1380 Zeno Narrative chart. Pre-Columbian discovery of America. RGS 1873 map
£110
SKU: P-6-110846
Carta da Navegar de Nicolo et Antonio Zeni Furono III Tre Montana Lano. M.CCC.LXXX. [Navigational chart of Nicolò and Antonio Zeno, who were in Thule (or the Three Mountains) in the year 1380—Sketch Map of the Countries Referred to in the Zeno Narrative]
Pre-Columbian Discovery of America. A 19th-century lithographed reproduction of the so-called Carta da Navegar attributed to the Venetian brothers Nicolò Zeno and Antonio Zeno, issued under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society to illustrate an article by Richard Henry Major, “The Site of the Lost Colony of Greenland Determined, and Pre-Columbian Discoveries of America Confirmed, from 14th-Century Documents.” Major, map librarian of the British Museum from 1844 to 1880, argued that the Zeno material demonstrated that “a hundred years before the great voyage of Columbus … there still existed remains of the ancient Scandinavian colonists in North America.” The map visualises the geography described in the controversial Zeno Narrative, according to which the brothers voyaged across the North Atlantic around 1380, supposedly reaching North America. The narrative itself only entered circulation in 1558, when their descendant Nicolò Zeno the Younger published a map and a series of letters he claimed to have discovered in a storeroom of the Zeno family home. Beyond the recognisable Islanda (Iceland) and Engronelant (Greenland), Frisland—now recognised as a phantom island—went on to appear on virtually all maps of the North Atlantic until the 1660s, while Icaria is generally understood as a corrupted or secondary rendering of Icelandic or adjacent North Atlantic nomenclature. More intriguingly, Estotiland and Drogeo were interpreted by Major as corresponding broadly to parts of North America, and as evidence for the brothers’ alleged pre-Columbian discovery of the continent. A leading Victorian authority on historical cartography, Major’s interpretation exemplifies 19th-century scholarly efforts to reconcile medieval documentary sources with modern geographical knowledge and to reassess the possibility of pre-Columbian exploration of the North Atlantic.
Size 29 x 40 cm | 11.5 x 15.5 inches
Date Published: 1873
Type: Antique Royal Geographical Society map with related text pages
Author: Royal Geographical Society
Publication: The Geographical Journal
Condition: Good |
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