MAP-DOCUMENTED HISTORY OF EXPLORATION OF SIBIR EXEMPLIFIED BY
SELECTED WEST-EUROPEAN 16TH AND 17TH CENTURY MAPS
L. Szaniawska
National Library of Poland
lucyna-szaniawska@wp.pl
The paper focuses on the exploration, and later the drawing
of maps, of territories that are far removed from the civilizations responsible
for such attempts. In particular, it shows how the maps were at first with
misleading images and then, along with gradual advances in the exploration of
unknown lands and seas, how these were replaced by a picture more consistent
with reality.
It seems that maps of Northern Asia published in Western
Europe since the 16th century are a particularly good example of the
potential of maps as carriers of the Europeans’ knowledge and ignorance. The
maps document successive stages in the exploration of inaccessible areas of
Sibir. The carry both elements taken over from the knowledge of ancient Greek
geographers and those that were derived from the most recent discoveries made
at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. It is
interesting and quite characteristic of the maps of Sibir that fantastic and
misleading content freely co-existed with bona fide information from field
research. Until the second half of the 18th century, i.e. until a
Russian atlas of the Russian Empire was published by the Academy of Sciences at
St. Petersburg, maps appeared on the books marked of Europe whose authors had
no geographical knowledge at all. A very good example is provided by how the
island of Novaya Zemlya were represented on maps published by European
publishing houses after the discoveries of Willem Barents.