Here Be Maps Part One - Monsters in the Margins

If you’ve ever looked at an old map you’ve probably noticed they are often decorated with monsters, demons, or mysterious creatures of one kind or another. Today we know they were not “real” creatures, but to cartographers from the past they symbolised a sincere attempt to document what travellers could expect to find in the far corners of the Earth.

Maps like the ones below took cartographers years of observation and speculation to create and were a compendium of fact and wild fiction. Mariners were at this time travelling the Earth, recording everything they saw, and combining accurate geographical measurements with wild stories, all of which scholars at home read carefully and preserved.

A reproduction of the original Ebstorf map.

One of the first atlases every published from the 16th century.

A close-up of the "Ebstorf" Map one of the mappae mundi from the 13th century.

Nowadays it is hard to believe the tall tales people told of distant lands, many of which were readily believed by educated men.

The map below represents a region of Central Asia as the Roman’s understood it. On the left is an image of a Monoscelli, who were a race of people said to have one huge leg apiece. On the right is an example of the Scythians, who carried their eyes on their shoulders, and below we find one of the dog headed men, who spoke in barks. These characters and many like them were common sights on old maps and they owe their existence to sources like the Bible, common legends, and Roman writers such as Pliny the Elder.

A map of India from the 16th century.

Pliny was a naval commander and philosopher who lived in the first century AD and is responsible for preserving the most accurate and useful knowledge the Romans possessed as well as perpetuating some of the most ridiculous twaddle mankind ever recorded. In AD 77 he published the Naturalis Historia, the world’s first encyclopaedia, in which he mentioned the beings above, as well as dragons and serpents and the other dangers to be found at sea.

Pliny's work was the primary source of information for cartographers in the Middle Ages. They added his tales to their maps and embellished the missing parts with whatever seemed most interesting because their imagination provided answers more quickly than the slow gathering of actual facts ever could.

When the church became the final authority on the plan of the world they rejected the inconvenient conclusions of the ancients in favour of a neat, theologically pleasing picture built out of Christian dogma and speculation, of which the Bible was the major source. Maps became guides to the articles of faith rather than compendiums of practical knowledge and tended to include legendary regions, along with the associated creatures that were to be found there.

First amongst the places that the Church believed must exist was the Garden of Eden, which they located in the east, walled and high above the reach of the flood.

A T-O map of the Garden of Eden from the 17th century.

No map was considered complete unless Eden appeared on it. When the crusaders failed to discover it, it was moved farther east, until it was lost in the vast continent of Asia. Markers, such as the altars Alexander the Great set up on the edge of his kingdom, were noted as a guide for brave pilgrims. St. Macarius, guardian of Eden, often appeared nearby as a warning to travellers that were not fit to enter the Earthly Paradise.

Gog and Magog were another feature on early medieval maps. They appear in Ezekiel and Revelation as a race of people dwelling in the north with powers hostile to God, out of whose lands the final judgement was to come.

“This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against you, Gog, chief prince of Meshek and Tubal. I will turn you around and drag you along. I will bring you from the far north and send you against the mountains of Israel. Ezekiel 38:3”

“When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. Revelation 20:7”

Throughout the dark ages Europe trembled in fear of invasion from these enemies of God and their realm appeared on map after map, always in a different place, surrounded by demons and warnings. The medieval mind was quick to imagine the distorted monsters created by Satan as can be seen in the works of the painters Hieronymus Bosch or Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

The dread of Gog and Magog, and perhaps of Islam (though the Koran mentions them in the same light), made the arrival in 1165 of a letter from a protecting king called Prester John fabulously popular.

Prester John was a descendent of three wise men and ruled a Christian nation lost among the pagans and Muslims of the orient. His lands were supposed to contain the fountain of youth and border on the Garden of Eden. He also helped guard Europe by holding back Gog and Magog behind the gates of iron Alexander the Great had built with God’s aid.

Copies of the letter circulated Europe for centuries after, swelling with stories of griffins, mythic birds, centaurs, fire-dwelling salamanders, and horned men. As trade with the east ramped up, no reports of such a kingdom trickled back yet creatures from the letter still decorated the margins and spaces of later maps.

A map of Prester Johns lands from the 17th century.

No map drawn up after was considered complete unless it included these regions and blank areas populated with extraordinary creatures. Added to these were garbled reports of real animals; gorillas as dog-headed men, porpoises as mermaids, and whales as sea serpents and floating islands.

A map of "Iceland" from the 16th century.

Eventually Gog and Magog and the realm of Prester John passed into legend, along with the demons and griffins, and they became decorations on maps, rather than warnings for mariners. Still, they look pretty frightening and the world seems a little poorer now they are gone.

Further reading:
The Discoverers, Daniel Boorstin
The History of Cartography, Leo Bagrow and R.A. Skelton
The Bible
Naturalis Historia, Pliny the Elder