Abstract

This chapter argues that it was fifteenth-and sixteenth-century sea voyages especially to the southern hemisphere that ultimately explain why particularly sixteenth-century Europeans re-evaluated the ontological and spatial relationships between water and earth. Though certainly there were some medieval scholars who argued differently, the most prevalent spatial model of the world's landmasses and waterways in the late middle ages positioned the dry land in the northern hemisphere and placed a large amount of water in the southern hemisphere. As Europeans sailed down the west coast of Africa and to South America, the water that carried them and the texts that circulated about these voyages disproved many of the basic earlier assumptions about the water-earth spatial and ontological relationships.

Key Words: voyages of discovery; encounters; Amerigo Vespucci; Gerard Mercator; southern hemisphere

[That land has been discovered (invenio), which ought to be called a new world] contradicts the opinion of our ancient authorities, as most of them claimed that there is no continent south of the equator, but rather a great sea, which they called the Atlantic. And if they affirmed that there was a continent there, they denied that it was habitable land for many reasons. But my last voyage revealed their opinion is false and that the contrary is entirely true, since I discovered a continent in those southern regions that is inhabited by more numerous people and animals than our Europe, or Asia, or Africa.