Martin Behaim

Martin Behaim was a 15th-century German navigator and geographer who created the Erdapfel, the oldest surviving terrestrial globe.

Erdapfel: The oldest surviving terrestrial globe, made in Nuremberg in 1492 under Martin Behaim’s direction. Behaim is chiefly remembered for this globe, which combines geographical knowledge with contemporary errors.
Nuremberg: A major imperial city in the Holy Roman Empire, known in the late Middle Ages for commerce and skilled crafts. Behaim was born there, and the city’s patrons commissioned his globe.
Terrestrial globe: A spherical model of Earth that represents geographic features on a curved surface. The Erdapfel belongs to this mapmaking form, which preserves spatial relationships differently from flat maps.
Christopher Columbus: A Genoese navigator whose Spanish-sponsored voyages beginning in 1492 initiated sustained European contact with the Americas. Columbus’s first voyage began the same year the Erdapfel was completed, exposing the globe’s outdated geography.
Nuremberg Chronicle: A richly illustrated world history published in Nuremberg in 1493 by Hartmann Schedel. Its publication soon after the Erdapfel offers another Nuremberg account of the known world.
Portugal: A kingdom on the western edge of the Iberian Peninsula that sponsored early European oceanic voyages. Behaim lived and sailed in Portugal during its expansion into Atlantic and African waters.
Cartography: The practice and study of making maps and other spatial representations. Behaim’s globe is a major surviving artifact of late-medieval cartography.
Age of Sail: The period when sailing ships powered long-distance exploration, trade, and empire across the world’s oceans. Behaim’s maritime career belongs to the early expansion of oceanic sailing.
Fra Mauro map: A large 15th-century world map that records European and Asian geography before the voyages of Columbus. It shows a different, earlier synthesis of geographic knowledge than Behaim’s globe.
Flemish trade: The medieval commercial network linking Flanders with markets across Europe and the Atlantic. Behaim’s early mercantile career connected him to the trade networks that led him abroad.

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Matthias RingmannCompared with: His globe predates Ringmann’s map and depicts a world without the newly named American continent.