Historical maps illustrate more than what was known of the physical world at any one time. Such maps reveal how people imagined the world looked - even how they thought it should look.
A new exhibit at the Royal sa国际传媒 Museum - Envisioning the World: The First Printed Maps, 1472-1700 - brings together 30 maps, mostly from the collection of Henry Wendt of Friday Harbor, Washington.
Wendt, the retired chairman of pharmaceutical company SmithKline Beecham, loves these maps not only for what they tell us about early explorations of the world. He loves them for what they say about the history of human knowledge.
For example, one map, printed in the late 1400s or early 1500s, displays Noah's three sons, Japheth, Ham and Shem, dispersed after the great flood. Along the margin, it also shows a collection of grotesque freaks - quasi-humans with multiple arms, animal body parts or six eyes.
Wendt said in the Middle Ages, it was assumed that places not yet known must be inhabited by monsters.
"They believed that lands yet to be discovered, almost by definition, could not be Christian," explained Wendt, who attended Thursday's opening. "Therefore, they must be inhabited by non-Christians and it was highly likely they had to be weird, freakish creatures."
The exhibit also shows one of the 178,000 maps contained in the sa国际传媒
Archives - a 1696 map of sa国际传媒, or New France, bearing the coat of arms of the Dauphin, heir to the French throne.
The map shows California as an island. Even though Europeans had already determined it was part of a greater land mass, treating California as an island made it easier for the Catholic Spanish to defend their claims to it against the disputing claims of the Protestant English.
Wendt's collection, now housed in the Sonoma County Museum in California, is the result of decades of searching, travelling and collecting.
He studied history and art history at Princeton University in New Jersey and has always had a fascination for the past. He's also maintained a respect for fine craftsmanship and creativity, which can be found in the hand printing and hand colouring of the various maps, each of which is a work of art.
Wendt remembers finding his first map printed in the Middle Ages. He discovered it in a shop in Tokyo and paid $8 for it. It was large and he brought it back to his hotel room, spread it out and spent the next several hours poring over its small details and notes.
Since then, he has collected at least 100 historical printed maps, including the first known map ever printed. "I had to hunt for that one."
Part of the exhibit now on display at the Royal sa国际传媒 Museum, it was printed in Augsburg, Germany, in 1472. It shows three continents: Africa, Asia and Europe, for Noah's three sons. The land is divided by the Great Sea (the Black Sea) and the Mediterranean, and circled by something called the Oceanic Sea.
Wendt said the idea of creating maps based on biblical references and intuition should not be mocked.
These early map makers were drawing on the best sources they knew. "Hey, it was a start," he said.
Another quirky exhibit was printed in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1624. It's a print made from a map, originally carved in marble and created by Roman general and geographer Agrippa, who died in 12 BC.
Agrippa's map shows the entire world as it was known, from England to India and Sri Lanka.
But instead of displaying land forms, it shows the world in one straight line, metres in length, corresponding to Roman roads.
The result is one of the first road maps ever made. It even shows places to stop and stay, where Roman couriers could rest, bathe and eat.
Wendt believes the historical maps are evidence of a widespread human urge, one that's still with us, as demonstrated by Google maps.
"We are all really addicts of geographic knowledge," Wendt said. "I would say it's really even a primal response to desire to know where we are."
