The First Images of the Ob River on Western European Maps

Abstract

Martin Waldseemüller’s maps, published in 1507 and 1513 in Strasbourg, are the first maps to bear the name of the new continent, America. They reveal the discovery of the New World by Spanish and Portuguese navigators. None of the researchers, however, have noticed that the same maps of North Asia (the area of present-day Western Siberia) for the first time show a river flowing into the Arctic Ocean. The peculiarity of Western European cartographic sources at the turn of the 15th–16th centuries lies in the fact that the reflection of the world picture was based on the tradition of the geographer Claudius Ptolemy. The desire to publish the “New Ptolemy” prompted the members of the Vosges Gymnasium, where Waldseemüller worked, to combine traditional knowledge of the world with the latest geographical discoveries. The article analyzes the content of Waldseemüller’s maps, provides a comparative analysis of the maps that formed the basis for the creation of these images, and traces the borrowings of data from the German cartographer by subsequent authors of the 16th century. As a result of careful study of inscriptions and legends, the author concludes that the depiction of areas of North Asia on the maps of the German cartographer dates back to the maps of Henry Martell of 1489–1491. A large map of the world by this author is kept at Yale University, but many of its inscriptions have faded or disappeared. The painstaking work of the American researcher Chet van Duzer, who published a monograph on the map in 2019, gave researchers the opportunity to examine the source carefully. The comparison between this map and an earlier round map of Fra Mauro of 1459 suggested that Martell, in his turn, borrowed the image of the North Asian river from this Venetian monk. Thus, the process of borrowing and clarifying the information about the previously unknown river is traced. At the end of the article, the author proves that European cartographers displayed the latest information about the Ob river, which came from Russia.