Gerard Mercator's 1538 world map, folded onto a globe

What it is. A world map by Gerard Mercator, dated 1538. It uses the same two-heart layout as Oronce Fine's map of 1531. A southern land is drawn at the bottom.

The globe is not a redraw. Each point on it is a pixel of the real scan. We measured the printed latitude rings, about 20.24 pixels a degree, and placed every pixel by them. Mercator's printed Antarctic Circle falls within 0.6 degrees of the 66.5 S ring of the globe.

Is it Antarctica?

This is debated. Charles Hapgood (1966) read both Fine's and Mercator's southern lands as signs of older knowledge of an ice-free Antarctica. Others read them as the old idea of a southern continent that balanced the northern lands. Antarctica was first seen in 1820. Neither side has settled it.

The coast trace shows today's Antarctic coast at true scale. Compare it with the land on the map.

Our choices

The one setting not printed on the map is the longitude offset. We put Mercator's strait on the real Strait of Magellan. His Old World follows Ptolemy and fits no single offset, so make no claim from its longitudes.