There are a lot of descriptive things in this map. One is that there are ships all over the oceans that surround the Americas, and also to the left of the top of South America is what looks to be a sea monster. There are four of these monster-like creature drawings on this map. At the top of the map there also appers to be drawings of what the towns, possibly sky views of what looks like in either different parts of America, or different parts of the world.
The ships might represent different ways/paths/routes that different people took on a voyage to America(s). It also seems as though this drawing has South America pretty accurate, but North America seems way off, although I'm not sure if this is because they were still exploring America or not.
Another thing I noticed about this map was that most of the flags on the ships look the same, excluding only a couple.
The last thing was that on both sides of the map there seems to be drawings maybe of how men dealt with different things, such as one of the pictures on the left look like they're almost arresting a man for doing something wrong.
http://www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps/1665b5.jpg
This was a really cool map! I definitely agree with you that South America was better mapped out in this than North America was, especially because South America had areas labeled within the continent, not only along the shoreline. I felt differently than you about the drawings of men on each side though. To me it looked as if the powerful, wealthy men would have been the colonists, bringing civilization to a world they deemed beneath them, while the men who looked as if they were "doing something wrong" seemed to be Native Americans or at least the people that the colonists wanted to convert.
ReplyDeleteDear Palua,
ReplyDeleteI really like this map you chose--it has so many pictures! On the right there's one where what's supposed to be a baby (I think? though it looks just like a little naked man :S) that makes me think the cartographer thought the Natives didn't know how to raise children, since the child appears to be strangling its host like a parasite. Yet the settlers and Indians look like they're being friendly with each other. Did the mapmaker make friends with them, you think?
~Mary