Geography before Columbus

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

The ancient Greeks understood the usefulness of recording the knowledge, to improve and teach. Their great scholars were primarily polygraphs, who published in a coherent form the work of their predecessors.

Geography aroused great interest, on the one hand in terms of theoretical geometry, on the other hand, already, to provide maps for travelers. It is not surprising that we find the names of Thales, Herodotus, Parmenides, Aristotle, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, among the pioneers of geography.

All these studies converged 1850 years ago on the work of Ptolemy, one of the best mathematicians of antiquity, whose major title of honor is to have proposed the model of geocentric astronomy which was used until Copernicus (1543).

In 1478, Ptolemy was also the reference for the geography. The Roman edition of his geographical work, then entitled "Cosmographia", is illustrated with 27 maps finely engraved on copper, where location names are displayed in a palaeographic writing that it is readable (with some effort) by the reader of today. We see the world as it was known in the fifteenth century, as the maps from the time of Ptolemy did not survive.

In the sale by Reiss at Königstein from 21 to 23 April, there is a copy of the second Roman edition (1490), which utilized the copper plates of the previous edition. It is estimated 150 K €.

Two years later, in 1492, Columbus went on the ocean, towards the west. The following of this history is known, including its huge impact on cartography.

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

Unsold.

The previous lot was a copy of the 1486 edition of the Cosmographia, published in Ulm. Estimated € 120 K, it was sold 60 K € before fees.

Already last year, I noted a difficulty in selling old scientific books.