The Story of Geographical Discovery: How the World Became KnownJacobs, Joseph
History
The Story of Geographical Discovery: How the World Became Known
Jacobs, Joseph
Discoveries in geography
Another result of this conception of the world as a T within an
O, was to expand Asia to an enormous extent; and as this was a
part of the world which was less known to the monkish map-makers
of the Middle Ages, they were obliged to fill out their ignorance
by their imagination. Hence they located in Asia all the legends
which they had derived either from Biblical or classical sources.
Thus there was a conception, for which very little basis is to be
found in the Bible, of two fierce nations named Gog and Magog,
who would one day bring about the destruction of the civilised
world. These were located in what would have been Siberia, and
it was thought that Alexander the Great had penned them in behind
the Iron Mountains. When the great Tartar invasion came in the
thirteenth century, it was natural to suppose that these were no
less than the Gog and Magog of legend. So, too, the position of
Paradise was fixed in the extreme east, or, in other words, at the
top of mediæval maps. Then, again, some of the classical authorities,
as Pliny and Solinus, had admitted into their geographical accounts
legends of strange tribes of monstrous men, strangely different from
normal humanity. Among these may be mentioned the Sciapodes, or
men whose feet were so large that when it was hot they could rest
on their backs and lie in the shade. There is a dim remembrance
of these monstrosities in Shakespeare's reference to
"The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."
In the mythical travels of Sir John Maundeville there are illustrations
of these curious beings, one of which is here reproduced. Other
tracts of country were supposed to be inhabited by equally monstrous
animals. Illustrations of most of these were utilised to fill up
the many vacant spaces in the mediæval maps of Asia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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