Book Review: Terra Cognita -The Mental Discovery of America, by Eviatar Zeruvabel

Years ago, I had the opportunity to ask Magnus Fiskesjo, one of my thesis advisors at Cornell, about Gavin Menzies books on his alleged (and easily disproven) claims of the Chinese discovering America. Dr. Fiskesjo recommended I read this book instead, I did and found it quite interesting and encourage others to do so as well. Please note while I read the first edition, there is now a second edition of the book. (This essay was originally written as a review on . Amazon.com)

As we all know, Columbus was not aware in 1492 that he had landed on a new continent. Hence the lingering odd term "Indian." This work discusses in great detail the often ignored process, and it emphasizes process, of how and why and when Europeans began to realize that they had discovered an entire new continent (or two) that was completely unconnected with Asia.

The author is an Israeli geographer and does this in large part through discussions of period maps and a couple globes. (The work includes 31 plates of period maps showing how cartographers in Europe viewed the relationship between newly discovered areas of America and the rest of the world.) He emphasizes in great detail the need to look at varying definitions of terms like "continent," "discover," "North America," and so on.

A great deal of time is spent not only on explorers, be they Spanish, Italian, Viking, English or Russian (who approached North America from the West but were the first to truly prove it is not attached to Asia) over a period of many centuries, as well as the cartographers and writers in Europe who disseminated, analyzed, sorted, filtered and processed the new information that was being uncovered and tried to put it in a context. (In fact, this work was first recommended to me by a professor who recommended it as partial refutation of Gavin Menzies silly claims that the Chinese not only discovered America in 1421, but, somehow, instantly new what it was and then told Columbus.)

Best of all, the work is only 118 pages long, plus plates and footnotes, making it a relatively quick read.

It does provide a great deal of information on the context of actions that might otherwise have been missed. (i.e. Coronado was apparently searching for a mythical seven cities of gold, but was not sure how these cities related to the civilization of China and the spice areas of SE Asia, for instance, and thought there might be a connection between the two.)