IT WAS THE MAPMAKERS WHO REALLY DISCOVERED AMERICA

Abstract

Christopher Columbus is credited with the discovery of America, but he died believing he had reached Asia. Simply running into a place thought to be some other place is hardly worthy of being called a 'geographical discovery.' Those who followed Columbus were similarly confused. It remained, during the next half century, for the mapmakers to fit the explorers' accounts into the world map. In the early 1500s they separated South America from Asia, but not until Mercator's map of 1538 was North America disconnected. It was analysis by cartographers that revealed the new lands to be hitherto unknown continents. Thus the map makers were the real discoverers of America.