A map of 400 years ago was found and exhibited at the Library of Congress of the United States. It has the peculiarity that calls Florida the “land of flowers” and puts China as the center of the world.
The author of the old map was the Italian missionary Matteo Ricci by order of Emperor Wanli in 1602. Thus, Ricci became the first man who showed America in Mandarin and one of the first Westerners that lived in Beijing in early 1600.
The map is full of drawings and notes that can be appreciated and describe different regions of the planet. The longest river and the highest mountain were positioned in Africa. In North America was mentioned the “hunchback ox or bison, wild horses and a region called ‘Ka-na-ta’”.
There can be also observed regions of Latin America as “Wa-ti-ma-la” (Guatemala), “Yu-ho-t’ang” (Yucatan) and Chih-Li “(Chile). Ricci also gives a brief description of the discovery of America.
“Long time ago, nobody knew that there were places like North and South America or Magellan” wrote Ricci, using the name of the first cartographers to Australia and Antarctica.
“But 100 years ago, Europeans arrived in ships sailing to various coastal and discovered them” he said.
Ricci’s map was nicknamed as “The black and impossible tulip of mapping” due to the difficulty to find it.
