(Roughly) Daily

Nautical map of the world by Nicolo di Caverio, 1506

From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, European powers sent voyagers to lands farther and farther away from the continent in an expansionist period we now call the Age of Exploration. These journeys were propelled by religious fervor and fierce colonial sentiment—and an overall desire for new trade routes. They would not have been possible without the rise of modern cartography. While geographically accurate maps had existed before, the Age of Exploration saw the emergence of a sustained tradition of topographic surveying. Maps were being made specifically to guide travelers. Technology progressed quickly through the centuries, helping explorers and traders find their way to new imperial outposts—at least sometimes. On other occasions, hiccups in cartographic reasoning led their users even farther astray…

How cartography made early modern global trade possible: “First you make the maps.”

* Patrick White, Voss

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As we find our way, we might recall that it was on this date in 1578– the same day that King Henry III laid the first stone of the Pont Neuf (“New Bridge”), the oldest remaining bridge in Paris– that the Catacombs of Rome were (re-)discovered.  Underground burial sites in use mostly in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, they were decorated with both iconographic and stylistic paintings and mosaics.  After their rediscovery, it took several decades to explore and map them; indeed, new discoveries have been made as recently as the 1950s.

Eucharistic fresco in the Catacombs [source]