Drawing the Lines

Abstract

The article discusses the debate over the validity of a map at a Yale University library which offers depictions of the New World that predate the landing of Columbus by 60 years. The parchment map, about 11 by 16 inches large, was uncovered in a Geneva bookshop in 1957 with no records of prior ownership. In 2002 Jacqueline S. Olin, retired from the Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education in Suitland, Md., and her colleagues reported results of carbon dating indicating that the map dates from 1434, give or take 11 years. But since the map's discovery, critics have called it a clever fake. What lies in dispute is not the pre-Columbian age of the parchment but that of the map drawn on it. At the same time Olin and colleagues dated the map's parchment, chemists Katherine Brown and Robin Clark of University College London argued that the map's ink dated from after 1923. Historian Kirsten A. Seaver, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London, states that the map's writing contains historical anachronisms such as mention of Bishop Eirik of Greenland of the early 12th century reporting to superiors, although he would have had none, because Greenland had not yet become part of the Church hierarchy.