5.2.8 Mar del zvr hispanis mare pacificum

Study the map and the inset. What is pictured? What types of details do you notice are included in and around the map? How does the mapmaker imagine the Pacific world and California? Look at the people pictured in the corner. Who populated the Pacific world, according to the mapmaker? What does this tell us about how Europeans thought of the people who lived on the west coast of the Americas and the east coast of Asia? What clues, if any, does this map provide that help answer the question, Why did Europeans explore?

This map highlights the fact that after 150 years of European exploration of the West, explorers had reached and mapped in great detail the Pacific world. The map of the Pacific Ocean includes great detail of the many islands and lands in the Pacific Ocean, which was much larger and more difficult to navigate than the Atlantic. This image is one of the first charts of the Pacific to show California as an island and the earliest sea chart of the Pacific to appear in a Dutch atlas. The map also shows in detail the small islands of Micronesia in the South Pacific. The Terra Incognita at the top of the map almost connects Asia to California with the Fretum Anian (Anian Strait) in between them. It also shows many place names in California. This map is a reflection of British mathematician Henry Briggs’s “Treatise ... of the Northwest Passage to the South Sea,” which treats California as an island. Students can use this map as a piece of evidence to understand the scientific and technological advances and motivations for exploration.