Caveat Emptor: The Lesson of the Fake Waldseemüller Gores

There have been stories recently, in major news publications, about an extremely rare, early 16th century map that was set to go to auction with an expected selling price of at least USD800,000, but that has turned out to be a fake. It's a cool story, and a cautionary tale worth recording.

The map in question is the Martin Waldseemüller "gores". Gores are meant to be cut out and pasted onto a sphere to create a globe. That's one reason why this map is so rare. Most of these maps would have been cut up after being produced and lost over time. In fact, only four originals were known to exist of a map believed to be the first printed globe and the first to use the word "America".

The map was described as "a huge deal". It was the first to show the world in 360 degrees. Showed an important new landmass, and introduced an important new word into our lexicon. It also gave arguably inflated importance to the explorer Amerigo Vespucci.

It's an amazing thought, that just 15 years after Columbus's voyage, a map-maker scrambled to compile all this new information he's learning about the new world and to try and express it in a new way.  

Apparently, the story goes that someone walked off the street into Christie's auction house and claimed to be a descendant of a well known British paper restorer who had found the map among his late-relative's papers. The experts at the Auction house were overjoyed. The felt they had chanced upon an amazing treasure. Too bad they were wrong.

A map expert named Alex Clausen, employed by the well known (in the map world) Barry Ruderman of Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps, spotted a few things amiss.

A drop of glue on the paper, that would have affixed it to something, had print on top of the adhesive, rather than under it, as might be expected. In other places, detail seems to have been added to the map, where it would have been expected to be missing as the printing process wore it down. Another concern, caught by another paper expert, was that there was a line on the map that matched a spot where a verified original map had been repaired. It was too coincidental for this new map to have an identical repair. Moreover, another copy of the map, previously presumed to be original also had this same line. That latter map's status as an original is now also being re-considered by its owner.

Such a map would likely never be in the hands of an amateur or casual map collector, but it raises a question: if most experts were nearly fooled, how could an amateur ever avoid being duped? If the nuances between the real thing and a fake are so hard to detect, it's discouraging to someone who may want to take a step into buying some of the rarer, older, and more expensive maps that are on the market. The best advice, is probably to ask lots of questions of the seller, including about the provenance--the historical chain of ownership--of the map. It also helps to have a high level of trust in the seller.

Above all, it reinforces the much older maxim: caveat emptor! Let the buyer beware.

Exceedingly Rare Aztec Map

Thanks to National Geographic, I came across this story about a map that is as much archaeology as it is geography.

The map is called the Codex Quetzalecatzin, was recently acquired by the U.S. Library of congress and is one of fewer than 100 Mezoamerican maps that predate the year 1600. In other words, it's an extremely rare, Aztec map from sometime between 1570 and 1595. 

Image of the Codex Quetzalecatzin frm the U.S. Library of Congress

The map shows the family tree and land holdings of an Aztec family and "...covers an area that runs from just north of Mexico City to just below Puebla, roughly 100 miles away to the southeast". 

It contains both Aztec imagery as well as clear Spanish influences, not least the Spanish writing on the map. It appears to represent some of the earliest contact between the indigenous people of Mexico and Europeans. 

From looking at it, what strikes me is that it barely looks like a map at all. It looks more like a drawing of a landscape, or what we may call a "view", than a map. To the layperson like me, it also seems to have a strange scale and it is not immediately clear that it represents such a vast area. 

It is beautiful though, with vibrant colours and images such as this snippet: 

The U.S. Library of Congress has at least one other map like the Codex Quetzalecatzin. It's called the The Oztoticpac lands map, and though it has no doubt been the subject of extensive study, I cannot find very much about it online.

This one is even older than the Codex Quetzalecatzin and dates to around 1540. It's described as a "litigation map", relating to a property dispute. Some detail on it from The Library of Congress reads:

 The Oztoticpac Lands Map is an Aztec pictorial document with Nahuatl writing drawn for a court case surrounding the Oztoticpac estate within the city of Texcoco around 1540. The document, written on amatl paper, involves the land ownership of the Aztec ruler Chichimecatecotl, who was executed by Spanish officials in 1539. It is not clear from surviving information who won the case. Most of the document consists of black-and-red line drawings showing fields, houses, palaces, trees, and measured plots of land. In the lower left, twenty trees that have been grafted with European fruit stock in a local orchard are shown. These include apples, quinces, pears, grapes, and pomegranates.

Here's an image with a better look:

There are some fascinating details on this map, some of which probably require a better historical and cultural knowledge to understand, but which to the layperson, are interesting and fun to look at.

For example, the map contains images of various plants. The quote above explains what they are, but some of the images are so curious. For example, in the image of the plant below, whose disembodied hands are those, and why are they there at all? Whose disembodied heads are these and, what's this man doing all alone on this plot of land? These seem to be more than just decorative, and when considering that this map was used in a court case, one has to imagine that they are meant to reflect a certain ownership of a particular area shown on the map.

One reason I love antique maps is because they represent a snapshot of what a place was like at a specific moment in time. These maps do that, and then some. There are not just about what places looked like, but they tell us about who lived there and how they lived. This is more than you would get from your average antique map. It's why, as I wrote above, that maps like this fall into the category of archaeology. They help us understand how people who are long gone structured their lives and societies. They're windows into history and a pleasure to look at.