[ISHMap-List] A critical review of the hypothesis of a medieval origin for portolan charts

[Luis Robles]

I received this news last Wednesday through from Frank Jacobs's "Strange
Maps" blog in BigThink (
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/648-portolan-charts-too-accurate-to-be-medieval).
I assume that many of you must have received it too but just in case I
thought I should post it here for general information.

*Roel Nicolai*, a PhD student at the University of Utrecht, presented last
March 3 his doctoral dissertation entitled *A critical review of the
hypothesis of a medieval origin for portolan charts*. He reached several
provocative conclusions that I expect will stir debate among the members of
the list. The book is not available online yet, but in the University's
website there is a press
release<http://press.uu.nl/origin-of-medieval-sea-charts-disproven/>in
English from which I have extracted the following statements:

   - "A mathematical analysis of the oldest surviving portolan has revealed
   that its source data must have been derived from a portolan chart - instead
   of the other way round."
   - "it is unlikely that the nautical compass was available in time and
   that  navigational methods used at that time were sophisticated enough to
   determine distances at such a degree of accuracy"
   - "Nicolai has also established that portolan charts were drawn on the
   Mercator projection, or a similar type of projection."
   - "they were much further advanced in terms of knowledge in the Middle
   Ages than we think"
   - "An Arabic-Islamic origin is highly unlikely, according to Nicolai."
   - "It therefore seems plausible that portolan charts originated from a
   tradition that is now lost. It is an intriguing question from what culture
   that tradition stemmed. Further research will be required to establish
   whether or not Greco-Roman antiquity is a realistic option, says Nicolai."

The university does not say whether Mr Nicolai was awarded the doctorate or
how to get access to his publication.

-- 
Luis A. Robles Macías

Profile in Academia.edu <http://independent.academia.edu/LuisRoblesMacías>
Blog: http://historiaymapas.wordpress.com/
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