This map is a map very much in our own era. In a collection of antique maps, it is kind of the contrast, if you will, that is useful to make when looking at the maps of three, four hundred years before. I particularly like this map because it essentially accentuates the ocean floor of the Atlantic – something that was clearly not known to the mapmakers of the fifteen and sixteen hundreds. And it is a wonderful map to show the cleavages in the ocean floor as the continental plates are shifting, moving apart from one another here and forcing themselves together there. A great colorful work by the National Geographic Magazine, which in many ways was the state of cartography for 50 years in the middle of the 20th Century.
Low resolution preview for in-copyright image.
Title: Atlantic Ocean floor
Contributor: National Geographic Society (U.S.). Cartographic Division
