obviously cannot be that copy and is in fact the original. I have also read that it is a copy of one possessed by Marco Polo. Whether that is true of not, all maps of the time were likely copies, at least in part, of other existing maps.

If this map is indeed from 1450 or earlier, there are some anomalies that shouldn't be there. At least not according to our Western-centered historical filter. There is controversy about the Chinese junks and Africa, and obviously Pre-Colombian visitation to the Americas has been debated for centuries. These aren't the anomalies I am referring to though. Although if indeed there are portions of Africa here that had not been 'discovered' yet, that would only support investigation into the other anomalies.

The text is too small for me to read and translate, and there is a book which translates the text on the map but I haven't read it. Now, I know from looking at old maps created in Europe that Asian and African details were less reliable then Western Europe ones for obvious reasons. I know cartographers used multiple sources in piecing together their maps. Mistakes are common, mythological places often appear, and areas are mislabeled (or a blanket term like "Tatars" and/or "Barbarians" is used). The Fra Mauro maps has places labeled both correctly and incorrectly in Africa and Asia. For example, assuming Thebet is supposed to be Tibet, it's in the wrong place.

Why is Asia so large? This is where the anomalies I am speaking of are. The area labeled Sinvs Gangeticus (based on the name, I'm guessing that's supposed to be near India) is shown with mountains and rivers and features that are familiar. I'm not sure if this is a reliable source or not, but this person came to a similar conclusion:

http://www.marcopolovoyages.com/Articles/PortugueseMap1436.html (Dr.Gunnar Thompson)

Why is Florida and the Gulf of Mexico on this map in 1450? Why have only a few people noticed this? I know that our brains see things where they aren't there, but just fire up Google Earth and compare them. What's labeled here as Taprobana is probably part of Mexico. Taprobana has a rectangular shape on most other maps. Fra Mauro was likely using a map with North America attached to Asia and when he drew this he was applying places known to have existed in or around Asia (Java, the mythical Tapropbana) to Asia (which included an attached NA) from his source material. That's original research though. Which is why I won't argue about whether that smaller Giava is Ciava (hard to tell) not far from where Cuba would be. Or the curiously named Saylam island near where the Solomon Islands really are is called that for similar reasons.

Anyways, is the above link a reliable source to include anything about Marco Polo's map and the region which is obviously Florida? It's common sense when you look at it, but Wikipedia needs a little more than common sense. Pre-Colombian expeditions to the Americas from Moorish Spain and Portugal are getting more debate as historians are finally letting go of the whole Columbus thing. It's important not to let the Colombian propaganda cloud our best judgments — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.192.251.93 (talk) 23:47, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No one believes or has believed for decades that Columbus was the first European. Thompson was an associate professor in Counselor education at the University of Hawaii with a PhD in rehabilitation counselling. He believes that the Americas had been visited by voyagers sent by Queen Hatshepsut, King Solomon, and Queen Elizabeth I, these including Marco Polo, Chinese adventurer Tzu Fu, Admiral Zheng He, Nicholas of Lynn, Amerigo Vespucci, Francis Drake, and King Arthur. In his self-published book American Discovery he wrote "Native Americans are the first discoverers, occupying the Americas for at least 300,000 years." In other words, before Homo Sapiens. So no, he's not a reliable source. Dougweller (talk) 10:11, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thompson may not be a reliable source per Wikipedia standards, however, he may be on to something. It is a real shame few others are discussing this map (and others) and the resemblence to the Gulf of Mexico along with Florida. That would be one heck of a coincidence. Also do not have a high resolution version to determine if the Giava off the "Flordia" coast starts with a C or not. I doubt it relates to Cuba, but it would be phonetically similar. If this part of America was mapped and confused by cartographers to be part of the Asian continent, it would make sense considering how America was called India. Again, just a shame nobody reliable is stating what looks quite obvious — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.228.232.81 (talk) 03:51, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone who thinks they spot the Gulf of Mexico and Florida on this map is just deluded. Admiral Zheng He may not have visited America, but he is also not controversial, having led a huge fleet from China all the way to Africa on seven different occasions. One of Fra Mauro's sources, Niccolo ,was in Sumatra and India during the same period, and it seems obvious to me that he both gathered news from Zheng He and transmitted it to Fra Mauro. I frankly can see no place on this whole map that bears any relation to Florida.Daniel Sparkman (talk) 18:35, 28 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Inverted?[edit]

The image accompanying "Orientation and Center" says that it is "inverted according to the modern North-South orientation" but, in fact, the image is the same south-at-top orientation as in other parts of the article.

--23.119.204.117 (talk) 05:15, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tone[edit]

Can the tone of this article be improved so that the accurate elements in the map are not presented and discussed as if they were inaccuracies. I will try to make some changes. --Acjelen (talk) 23:04, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Map scans/photos[edit]

For a long time the main image here has been File:FraMauroDetailedMap.jpg, which is as far as I can tell a scan/photo published by the library holding the map, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. The current file is 5,000 × 5,000 pixels, and has a pretty high level of detail, though there's an even higher resolution version of the same scan (?) which can be browsed here, at the Museo Galileo website. There's also a different very high resolution scan available here from Factum Arte, which has a somewhat different white balance. Having never seen this map in person, I can't tell you whether either one of these seems precisely accurate color-wise.

Recently user:Archaeodontosaurus apparently visited the library and took a new photograph of this map, File:(Venice) Fra'Mauro's World Map - Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana.jpg, not including the frame. This one is nominally 8,028 × 8,354 pixels, but zooming all the way into it, it looks like the camera lens and/or compression algorithm couldn't really keep up with the sensor pixel density, and the amount of detail included is roughly what you'd get with about an image with 2,000 or 3,000 pixels per side. The previous scan published by the museum is significantly sharper, showing more and clearer detail (as one example, the blue text at top left is clearly legible in File:FraMauroDetailedMap.jpg, but looks like a bunch of weird vaguely letter-like blobs in the new image). The white balance of the new image also seems off to me, but again, I haven't visited this map in person, so can't tell you for sure what it should be.

Anyway, user:Archaeodontosaurus, thanks for taking photos of the world's cultural heritage and uploading it to Wikimedia Commons: that's a valuable activity to keep doing, and I don't want to discourage you. However, I reverted your swapping of the main image here, as I think the previous image is overall better, despite the nominally slightly lower resolution.

If we want to host an even higher resolution copy, maybe someone can even take the time to download the image data from the Museo Galileo version of the scan and stitch it back together into a single large image. Or perhaps we should just link to zoomable web pages hosted elsewhere.

All the best, –jacobolus (t) 19:09, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Your analysis is good. The color temperature, on the other hand, is correct. But the card is in a very dark place (to avoid light-related degradation) and it is very difficult to do better. It remains an interesting challenge... --Archaeodontosaurus (talk) 05:37, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]