Old Sea Map with Monsters January 8, 2008
Posted by cantueso in Latin, Philosophy, drawing, geography, history, legend.trackback
There is a famous map called Carta Marina. It is about 500 years old, depicts the North of Europe and includes sea monsters. The monsters are seen attacking the ships and each other.
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Some monsters look like big fish, others more like serpents and crabs, and many have the faces of humans looking stupid, as if establishing a correlation between stupidity and evil.
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The geography is all wrong, as the map is based on the sailors’ ideas and memories rather than on any calculations. The problem is that now one cannot take these pictures serious anymore. Their terror has become our entertainment.
The red sea serpent would be about the size of Rhode Island and it bites into a ship as if it were a bocadillo.
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And don’t they look as if they were walking on the surface of the water? The monster on the left has feet like a dog and seems to enjoy her conversation with that neighbour who looks like a thistle with a moustache. –
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The swimmers, too, were at risk. The fish that attack the swimmer are all as big as he is, but the monster that attacks the fish is many times bigger.
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There is another map called the Abraham Ortelius also featuring lots of zoology in the sea surrounding Iceland.
Columbus would have had maps like these to figure out how to get to India which turned out to be America. These maps are from his time.
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And here is another dream boy. It looks like he is going to eat the ship including passengers and crew.
Why did they imagine the monsters all so big?
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However, the real monsters that live in the sea and have been photographed are smaller and much less dangerous. They are not imagined, but they still look like somebody you know, here coming from mypettalks.com/content/gallery/fish/
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See? the monster is as big as an island and it is being attacked by smaller monsters that bite his belly.
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This is a real monster, a deep sea fish from Wiki. They say that 90% of the ocean’s volume is not accessible to humans. It does not say why.
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And remember Melville’s White Whale?
Here are two spermwhales getting attacked by some little boats.
The picture is in the Penguin edition of Moby Dick and on Ismael’s WordPress blog
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Added June 2, 2009:
In answer to some search keys received for this post:
The map with all those monsters is not from the Middle Ages. It is from the same century as this map of the US. One is by Olaus Magnus (1490 – 1557), and the other is by Abraham Ortelius (1527 – 1598).
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A very large version of the America map is at the US library of Congress http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/
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That map is definitely fun to look at though, I spent a good half an hour looking through it all trying to make up reasons in my head for the different pictures portrayed on it.
Thanks for the link
Hello!
I think the monsters are the personification of the human horror of that who is beyond his well known knowledge and securtity.
To Leuchtspur:
That is certainly so, but at that time, not so long ago, most of the Earth was unknown, most still legendary and terrific.
These monsters are all of them a bit outdated, considering they look as harmless as gold fish except of course in size. I think you’d better go on with your Bible studies. What the hell did they think painting beasties the size of Scotland?
You don’t seem to know that now the sea has again become dangerous because of pirates. They approach during the night and climb up and start shooting even before those on board realize what is going on. And then they order the ship to the shore and keep it there until the owners pay ransom.