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1. Introduction. In 1602, the Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci presented to the Chinese Emperor Wanli a world map 坤輿萬國全 圖 (坤輿万国全图 Kunyu Wanguo Quantu) labeled entirely in Chinese. For the past 400 years, the Chinese world map has been thought to be a map translated from European sources.
Abstract. Qualitative and quantitative comparison of Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (the 1602 Chinese world map) and contemporaneous world maps by Mercator (1569), Ortelius (1570) , Mercator’s Arctic map (1595), and Plancius (1594) in particular, reveals that.
Although Chinese mapmakers placed this territory on the Asian coast, others have suggested as early as the 1800s [67] that Fusang might have been in North America, due to perceived similarities between portions of the California coast and Fusang as depicted by Asian sources.
The Chinese world map includes geography of a pre-Renaissance Europe and American geography unknown to Europeans until more than 200 years after Ricci’s death. Approximately 50 % of the place names, including those of America, have no equivalents on European maps.
THE HAN MAPS AND EARLY CHINESE CARTOGRAPHY* MEI-LING HSU ABSTRACT. The two Chinese maps recently discovered in a Han tomb of the second century B.C. antedate by 1,300 years the two maps which were previously the earliest extant in China; elsewhere in the world they are predated only by the
Da Ming Hunyi Tu map. The Da Ming Hunyi Tu (Chinese: 大明混一图; lit. 'Amalgamated Map of the Great Ming Empire') world map, likely made in the late 14th or the 15th century, [33] shows China at the centre and Europe, half-way round the globe, depicted very small and horizontally compressed at the edge. The coast of Africa is also mapped ...
The results show that (1) the Americas of Kunyu Wanguo Quantu are of Chinese origin; Matteo Ricci merely edited the Chinese source map to make it look more European; and (2) the Ming Treasure Fleets led by Admiral Zheng He (郑和) to the Western Ocean have explored the Americas.
