Ill. As Plutarch observed 2 millennia ago, mapmakers aren t nearly as accurate as they claim to be.
All maps are subjective in that they involve a process of selection and omission.
The new book thought to be the largest published checklist of maps of Africa was published by the UI Library and the UI Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Bassett and co-author Yvette Scheven, a UI professor emerita of library administration, found and identified more than 2,400 maps, the earliest being a 1508 Portuguese map showing a compressed continent that looks more like Massachusetts than Africa. A Royal Geographical Society map, for European audiences, shows colonies and spheres of influence in 1890. Thus, Dutch maps dominate the collection for the 17th century, while British and French maps stand out for the 18th and early 19th centuries. More than a third of the 19th century atlas maps were published in the United States reflecting its rise in the world economy.