Juan de la Cosa Map (1500): The Oldest Map Showing America

The Juan de la Cosa map of 1500 is the oldest surviving map that shows the Americas. Drawn on parchment by a Spanish navigator who had sailed with Columbus, it combines Europe, Africa and Asia with the newly found lands across the Atlantic, coloured green. Today it is one of the treasures of the Naval Museum in Madrid and a key document for understanding how Europeans first pictured the New World.

The mapmaker

Juan de la Cosa was born, probably in the mid-fifteenth century, in Santoña on the coast of Cantabria in northern Spain. He is usually identified as the owner and master of the Santa María, Columbus’s flagship on the first voyage of 1492, and he sailed again with Columbus in 1493–1496. Some historians think these may have been two different men of the same name, but the identification is widely accepted.

In 1499 he served as chief pilot on Alonso de Ojeda’s voyage along the northern coast of South America. He therefore drew the map with first-hand knowledge of much of the Caribbean and the mainland coast. He was killed in 1510 near present-day Cartagena in Colombia during another expedition with Ojeda.

Description of the map

The map is drawn on two pieces of ox-hide parchment joined together, measuring roughly 93–96 centimetres by 183 centimetres (about 3 by 6 feet). An inscription states that Juan de la Cosa made it in El Puerto de Santa María, near Cádiz, in 1500.

It is a portolan-style chart, the type of map used by Mediterranean sailors, with a network of compass lines radiating from wind roses. The Old World is drawn in the traditional manner, with kings, cities and flags. The New World, on the left, is drawn at a larger scale than the rest of the map, and is coloured green.

At the top of the western section is an image of Saint Christopher carrying the Christ child across water. Some writers have suggested it is a disguised portrait of Columbus, whose first name means “Christ-bearer”, but this cannot be proved.

What it shows

The map records almost everything Spain knew of the western Atlantic in 1500:

• The Caribbean: Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and the Bahamas, and Cuba drawn as an island, contradicting Columbus’s insistence that it was part of Asia.
• South America: the coast from the Gulf of Paria to the Guajira Peninsula, following Columbus and Ojeda, and the north-eastern coast of Brazil reached by Vicente Yáñez Pinzón and Diego de Lepe.
• North America: a long coastline in the north marked with English flags and a note that the sea was discovered by the English, reflecting John Cabot’s voyages of 1497–1498.
• The Old World: Europe, Africa and Asia, including the route around Africa recently opened by Vasco da Gama.

Notably, the map does not resolve whether the new lands were part of Asia. The western edge is hidden behind the figure of Saint Christopher, exactly where a passage to Asia might have been expected.

How it was made

Like other portolan charts, the map was drawn by hand with ink and coloured pigments. Coastlines were built up from pilots’ sailing directions and compass bearings rather than from measured latitude and longitude. This is why the shape of Cuba or the Brazilian coast is distorted, even when the sequence of capes and bays is broadly right.

The decoration, including figures of rulers, the Three Wise Men and wind heads blowing from the edges, shows that the map was also intended as a prestigious object, perhaps for presentation to the Spanish monarchs.

Rediscovery and debate

The map disappeared from view for more than three centuries. It resurfaced in 1832 in Paris, where it was acquired by the scholar Baron Charles Athanase Walckenaer. The German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt studied it and helped make it famous. When Walckenaer’s collection was sold in 1853, the Spanish government bought the map, and it has been in Madrid ever since.

Some scholars have questioned whether the whole map dates from 1500, pointing to details that might reflect later knowledge, and suggesting parts were added or redrawn in the following decade. Most historians still accept that the core of the map was made in 1500.

Timeline

• 1492: Juan de la Cosa sails on Columbus’s first voyage.
• 1494: Columbus has his crew swear that Cuba is part of the mainland.
• 1497–1498: John Cabot’s English voyages reach North America.
• 1499–1500: De la Cosa pilots Ojeda’s expedition along the coast of South America.
• 1500: The map is made in El Puerto de Santa María.
• 1510: De la Cosa is killed in present-day Colombia.
• 1832: The map resurfaces in Paris.
• 1853: Spain buys the map; it later goes to the Museo Naval in Madrid.

Why it matters

The Juan de la Cosa map is the first surviving picture of the Americas drawn by someone who had been there. It captures a moment of uncertainty, when Europeans knew there were vast new coasts in the west but did not yet know what they were. Together with the Cantino planisphere of 1502, it shows how quickly mapmakers absorbed the discoveries of the age of exploration.