The Globus Jagellonicus or Jagiellonian globe, made in France and dated to around 1510, is by some considered to be the oldest existing globe to show the Americas.[1][2] It bears a striking resemblance to the Hunt-Lenox Globe, also tentatively dated to 1510[3] which is the second or third oldest known terrestrial globe, after the Erdapfel of Martin Behaim, made in Nuremberg in 1492, the year before the Columbus' discovery became known in March 1493, and thus without the new continents. Globes made by Martin Waldseemüller in 1507 already showed America.
The globus belonged to the medieval Cracow Academy which was in 1817 renamed to Jagiellonian University; it is featured on display at the Collegium Maius Museum. It was rediscovered in the early 1870s[4] and described as Globus Jagellonicus in 1900 by Prof. Tadeusz Estreicher in the Transactions of the Cracow Academy of Sciences for that year.[5][6] At the time, when no Polish state existed for about a century, Prof. Estreicher points out that this globe indicating recent geographical discoveries, possessed by the Cracow Academy since 1510, throws special light on the interest taken by Polish scholars of that time.
The gilded copper globe is considered the earliest existing globe to indicate any part of the New World and the first to delineate the South American continent. It is also the oldest globe on which the continent of America is shown to be distinct from that of Asia. It uses the name "America" , which had been introduced in 1507 by Martin Waldseemüller in his Universalis Cosmographia, though for a continent located to the south of India.[7] A replica of the globe is on display in the Polish Nationality Room at the University of Pittsburgh[8]
Robert J. King has pointed out that America was shown on the Jagiellonian Globe in two locations: in the Atlantic Ocean under the names MUNDUS NOVUS, TERRA SANCTAE CRUCIS and TERRA DE BRAZIL; and in the Indian Ocean under the name AMERICA NOVITER REPERTA (America newly discovered). This bilocation of America in the eastern and western hemispheres resulted from the two different scales of longitude employed, one that of Claudius Ptolemy, who allowed 180 degrees between the westernmost point of Europe, Cape St Vincent in Portugal and Cattigara on the easternmost point of Asia, the other that of Christopher Columbus, who allowed 225 degrees for the same distance. According to the Columban calculation, therefore, the New World/America was closer to Europe, its most western part no more than 135 degrees west of Portugal, while according to the Ptolemaic calculation it was further west, to the south of India, as seen on the Jagiellonian Globe.[9]