Talk:Abraham Ortelius

Britenburg
"a plan of Britenburg Castle on the coast of Holland". It looks as if it should be "Breitenburg Castle in the duchy of Holstein". See http://vitrine.library.uu.nl/wwwroot/nl/teksten/Tfol212rar.htm


 * No, the text is correct. The link you gave mentions one Heinrich Rantzau from Breitenburg contributed some maps from his region, not that Ortelius made a map of Breitenburg. The Britenburg plan does exist and has appeared in other atlases. The Britenburg or more correctly Brittenburg is the remainder of a Roman fortification built at the mouth of the Rhine at that time (near Katwijk). It is now submerged, but was apparently occasionally visible on the beach in the days of Ortelius and later. -Scipius 18:13 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)

Death date
I have removed the date of death. It was listed as July 4. Has this been verified at all? The August 1 page lists it as August 1st, but I have also found June 28 listed on the web. Angela 21:47, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

As can be read in the obituary of Sweertius, which was included in the 1606 English edition of the Theatrum, Ortelius died on June 28, 1598, which I re-introduced in the text. User: Marcel van den Broecke 25 january 2006


 * Would that have been Old Style or new?--Henrygb 22:51, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Frankfurt Book Fair
The article states that the young Ortelius annually visited the fair in Frankfurt (presumably, the one -am-Main), but the Catholic Encyclopedia speaks of the great Leipzig fair in this context. How can this be resolved? Were there major bookfairs in both cities? Myron 21:23, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ortelius' response to corrections from his readers
In 1979, Eisenstein (Printing Press as an Agent of Change, p110, note 213) wrote "Preliminary research in the Clements Library by a University of Michigan graduate student, Gail Bossenga, shows that Ortelius incorporated the corrections his correspondents spotted on an irregular and occasional basis, but did take advantage of addenda more frequently." Please add a note on my talk page if you know any more about this! Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 03:14, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

British Library exhibit and exhibit catalog
The current British Library exhibit, Magnificent Maps (30 Apr 2010 - Sun 19 Sep 2010) shows Ortelius' first map. The exhibit catalog, Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art by Peter Barber and Tom Harper includes a picture of this map, along with a description, on pages 88-89, visible by searching inside at Amazon isbn:0712350934. That also points out a relevant bibliography entry: Robert J. Karrow, Jr., Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century and their Maps: Rio-bibliographies of the cartographers of Abraham Ortelius (Chicago, Speculum Orbis Press, 1992) which I've added to the article. If anyone has a copy of either book, it'd be worth looking through for material to add. Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 22:23, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

A rare case of double mind-reading
"He is also believed to be the first person to imagine that the continents were joined together before drifting to their present positions." Really? --Pete (talk) 21:46, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes. What does mind-reading have to do with continental drift? 79.106.203.106 (talk) 08:03, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Answering Ganesh Watve
I removed your question and am answering it here. The United States of America declared its independence in 1776; the continents of North and South America were discovered by Europeans beginning with Columbus in 1492. These continents were named America in 1507. Australia was hypothesized all the way back to Aristotle. It appeared on maps long before Europeans first sighted in in 1606. What you think is Antarctica on this map is actually Terra Australis, the land mass that the ancients believed exist. Bob Caldwell CSL (talk) 18:52, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

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Continental drift
I have been trying to track down the actual passage where Abraham Ortelius first proposed a form of continental drift. Does anyone know where it is? The quote by W. J. Kious [Abraham Ortelius in his work Thesaurus Geographicus ... suggested that the Americas were "torn away from Europe and Africa ... by earthquakes and floods" and went on to say: "The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers carefully the coasts of the three [continents]."] seems to be fake. [Edit: I stand corrected. See below.] James Romm, A New Forerunner for Continental Drift, writes: "In a discussion of Plato's Atlantis legend which he published in the third edition of his Thesaurus Geographicus, a dictionary of classical place names, Ortelius suggested that Plato had described an ancient separation of the continents, and used this interpretation to account for the matching coastlines of the Old and New Worlds - a phenomenon which he may well have been first to point out." His citation reads: "Ortelius, A. Thesaurus Geographicus Leaf Nnn verso (Plantin, Antwerp, 1596)." But Ortelius's brief discussion of Atlantis contains nothing remotely comparable to Kious's quotes. Ortelius mainly points out Mercator's claim that Plato's Atlantis was America. - Eroica (talk) 09:31, 23 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I found it. The passage is in the 1596 edition of the Thesaurus Geographicus under the heading Gadiricus. My translation is not very good, but I think it captures the gist:

"Gadir sive Gades pars erit reliqua Atlantidis sive Americae insulae, arque haec non tam submersa, (ut idem refert in Timaeo) quam ab Europa atque Africa terraemotu et illuvione abrupta: et recta occidentem versus elongata videbitur. Quod si quis hoc Fabulam fabula compensare vocet, per me quidem licebit. Ostendunt se tamen rupturae vestigia, si quis harum trium dictarum terrae (adhibita geographica universalitabula) partium littora, quo se mutuo adspiciunt, eminentias [?] Europae nempe atque Africae cum concavitatibus Americae penitius consideraverit, adeo ut quis posset cum Strabone 2. dicere, non esse figmentum quod Plato ex Solonis sententia, de Atlantide insula prodiderit. (Ortelius 310, Gadiricus)"

"Gadir or Gades may be the remaining part of Atlantis, or the island of America, which perhaps were not so much submerged (as related in the Timaeus) as torn off from Europe and Africa by earthquake and inundation: note how it is clearly elongated towards the west. But if anyone accuses me of explaining one fable with another fable, I won't object. The vestiges of this rupture are clearly visible, however, if one consults a map of the world and considers more closely the shorelines of the three aforementioned lands where they face one another--that is, the promontories of Europe & Africa and the concavities of America. To such an extent that one could say with Strabo, Book 2, that what Plato, following Solon’s account, tells us about the island of Atlantis is not a lie." Eroica (talk) 10:30, 23 April 2023 (UTC)