| Abstract: |
Early maps can serve not only as a source of valuable historical information about the landscape and geography of a represented area. They can serve as a source of information about cultures living in the given territory as well, even as a source of information about the culture which the author himself comes from. Beside the study of map language and map content, it is the rich content of early maps within marginal information, which allows to study the ideas and concepts of our ancestors about the cultures living in different parts of either the known or unknown world at that time. These are the drawings of illustrative character in particular, in the early maps postured as parergas, vedute and cartouches. The paper is slightly inspired by the exhibition “Annäherungen an die Ferne” (Approaches to Distant Lands), which took place in the Austrian National Library in 2009 and which provides a wide range of study materials. In addition, the early maps from renaissance and baroque, originally from several map collections in Czechia, were used for our research purposes. The aim of the paper on the one hand is to analyze and classify map language and map content and on the other hand it is to discuss the cultural determinism arising from cultural origin of the author. |
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