What effect did Exploration have on the ways people thought about the Earth?

1. What effect did Exploration have on the ways people thought about the Earth?

2. Early in history, there were many misconceptions about the Earth.

3. MATH ALERT! Almost 2000 years before Columbus was born, a Greek philosopher named Pythagoras argued that because the moon was a sphere and the sun was a sphere, the Earth should be a sphere. Some 300 years after Pythagoras wrote about Earth being round, another Greek, Eratosthenes, calculated the Earth’s radius.  He used the distance between two cities and the angle of the sun’s rays made at midsummer at noon.  His measurement turned out to be 15 percent too large, but still impressive, considering it was done over 2600 years ago. Hey! That looks like a good book!

4. This early European world map is called a “T–O Map” because of its symbolic design.  Originally drawn in the seventh century, the design had great religious significance.  The “T” represented a Christian cross that placed Jerusalem at the center of the world. It also separated the known continents—Asia, Europe, and Africa.  The “O” enclosing the entire image represented the medieval idea of the world surrounded by water.

5. Where is the world centered in the 1482 version of Ptolomy's map? What might this tell us about the attitudes of Europeans on the eve of Columbus' voyage?

6. Columbus convinced Queen Isabella to fund an expedition. He thought the Earth was smaller than it really was. How can this help Spain??? I want to sail across the sea!

7. I like the sound of that name! Waldseemüller’s 1507 large world map included data gathered during Amerigo Vespucci’s voyages of 1501–1502 to the New World. Waldseemüller christened the new lands “America” in recognition of Vespucci’s understanding that a new continent had been uncovered as a result of the voyages of Columbus and other explorers in the late fifteenth century. This is the only known surviving copy of the 1,000 maps that are believed to have been printed.Waldseemüller’s map represented a revolutionary new geography: it was the first map, printed or manuscript, to depict clearly a separate Western Hemisphere, separated from Asia, with the Pacific as a separate ocean. The map represented a huge leap forward in knowledge, recognizing the newly found American landmass and forever changing the European understanding of a world that was previously divided into only three parts—Europe, Asia, and Africa.

10. How accurate is Sebastian Munster's 1540 map, the first to show the Western Hemisphere? SEBASTIAN MUNSTER (1489-1552) was a German mathematician, cartographer, professor of Hebrew, and, for a time, monk. He was the first mapmaker to produce separate maps of the four known continents and the first to publish a separate map of England. The woodcut map on display is a version of the first map to show North and South America connected to each other but separate from any other land mass Munster’s map was the most widely circulated New World map of its time. It depicts the false Sea of Verrazano and the Northwest Passage and presents a view of North America before the Spanish explorations to the interior of the continent.

11. There are still places on the Earth that are considered to be unexplored! Consider the consequences of this exploration? What are pros and cons?