Ptolemy's world map
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The Ptolemy world map is a map based on the description of the world contained in Ptolemy's book Geographia, written circa 150 . Although authentic maps have never been found, the Geographia contains thousands of references to various parts of the old world, with coordinates for most, which allowed cartographers to recontruct Ptolemy's world view when the manuscript was re-discovered around 1300 AD.
Perhaps the most significant contribution of Ptolemy and his maps is the introduction of longitudes and latitudes and the specifying of terrestrial locations by celestial observations. When his Geographia was translated from Greek into Latin and introduced into Western Europe at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the idea of a global coordinate system revolutionized European geographical thinking and put it upon a scientific and numerical basis.
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The map distinguishes two large "closed" seas, the first one being the Mediterranean, the second one being the Indian Ocean (Indicum Pelagus), which extends into the China Sea (Magnus Sinus) in the East.
The major geographical locations are Europe, the Middle-East, India with an oversized Sri Lanka (Taprobane), the Southeast Asian peninsula (Aurea Chersonesus or "Golden Peninsula") and beyond it China (Sinae).
The Geographia and the maps derived from it probably played an important role in the expansion of the Roman Empire to the East. Trade throughout the Indian Ocean was extensive from the 2nd century, and many Roman trading ports have been identified in India. From these ports, Roman embassies to China are recorded in Chinese historical sources from around 166.
