A Real National Treasure Mystery

The National Treasure sequel is coming to theaters in a couple weeks and it has entertainment collectors abuzz, but what they might not know is that we have our own national treasure mystery going on display this month at the Library of Congress. A Wadseemuller map from 1507 has puzzled researchers from the moment it was discovered. It is the only known surviving copy of the 500-year-old map that first named this land “America”. The 12 sheets that complete the map were purchased from German Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wolfegg for $10 million in 2003 from his valuable collection of historical documents.
The German monk Martin Waldseemuller drew them after he was approached by the Duke of Lorraine, 13 years following the first landing of Christopher Columbus in the Western Hemisphere. The result he and a group of scholars produced two years later was remarkably dead on. The shape of South America is mostly correct, to the point that key areas are drawn proportionally to each other within 70 miles of accuracy. Also, the map gives a mostly correct depiction of the west coast of South America, but according to our history books, Vasco Nunez de Balboa did not reach the Pacific by land until 1513, and Ferdinand Magellan did not round the southern tip of the landmass until 1520. So, from what we currently hold to be true, it technically should not have been possible to construct this map so precisely with the knowledge that we believe they were limited to, but this is only part one of the mystery.
Waldseemuller was very clear in his naming of this new land “America” after Vespucci, a famous Florentine navigator who wrote letters describing his journeys to this new world. But for some unknown reason, Waldseemuller began to have regrets about the name, and in an atlas he produced six years later, he refers to it as “Terra Incognita” or “Unknown Land.” A few years after that, he digressed even further by reconnecting North America to Asia, and renaming this land mass “Terra de Cuba” (Land of Cuba) in the north, and “Terra Nova” (New World) in the south. Some speculate that political influences of Spain and Portugal played a part in the differentiation between the maps. One thing is for certain though. This map is the modern standard by which all further maps were developed, making it a keystone map, and an important piece in the developing understanding of the history of western civilization.