The longitude of the Mediterranean throughout history: facts, myths and surprises
Résumé
Our survey of pre-1750 cartographic works reveals a rich and complex evolution of the longitude of the Mediterranean (LongMed). While confirming several previously docu-mented trends − e.g. the adoption of erroneous Ptolemaic longitudes by 15th and 16th-century European cartographers, or the striking accuracy of Arabic-language tables of coordinates−, we have observed accurate LongMed values largely unnoticed by historians in 16th-century maps and noted that widely diverging LongMed values coexisted up to 1750, sometimes even within the works of one same author. Our findings also dispute the important role traditionally attributed to astronomers in improving the accuracy of Mediterranean longitudes.
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The longitude of the Mediterranean-Robles-2014.pdf (973.61 Ko)
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LongMed table-Robles-2014.pdf (160.88 Ko)
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