An Austrian collector has found what may be the oldest globe, dated 1504, to depict the New World, engraved with immaculate detail on two conjoined halves of ostrich eggs.
The globe, about the size of a grapefruit, is labeled in Latin and includes what were considered exotic territories such as Japan, Brazil and Arabia. North America is depicted as a group of scattered islands. The globe's lone sentence, above the coast of Southeast Asia, is "Hic Sunt Dracones."
" 'Here be dragons' — a very interesting sentence," said Thomas Sander, editor of Portolan, the journal of the Washington Map Society. The journal on Monday published a comprehensive analysis of the globe by collector Stefaan Missinne. "In early maps, you would see images of sea monsters; it was a way to say, 'There's bad stuff out there,' " it said.
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