Maps

The European map from 1507 can tell us which places or things were important to them and which were not. The first and most obvious is that they thought the world was much smaller. They cut out almost all of the Americas and a good deal of Asia and set them much closer together than they actually are. They assumed that the Americas extended not much further than what they had already encountered and that the rest was water. They also assumed that the Americas were about equal distance from Europe/Asia on either side. The details on the map are concentrated in Europe and the Middle East. There are very few in Russia, East Asia, and Africa. This seems to tell us that Europe acknowledged the power of the Muslim Empires but not the power that China had. The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires are all recognized and detailed in the map, whereas the Songhay Empire is barely recognized. The places that are mostly unknown to the Europeans like Africa and Eastern Asia, suggesting that they think the unknown is much bigger than they are, which is interesting because that would suggest a sort of humble nature. It is more likely that transportation was less available in those areas, making them seems larger and more spread out than Europe.

I would imagine that a Chinese map would be much more defined and detailed in Asia and possibly even Africa. The area that is Russia would be much more detailed in a Chinese map, but the Middle Eastern parts of the map would be roughly the same. The southern part of Asia would be much closer to correct, and the islands off of China would be more accurately placed. I think that the two maps would be the same in that the two poles would still be missing, but I think that China would have an even more vague view of the Americas. I think that they would have made them an even smaller sliver of land than it already is in the European map. Japan would also be much more defined. A map made by Ottoman cartographers would be very accurate in most of Africa and Europe. Africa would be much more defined than in the other maps, which is to be expected, because the Islamic power stretched fairly deep into Africa, whereas the Christian power had only a couple areas and the Buddhist power had none.