Ptolemäus
«Geography»

In the Middle Ages, apart from sea charts, maps were as good as never used in practice and foreign to measurements. The schematic map of the world attributed to the 9th century aspired to depicting an image of the world and not of the earth. At the turning-point from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age (circa 1400–1600) there began an intensive, empirical involvement with the natural sciences. From this evolved the wish for a realistic depiction of the earth’s surface. In cartography, the Renaissance began with rediscovering Ptolemäus’ «Geography» from classical antiquity. The Greek astronomer, mathematician and naturalist Claudius Ptolemäus designated in his work «Geographike hyphegesis» (An Introduction to Geography) the positions of approximately 8,000 points on the known surface of the earth, and also proposed the mapping of their projections. In doing so, he was the first to create the basis for a cartography founded on geodetic principles. With the coming of the 15th century, Byzantine emigrants brought the Greek codices of the «Geography» to Italy. The map of the world by the Ulm-based Ptolemäus was published in 1482, ten years before Christopher Columbus discovered America. It shows the eastern hemisphere and thereby the «Old World». On the western hemisphere, the «New World» was still unknown.