WOrld Map of 1569
A comparison with world maps before 1569 shows how closely Mercator draws on the work of other cartographers and his own previous works. He declares that he is also greatly indebted to many new charts prepared by Portuguese and Spanish sailors in the portolan tradition. Earlier studiers of cartography of world maps had largely ignored the more accurate practical charts of sailors, and vice-versa, but in our age of discovery, from the closing decade of the last century, this map has stimulated the integration of these two mapping traditions.
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