Chapter summary:
There is a host of evidence suggesting Waldseemueller got his information from the same source as Schoener for the creation of their world maps. Both show Quinsay (described by Toscanelli) and both show the island of Cipangu (Japan). Both have the same latitude error for the north coast of South America. The two globes, Schoener and Waldseemueller, are so similar both must have been copied from the same original source, which must also be Toscanelli’s source – Toscanelli’s names and descriptions being the same as Schoener’s and Waldseemueller’s. Waldseemueller must have copied from a globe when publishing his 1507 maps and the globe from which Waldseemueller copied was the same globe from which Toscanelli copied.
Waldseemueller says he got his information from Vespucci. Assuming that Vespucci reached 45 degrees south, and that Waldseemueller had received his reports, Waldseemueller could have obtained from him the information necessary to draw the Atlantic coast of South America. Vespucci was an excellent navigator and had Regiomontanus’s ephemeris tables, which enabled him to calculate latitude and longitude. Yet Vespucci never claimed to have reached the Pacific. He specifically told the Florentine Ambassador he had failed to find the passage which led from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Waldseemueller’s map shows the Pacific, the Andes up to Ecuador and then the Sierra Madre of Mexico and the Sierra Nevada of California. So for Waldseemueller to have credited Vespucci for his depiction of Pacific America (a credit he later withdrew) is nonsense. Waldseemueller must have copied his map.
Experts from Saint Dié, France, where Waldseemueller created his world map, have concluded that Waldseemueller had received from Portugal a copy of the master globe. This was copied from the one which Toscanelli sent to Portugal after it was received from the Chinese in 1434. So the very first map of the Americas was, in fact, neither Waldseemueller’s nor Schroener’s but an even earlier Chinese globe.
A comparison between the Shanhai Yudi Quantu (c.1400) and the 1418 map should reflect the knowledge gained from Zheng He’s voyages in the period 1400-1418; a comparison between the 1418 map and the Green globe (stripping our the knowledge Waldseemueller obviously gained from Cabot, Columbus and Vespucci) should reflect the knowledge gained from Zheng He’s voyages between 1418 and 1434. The “Straits of Magellan” are shown on the green globe but not on the 1418 map. Vespucci told the Florentine Ambassador he had not found the Straits: the green globe was published before Magellan set sail. So it appears the Straits were discovered by Zheng He’s fleets between 1418 and 1434, as was the Antarctic which is much more accurately drawn on the green globe than on the 1418 map – Europeans did not chart the Antarctic until three centuries after the green globe. The discovery of the Americas and the first circumnavigation of the world came as a direct consequence of the generosity of Zheng He’s emissary who gave the Chinese globe of the world to the Pope in 1434.
Further reading:
Johann Müller Regiomontanus
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Regiomontanus.html
http://historymedren.about.com/od/rwho/p/who_regiomontan.htm
http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/starry/regiomontanus.html
http://press.princeton.edu/books/maor/sidebar_c.pdf
The Maps of Regiomontanus
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1149745
Johannes Regiomontanus: Calendar
http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/aug1999.html
German Celestial globe, 1533-35
http://www.ingenious.org.uk/See/?s=S1&ObjectID=%7BCEF2C2C6-382E-D6A7-3C1E-CD98BA614496%7D&source=Search&target=SeeMedium
N. M. Swerdlow, a review of Regiomontanus: His Life and Work by Ernst Zinner; Ezra Brown
http://www.jstor.org/pss/234281
A Humanist History of Mathematics? Regiomontanus’s Padua Oration in Context
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/journal_of_the_history_of_ideas/v067/67.1byrne.html
