Advances in Historical Studies, 2015, 4, 239-307 Published Online June 2015 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/ahs http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ahs.2015.43019 America’s Birth Certificate: The Oldest Globular World Map: c. 1507 Stefaan Missinne PhD Art and Globe Expert, Vienna, Austria Email:
[email protected] Received 4 June 2015; accepted 30 June 2015; published 2 July 2015 Copyright © 2015 by author and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract In 2012, a woodcut print for a c. 11 centimeter globe was discovered in an ancient volume in the University Library in Munich. This pivotal 1 million US$ globular world map, which only differs marginally from four other extant woodcut copies, attracted worldwide media attention. This dis- covery ignited the search for the date and the origin of an enigma in the form of an intricate secre- tive small Renaissance map. The aforementioned had been acquired inserted in a French adapted and unauthorised copy of the Introduction to Cosmography dated 1507 and printed in Lyon. The son of a Dutch American immigrant from Flusching, H. C. Kalbfleisch bought it in Paris in 1881 and brought it to New York. The author offers key evidence that this secretive map is an important misinterpreted and misdated cultural historical prototype which antedates five later woodcut copies: gores in Munich UB, Minnesota-Hauslab, Christie’s, SL Munich and Offenburg. He proves that its size and scale are inspired by a calculation of Leonardo da Vinci as described in one of his Codices, and applied on the 1504 Ostrich Egg globe discovered in London 2012.