Abstract
A set of maps from the middle of the sixteenth century featuring the New World, such as those by Jean Rotz (1542), Giacomo Gastaldi (1546), and Jean Bellère (1554), presented a peculiarity regarding the delineation of the Amazon River. Instead of having a latitudinal direction, as dictated by modern cartographic conventions, the Amazon had a longitudinal orientation. This is often assumed to be an inaccurate cartographic representation of the river. However, these maps were rather precise insofar as, according to contemporaneous accounts of South America provided by scholars such as Peter Martyr, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, and Francisco López de Gómara, the Amazon had a potential longitudinal course. In this sense, the author aims to explain the accuracy of some of the early modern cartographies of Amazonia by placing these maps in dialogue with geographic and hydrographic descriptions of the river that circulated at that time. Consequently, this work re-evaluates the notion of precision when applied to the study of the early European mapping of the Amazon River.
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