1669 Sanson Map of America as Atlantis

This is a beautiful, first state example of Nicolas and Guillaume Sanson's map of America, proposing that the continent and the legendary lost continent of Atlantis were one and the same.

A Closer Look

The map employs state-of-the-art geographical knowledge for its template, the outline of the continents resembling that found on many of the maps of the seventeenth century. Tasman's mapping of Australia and the South Pacific can be seen and the speculative geography for the North Pacific appears. North America's delineation (with its insular California, the partial mapping of the Great Lakes, and a pre-Hennepin mapping of the rivers emptying into the Gulf of Mexico) corresponds to Sanson's other maps, and Dutch maps of the mid-seventeenth century.

Atlantis Found

The map's toponymy diverges drastically from the norm, applying the name 'Atlantis Insula' to North and South America, and dividing the land into ten domains named after the mythical sons of Neptune, god of the sea. Atlantis' only cities are Machimos ('Fighting Town') and Eusebes ('Pious Town') placed roughly corresponding to Mexico City and Cusco respectively. These place-names derive not from Plato, but from the Greek scholar Theopompus' Philippica, a scathing parody of Plato's Timaeus and Critias. Text throughout cites both Plato's original work and Theopompus' parody to support the reality of Atlantis. Even ancient prophecy is offered in evidence: the poet Seneca's prophetic verse in Medea is quoted at the bottom center:

In late years a time shall come in which the ocean shall relax the bonds of things, and a great land shall be discovered. Tethys shall unveil new worlds, and Thule shall no longer be the utmost extremity of the Earth.

Perhaps in evidence of the truth of this pronouncement, Iceland has been prominently labeled 'Thule Insula.' Other notations propose analogous similarities between the old world and new, such as similarities in size and shape between 'the south part of Atlantis' and Africa; the likeness of the Isthmus of Panama to the connection between Asia and Africa; and in blatant denial of all visual evidence makes the spurious claim that 'the northern part of the island of Atlantis not only approaches the extent of Asia, but also imitates the shape, location and population of the surrounding islands.' Perhaps Sanson's choice of projection, distorting as it does the coasts of Asia, Europe, and Africa in favor of 'Atlantis,' served to support these outrageous statements.

A Fine Cartouche

The map's engraving is far superior to its scholarship, from its beautifully pictorial mountains to its attractively-engraved cartouche. The latter is embellished with a depiction of Neptune himself seated on a seashell chariot, a crowd of sea-putti, perhaps intended to be nine of Neptune's ten sons, frolic about him. Two labor at pulling the chariot through the water.

Atlantis

The idea of the lost island of Atlantis was introduced in Plato's dialogues in the fourth century BCE as an allegory of the hubris of nations, and as an antagonist for his idealization of ancient Athens (Atlantis, able to dominate all nations in the world, was in Plato's pseudo-history repelled by Athens, as a demonstration of the latter state's superiority.) Plato's story ends with Atlantis having fallen out of favor with the gods, and sinking into the ocean.

It is difficult to find an allegory that someone, somewhere has not taken literally, so it is perhaps natural that Plato's tale would over the centuries be accepted as factual history by some writers. Plato's having placed his fictional island in sufficiently vague a location (beyond the Pillars of Hercules, AKA the strait of Gibraltar) did not help matters - nor did the fact that both the terms 'Atlantic' and 'Atlantis' share the same root referring to the titan Atlas. The Flemish humanist Justus Lipsius (1547-1606) argued for the reality of Atlantis, supposing that it may have been a now-sunken landmass in the Atlantic. Athanasius Kircher (1602 -1680), in 1664, produced a map consonant with that notion. It is perhaps less surprising that the discovery of a new landmass across that ocean would result in speculation that the Americas might be the lost continent, than that no maps similar to this one were committed to print prior. Not even Ortelius produced a map depicting Atlantis - and he was fascinated with classical geography and produced maps tracing the journeys of Homeric characters. It may be that Sanson's map was in some respect an answer to Kircher's, or an embroidery upon it.

California as an Island

Sanson proposed much in this map that was astonishing and novel. His treatment of the North American west coast was, at the time this map was produced, generally accepted knowledge. Sanson - along with virtually every prominent geographer in Europe - firmly believed that California was the largest island in the world. The notion first appeared on a map in 1622, and through a combination of inertia and wishful thinking maps would continue reproducing the canard until well into the 18th century. In the case of this map, the insularity of California was assumed to the extent that no specific mention of it was made in the text.

Publication History and Census

This first state was engraved by Guillaume Sanson for inclusion in his father's Cartes Generales de Toutes les Parties du Monde, published by Pierre Mariette in 1669. Burden identifies four further states, printed as late as 1741. We see ten separate examples of this edition of the map in OCLC, and fifteen examples of the complete atlas in various editions.