How to read old maps I

Ptolemy's World map

Dating back more than 500 years, this beautiful map of the world is rich with colour and detail. It was created by an unknown hand in Ulm, in what is now Germany, to show the world as described by Claudius Ptolemy more than a thousand years earlier. But if we take a closer look, it is also a great tool for learning how to read other old maps and can teach us a lot about who made them, how knowledge developed and how map making techniques changed.

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