The Surprising Reason Medieval Maps Were So Inaccurate
A past practice that would be unimaginable today
Cartography is an ancient art that didn’t really hit its stride until the 19th and 20th centuries. Maps prior to the 19th century were often crude, inaccurate, and filled with a baffling number of images and mythological additions. Old maps were filled with sea monsters, mythological kingdoms, and phantom islands. It is easy to simply write off our ancestors as superstitious or uninformed, but that is not the reason that the maps were so inaccurate.
Medieval maps were purposefully designed, knowing that they were fictitious or inaccurate.
But why? Why were Medieval maps so inaccurate? Why did the cartographers of the day draw elaborate images of sea monsters on the edges of their maps, knowing that no such monsters existed?
Cartographic inaccuracies in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods were due to a conscious design choice known as horror vacui. Horror vacui is Latin for “fear of empty space.” For many centuries, disconnected people in the world had little to no knowledge of one another. Europeans had little accurate information about Africa and North America. Chinese map makers had very little information about Great Britain. Japanese cartographers were clueless when it came to Australia. And…
