The World's Oldest Globe

Today, Reddit user u/Brooklyn_University posted an animated GIF of Martin Behaim’s Erdapfel, the world’s oldest surviving terrestrial globe, dating to 1492. As the globe turns, you’ll notice a striking absence: the Americas are nowhere to be found. Sail west from Europe on this map and the first landmass you would expect to encounter is “Cipangu” (Japan).

Made in the same year Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic, Erdapfel offers a revealing snapshot of European geographical knowledge on the eve of the Age of Discovery. It depicts a world still imagined without the Americas, helping explain why a westward route to Asia seemed not only plausible, but inevitable.

The globe is composed of twelve painted gores and two polar calottes. The animated image shared here reproduces a 1908 facsimile by E. G. Ravenstein, based on the original globe and earlier reproductions. It was created by u/Brooklyn_University using Ravenstein's composite, unprojected facsimile from the David Rumsey Map Collection, which was converted into a digital globe using the Map to Globe platform.

The first map to clearly show America as a distinct landmass is generally credited to Martin Waldseemüller. His 1507 Universalis Cosmographia is the first known map to use the place name “America,” applied to what is now called South America. You can explore an interactive version of the Universalis Cosmographia on A Land Beyond Stars by the Museo Galileo