The John Carter Brown library in Providence, Rhode Island holds a variety of fascinating and important objects.

We imaged several items there, among which a Walseemüller map of America, the Boban Aztec Calendar Wheel written in Nahautl and Spanish on pounded fig bark (Amatl), and a medieval Ptolemy map of Africa showing the earliest representations of topographical detail of the South African coast. This details of this map point to a geographic knowledge of Africa that would have made maritime travel to India and the East from Europe possible at least half a century earlier than thought up until now.        [ more projects -> ]