History and description Īlthough Isidore taught in the Etymologiae that the Earth was 'round', his meaning was ambiguous and some writers think he referred to a disc-shaped Earth. The mass of solid land is called round after the roundness of a circle, because it is like a wheel Because of this, the Ocean flowing around it is contained in a circular limit, and it is divided in three parts, one part being called Asia, the second Europe, and the third Africa. Divisus est autem trifarie: e quibus una pars Asia, altera Europa, tertia Africa nuncupatur.Įtymologiae, chapter 14, de terra et partibus (translation): Latin: Orbis a rotunditate circuli dictus, quia sicut rota est Undique enim Oceanus circumfluens eius in circulo ambit fines. Įtymologiae, chapter 14, de terra et partibus: Thus we see the earth is divided into two to comprise, on the one hand, Europe and Africa, and on the other only Asia. Moreover, Asia – as the most blessed Augustine said – runs from the southeast to the north. And Asia is divided from Libya with Egypt by the Nile.

Europe is divided from Africa by a sea from the end of the ocean and the Pillars of Hercules. So the earth may be divided into three sides (trifarie), of which one part is Europe, another Asia, and the third is called Africa. More detailed later maps with equivalent orientation are sometimes described as a 'Beatine map' after the Beatus map because one of the earliest known representations of this sort is attributed to Beatus of Liébana, an 8th-century Spanish monk, in the prologue to his Commentary on the Apocalypse.ĭe Natura Rerum, Chapter XLVIII, 2 (translation): Īlthough not included in the original Isidorian maps, a later manuscript added the names of Noah's sons ( Sem, Iafeth and Cham) for each of the three continents (see Biblical terminology for race). A classic 'T-O' map with Jerusalem at center, east toward the top, Europe at bottom left and Africa on the right.Ī T and O map or O–T or T–O map ( orbis terrarum, orb or circle of the lands with the letter T inside an O), also known as an Isidoran map, is a type of early world map that represents the physical world as first described by the 7th-century scholar Isidore of Seville in his De Natura Rerum and later his Etymologiae.

The Hereford Mappa Mundi, about 1300, Hereford Cathedral, England. Type of medieval world map This T and O map, from the first printed version of Isidore's Etymologiae, identifies the three known continents as populated by descendants of Sem ( Shem), Iafeth ( Japheth) and Cham ( Ham).

Flat earth ancient map