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Following the journeys of Marco Polo, interest in geography spread throughout Europe. From around c. 1400, the writings of Ptolemy and his successors provided a systematic framework to tie together and portray geographical information. The European global exploration started in the early 15th century with the first Portuguese expeditions to Africa and India, as well as the Discovery of America by Spain in 1492 and continued with a series of European naval expeditions across the Atlantic and later the Pacific and Russian expeditions to Siberia until the 18th century. European overseas expansion led to the rise of colonial empires, with the contact between the Old and New Worlds producing the Columbian Exchange: a wide transfer of plants, animals, foods, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases and culture between the continents. These great voyages of exploration in 16th and 17th centuries revived a desire for both accurate geographic detail, and more solid theoretical foundations. The Geographia Generalis by Bernhardus Varenius and Gerardus Mercator's world map are prime examples of the new breed of scientific geography. The Waldseemüller map Universalis Cosmographia, created by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in April 1507, is the first map of the Americas in which the name "America" is mentioned. It was patterende after a modification of Ptolemy's second projection but expanded to include the Americas.[50] The Waldseemuller Map has been called "America's birth certificate"[51] Waldseemüller also created printed maps called globe gores, that could be cut out and glued to spheres resulting in a globe. Besides those mentioned here, there were many other geographers of the Medieval and Early Modern eras.[52] |
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