Amazing that people could have produced such a map
before the enlightenment or the reformation!
Just amazing!

Actually, it appears we let the "pretty pictures" of the cartographer's conventions of the time blind us to the actual symbology on the map. At the time, maps (especially those collected in ornate volumes) were like works of art instead of our present-day technical diagrams. (And if you had a customer who could pay for something as ornate as the Carta Marina with all its cartographic bells and whistles, you'd better include some artwork and decoration to make the price worthwhile.)

The "sea monsters... sinking galleons, sea snakes, and wolves peeing against trees" were decorative conventions of the time. (For all we know, the mapmakers were probably having a little fun after the boring tracing of the coastline and figured their customers and users were probably smart enough to know the difference.)

A quibble: 1539 isn't medieval. It's completely early modern.

By 1539 the Renaissance was fully underway, the Reformation had begun in earnest, and the New World had been discovered and mostly conquered.

Hmmmm, that was just about the time Ponce de Leon was looking for the Fountain of Youth.

I look forward to our rediscovering that one, but it'll have to be pretty soon to do me any good.

Ken:

A story on this map up here about a week ago said that modern scientists had determined that the locations of those sultry mermaids you can see if you enlarge the map correspond to areas with big, fat, ugly walrus' and they now hypothesize that is what the (desperate, wouldn't you say?) sailors were actually seeing.

And you were lamenting the passing of the unicorn!

Harry:

Let me know when we stop looking.

H.D.,

Some scholars place 1539 as "Late Medieval"
rather than "Early Modern" not that I quibble
too much with your quibble.

I dunno whether I'm aging gracefully, but I'm dang sure aging.

This may not be that surprising. After mariners learned to find longitude but before they figured out how to find longitude, they made voyages out of sight of land by sailing along a particular longitude and writing down what they experienced in minute detail. Then, if they made it back, the next voyager would bring along a copy and try to find exactly the same things, while writing down everything in minute detail. (Hey, another example of intelligent selection.) Things like prevailing currents, prevailing winds, "after two weeks, we started seeing floating flowers like those found on Medeira" would have been very important to them.

That second longitude should be latitude.

The Ancients and the Moderns. To hear Madison and Hamilton tell the tale, they had discovered new principles of government that would allow an extensive republic.

I think you overstate the case, David. After all, mariners had been sailing back and forth between Europe and N. America for a very long time before Ben Franklin did something like what you describe and noticed -- as no one else ever had -- the Gulf Stream.

The Polynesians, supposed to have been the greatest pre-technology navigators, were always getting lost.

Orrin's original statement was the same as de Santillana's argument in "Hamlet's Mill," though I bet he didn't get it from that pagan.

I went back to my copy and discovered that I have a copy of a 16th century map, several in fact, in Chapter VI, "Amlodhi's Quern."

The one by Olaus Magnus shows a sea serpent dragging a ship down. The serpent's tail almost touches Helgoland, and after many contortions, its head stretches about half across the North Sea.

This is far too vague to be of any use to navigators.