The map itself is undated, but there are clues it was created in 1491: It quotes a book published that year, and Christopher Columbus may have consulted the map (or a copy) before his great voyage.

Civilian exploration may be the official mission of a Chinese deep-sea research ship that sailed clockwise around Australia over the past week and is now loitering west of the continent. But maybe ...

For centuries, the world has been misled about Africa’s true size. The Mercator map—one of the most widely used world ...