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Article: Cartography and Geography
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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CARTOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY
CARTOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY.
The recovery and diffusion of ancient literary and mathematical writings on geography in fifteenth-century Europe gradually transformed cartographic practices in the later fifteenth century. Earlier models of ordering space lacked uniform standards of denoting terrestrial continuity in mathematically consistent terms
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nautical portolan charts noted distance and direction on magnetic compass lines for sea travel, itineraries measured paths of land travel, zonal maps divided the globe, while symbolic
mappae mundi
situated Asia, Africa, and Europe in a circle centered, for theological reasons, at Jerusalem. Renaissance ...