Maps, Monsters, and Natural History in the Age of Exploration Exploration: The Globe and Beyond Lecture Series

How can we recognize scientific images from other periods and cultures, without assuming that images that look different from what we expect are inaccurate or imaginary? In this talk I explore this question through sea monsters and Patagonian giants, two life-forms that appear frequently on European maps from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I show how we can use images on maps in order to better understand the relationship between visual diagrams and the study of nature in the age of exploration.