HIS 826 Lecture 7: Instrument of Exploration: the compass, maps, ships, and guns
23 Jan 2021
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Instrument of exploration: the compass, maps, ships, and guns. Ancient mediterranean navigation: used sun, stars, winds, and migrating birds: knowledge of tides and currents, emphasis on local landmarks. Ancient egyptians: sounding line to enable shops to navigate shoals, shallow water, underwater rocks (started with a very long pole: became a rope with a weight with knots at regular intervals. Phoenician maps (1000 bc): not preserved kept top secret: they were the best navigators, pioneered night sailing, etc. Roman road maps: focused on distance between places and were difficult to follow for navigation. Globes: would allow accurate 3-dimensional depiction but ptolemy decided globes would have to be enormous: too expensive and you wouldn"t be able to see everything at once. Europeans and ignored ptolemy: made jerusalem the centre of the map: maps of the dark ages: focused on getting people to jerusalem and heaven (called t-o maps, medieval mappa mundi: zonal map (temperatures), t-o map (continents),
