![]() ![]() Another shows a creature with the head of a chicken and the body of a fish. One illustration depicts a man in the belly of a monster, most likely a reference to the biblical story of Jonah and the whale. Mappa mundi aren't the most geographically accurate maps, but they contain a treasure trove of bizarre animals. ![]() In his book, Van Duzer, who was a 2012 Kluge fellow at the Library of Congress and has since joined its staff, charts the origin of sea monsters from "mappa mundi," medieval European maps of the world nautical maps and Ptolemy's Geography, a treatise by the Greco-Roman mathematician and scientist Claudius Ptolemy, which contained an atlas of the known world during the second century. ![]() Though people in modern times typically think of monsters as mythical beasts, whales and walruses were considered monsters in medieval and Renaissance times. At other times, particularly a period in the 16th century, mapmakers took some poetic license with the animals (like terrestrial-aquatic hybrid animals).īut depictions of these creatures have been studied very little, Van Duzer said. Many cartographers simply copied these sea monsters from illustrated encyclopedias, Van Duzer told LiveScience. Sea monsters on maps run the gamut from menacing sea serpents to improbable lion-fish hybrids. ![]()
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