What I find really interesting about Explorers and their backers from these times is their
mindset and
perception of the world that lay out there. Here are some titbits which all link together to give an insight:
1)
WRONG GEOGRAPHY: This gives us a rough idea of what Colombus
thought the world looked like.
TITLE: Sketch maps of the equatorial belt of the world
DATE: 1503-06/1516-22
AUTHOR: Bartolommeo Columbus and Alessandro Zorzi
DESCRIPTION: Christopher Columbus was marooned in Jamaica for almost one year during his fourth voyage. From there on July 7, 1503, he wrote a letter to King Ferdinand, reporting on his exploration of Nicaragua and Panama. A copy of the letter was brought to Rome in 1506 by Columbus's brother, Bartholomew [a.k.a. Bartolommeo], who had accompanied the Admiral on this final voyage. Bartholomew was seeking the Pope's support to persuade the King of Spain to grant a commission for colonizing and Christianizing the Central American coast.
From here:
http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/Ren/Ren1/Reno.html
Which is PACKED with maps, sketches and noted by the very explorers themselves. CLICK IT!
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2)
"MONSTERS" and "HEROES":
Medieval geography placed Europe at the center of the world, with all other people and places falling at the periphery. This perception of the world led to an ethnocentrism that defined the European mode of looking at the world. Westerners considered themselves the standard for comparing all other people and places. Thus, people falling outside the confines of the known and controlled west were perceived as strange, deviant, and essentially monstrous.
Westerners regarded these deviant monsters with a combination of fascination and revulsion. Although Europeans perceived monsters and horrible and uncivilized, they were still irrevocably drawn to them as well. They reveled in descriptions of bizarre cultures and characteristics that differred so markedly from their own.
Cynocephali - Dog-headed people who communicate through barking. They are carnivourous hunters dressed in animal skins. According to some legends, they have huge teetch and can breathe fire.
From
The Medieval World View
These explorers were heroes for obvious reasons. They, and the whole society which surrounded them, really believed that there were all kinds of monsters out there. All kinds of tales tell of men with tusks, or men with pig's heads or any other kind of monstrosity of the imagination. Here are some examples:
*A Munster Ptolemaic map of the Pakistan/Afghanistan area, 1540*
See the whole thing
here.
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3)
"
Most medieval maps were not meant to get someone from one place to another. They were not objects that were carried around in the vest pocket of the weary traveller. Quite to the contrary, most medieval maps were either works of art hanging on cathedral walls meant to show the grandeur of Creation, or illustrations in manuscripts describing the characteristics of Creation. Like most artifacts of the Middle Ages, maps are rare. And, while we know a great deal about medieval maps, any discussion of this kind must begin with the simple caveat that we cannot know about what has not survived. We must work with what we have.
source Not a great source but he raises some good points.
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4)
King Manuel I (b. 1469, d. 1521) believed old legends which described India as a rich Christian kingdom on the eastern rim of the Muslim world. Manuel hoped to contact the Christian King of India, and to negotiate with him an anti-Muslim military alliance.
It was not easy for King Manuel to choose a leader for the planned expedition to India. The most experienced man available was
Captain Bartholomew Diaz, who had sailed all the way down the west coast of Africa in 1488, reaching the southern tip of that continent. Unfortunately, Diaz had proved incapable of suppressing a mutiny. After rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Diaz had ordered his sick and starving men to sail on to India, but they had refused to obey him, and he had reluctantly agreed to turn back.
King Manuel, feeling that a more forceful commander was needed for his new expedition around Africa, selected Captain-Major Vasco da Gama, who seemed unlikely to tolerate any mutinies. {Vasco da Gama} was a grim, cynical man, notoriously merciless, an expert at torturing prisoners.
To make use of the experience of Bartholomew Diaz, King Manuel put him in charge of organizing and planning the new expedition. He ordered Diaz to spare no expense to make sure that Vasco da Gama would be properly equipped. Diaz oversaw the building of two new ships for the expedition to India, and he had two older ships refurbished. All the ships were armed with the improved cannon that had recently been developed in western Europe. Diaz made certain that the ships of the new expedition carried enough food to supply their crews for three years with generous rations of wine, salt beef, biscuits, lentils, sardines, plums, almonds, onions, garlic, mustard, salt, sugar, and honey.
This kind of map is the result of those expeditions. This particular one is an Italian map of "Calecut" by
Giordano Ziletti.
DATE: 1564
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5) Here you can see the routes taken out of Western Europe by such explorers:
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6) This is the kind of map Muslims were making during the same time period. I can't make head nor tail of it to be frank. (South is at the top btw)
al-Istakhri's world map, Arabic, 977/1570 A.D.*
oriented with South at the top
rince Henry the Navigator
The monsters are imaginative too
