That’s right! One of the reasons why maps looked so wild in the medieval era, is that science was sort of on pause. The gaps in knowledge were often filled with reports from sailors or whatever the cartographer could imagine a place would look like.
Even toward the end of the century, when measurement tools were beginning to be refined again, surveying was (is!) quite a chore. So, while land masses started to be mapped in greater detail, some sailors just didn’t bother, since they could still get to where they needed to go, unless they were specifically sailing on a cartographic mission. But hey, it makes for a great image, right?
So I’m just going to fudge the map around while checking the numbers and angles, to get a result that is balanced and makes sense from a visual and practical point of view.
Next up, I get to figure out how coastlines mapped from the deck of a ship… Let’s put the astrolabe to the test again!
Once done, I will have all the landmarks, upon which to illustrate a map. After that, we’ll switch back over to modern navigation without GPS!
