Martin Behaim's Erdapfel

The oldest existent globe of the Earth. It's in the collection of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.

Martin Behaim and collaborators created the globe at the time of Columbus' first sea travel to the west.

So the American continent is missing on this globe. Also note the detailed inscriptions in early modern German. The overall design of the map image follows the Ptolemaic tradition where the circumference of the earth is 5/7 of the actual value (40075 km).

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Copyright: Germanisches Nationalmuseum / IPF TU Wien
License: CC BY-SA 3.0