The 1418 map in relation to California
By Dr. Gunnar Thompson
The 1418 map has some coastal similarities to the DeVirga map. The closest
relationship that I can detect is between the 1418 map and the Ming Shanhai Yudi
Quantu which appears to be a copy an earlier traditional map from about 1428–near the
culmination of Zheng He’s expeditions of discovery. I see three possible
areas of borrowing from European sources on the 1418 map: 1) the four Polar
Isles; 2) the Mediterranean Sea; and 3) the shape of South America with two
bulges on the western coast is vaguely similar to some 16th century European
maps. On the other hand, the Europeans might have borrowed this feature from
Chinese sources. I am particularly intrigued by the large island in the
middle of the South Pacific west of Chile. There is an island that is
somewhat like this on a map by Mercator (1565) where it is identified as
Nova Guinea–but it is situated much farther west near the coast of Asia.
Historians might argue that the portrayal of California as an island
indicates that the map was copied from European sources in the 18th century.
Supposedly, the first cartographer to show the California Island idea was
Briggs in 1625–and such maps were popular in Europe until about 1750.
However, several cartographers actually showed California as an island at a
much earlier date: Sylvanus (1511), Bordono (1528), and Munster (1544). The
map has some regions that are very distorted which is probably the result of
this being a rather schematic map done for the Emperor as opposed to a map
that was intended for navigational purposes. It is an excellent example of the
general Ming knowledge of world geography at the time of Zheng He’s voyages.
It clearly shows that the entire world was mapped by the Chinese.
