page_title: Regio Patalis
section_title: The Regio Patalis in Renaissance cosmography
hierarchical_section_title: Regio Patalis / The Regio Patalis in Renaissance cosmography
caption_attribution_description: English: Regio Patalis as part of Terra Australis: Abraham Ortelius, Typus Orbis Terrarum, 1564.
context_page_description: Regio Patalis is Latin for “the region of Patala”, that is the region around the ancient city of Patala at the mouth of the Indus River in Sindh, Pakistan. The historians of Alexander the Great state that the Indus parted into two branches at the city of Patala before reaching the sea, and the island thus formed was called Patalene, the district of Patala. Alexander constructed a harbour at Patala.
  While the Patala was well known to mariners and traders of the Ancient Mediterranean, by the European Middle Ages, mapmakers no longer knew its location. Regio Patalis appeared on late 15th and early 16th century maps and globes in a variety of increasingly erroneous locations, further and further east and south of India. It even appeared on some maps as a promontory of Terra Australis.
  Some scholars identify Patala with Thatta, a one-time capital of Sindh. But the identity of Patala is much debated among scholars.
context_section_description: The map of the world by the French mathematician and cosmographer Oronce Fine published in 1531 shows a large promontory attached to the continent of TERRA AVSTRALIS and extending northward almost to the Tropic of Capricorn: this promontory is named REGIO PATALIS (“Region of Patala”). 
  Fine's TERRA AVSTRALIS with its REGIO PATALIS is apparently drawn from the globe of the German cosmographer Johann Schoener produced in Nuremberg in 1523.  On this globe the Antarctic continent, called TERRA AVSTRALIS RECENTER INVENTA SED NONDUM PLENE COGNITA (“Terra Australis, recently discovered but not yet fully known”) also has a large promontory bearing the name REGIO PATALIS.
  Schoener developed his globe from the globe made by Martin Behaim in Nuremberg in 1492. On Behaim's globe, India potalis is located south of the Equator on the Hoch India (High India, or India Superior) peninsula, the actual Indochina, on the eastern side of the Sinus Magnus ("Great Gulf", the Gulf of Thailand).  An inscription on Behaim's globe explains that Hoch India (India Superior ), was situated so far to the South that the Pole Star was no longer visible: “because this land lies at the antipodes to our land”.
  Martin Behaim's source of knowledge of India Patalis was the Ymago Mundi of Pierre D'Ailly, a revised edition of earlier standard cosmographical works which d’Ailly wrote between 1410 and 1419. D’Ailly wrote: “according to Pliny we find there to be habitation under the Tropic of Capricorn and beyond. For the island called the Regio Pathalis has a well-known port where the Sun’s shadow falls southward, therefore the inhabitants always have the Sun to their North… I say therefore that the southern side of India extends to the Tropic of Capricorn near the region of Pathalis”.
  In discussing the habitability of lands under the Torrid Zone and Tropic of Capricorn, D'Ailly drew on the Opus Majus, written around the year 1267 English monk and scholar Roger Bacon. With regard to the Regio Patalis, Bacon said: “the southern frontier of India reaches the Tropic of Capricorn near the Region of Patale and the neighbouring lands which are washed by a great arm of the sea flowing from the Ocean”. Patala was on or just south of the Tropic of Cancer, not south of the Equator, but somehow Roger Bacon had confused the Tropic of Capricorn with the Tropic of Cancer under which, on the day of the summer solstice, shadows at Patala were cast southward.
  D’Ailly's Ymago Mundi served as the standard text book on cosmography during the 15th and early 16th centuries and so made widely current the view that there was a part of India, or of what was later called Indo-China, where the sun's shadow always fell southward at noon: this part was the Region of Patala. This theory found expression on Martin Behaim's globe of 1492, where India potalis is located south of the Equator on the Hoch India peninsula on the eastern side of the Sinus Magnus, the actual Indochina. This concept of the Region of Patala is shown as Patalie regiã in the world map included in La Salade, a textbook of the studies necessary for a prince written by Antoine de La Sale and published in 1444.
  Following Magellan’s circumnavigation voyage of 1519-1522, Johann Schoener identified South America with the extended India Superior (Indochina) peninsula, and so depicted it on his 1523 globe. He also split the Region of Patala (Regio Patalis) off from this peninsula and transferred it across the ocean to become a promontory of the Terra Australis. In this he was followed by Oronce Fine, whose mappemonde of 1531 shows the large REGIO PATALIS promontory on the continent of TERRA AVSTRALIS.
  The REGIO PATALIS is shown on the globe in an armillary clock made by Jean Naze of Lyon in 1560, in a fashion similar to that on Schoener’s globe of 1523 and on Fine’s map of 1531. It is also shown on the Nancy Globe, made c.1535. 
  The world maps of the school of cartographers centred in and around the Norman port of Dieppe (the Dieppe Maps, include the Harleian, so-called after its former owner, Edward Harley, made by an unknown car
caption: Regio Patalis as part of Terra Australis: Abraham Ortelius, Typus Orbis Terrarum, 1564.
exif: {"Image Make": "CASIO COMPUTER CO.,LTD.", "Image Model": "EX-Z9", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "1.02", "Image DateTime": "2013:01:25 05:17:01", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "2256", "Image Padding": "[]", "Image OffsetSchema": "4192", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "17/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2013:01:25 05:17:01", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2013:01:25 05:17:01", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "285325/248832", "EXIF ApertureValue": "353/100", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "353/100", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "9", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1728", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2304", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "55", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "High gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "2096"}