Geographical Knowledge and Maps of Southern Africa Before 1500 A.D.

Abstract

A distinction has been drawn between early geographical knowledge of Southern Africa and early maps showing the sub-continent, because a great deal of early geographical knowledge was not preserved in map form, but in geographical and historical texts. On the other hand, a number of early maps contain little or no indication of the source of their geographical information. This dichotomy has generated an extensive literature of its own in attempts to relate the cartography to the printed works. In doing so researchers have found that they could not deal with Southern Africa in isolation, but have had to take a continental view of the early history of geographical knowledge and cartography. Accordingly although this paper deals with Southern Africa, that is Africa south of the Zambesi, it will be necessary from time to time to range further afield in order to trace the origins of both geographical knowledge and cartography. If we are to believe Herodotus (c. 484-425 B.C.), the southern shores of the continent were known to the Mediterranean world as early as 600 B.C. His oftquoted story of the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa runs as follows: As for Libya, we know that it is washed on all sides by the sea except where it joins Asia, as was first demonstrated, so far as our knowledge goes, by the Egyptian King Neco, who, after calling off the construction of the canal between the Nile and the Arabian Gulf, sent out a fleet manned by a Phoenician crew with orders to sail round and return to Egypt and the Mediterranean by way of the Pillars of Heracles. The Phoenicians sailed from the Red Sea into the Southern ocean and every autumn put in where they were on the Libyan coast, sowed a patch of ground and waited for next year's harvest. Then, having got in their grain, they put to sea again, and after two full years rounded the Pillars of Heracles in the course of the third and returned to Egypt. These men made a statement which I do not myself believe, though others may, to the effect that as they sailed on a westerly course round the southern end of Libya, they had the sun on their right to northward of them. This is how Libya was first discovered to be surrounded by sea.I