🧵 5/10

In this exhibit, I also learned about the mythical island of "Frisland". It appeared on virtually all maps of the North Atlantic from the 1560s to the 1660s. But it does not exist!

In 1558, Nicolò Zeno of Venice published a map and some letters supposedly written by his ancestors in the 1390s, claiming they'd sailed around the North Atlantic on behalf of a mysterious prince named Zichmni, and even reached North America before Columbus.

#museum #paris #monsters #oldmaps #hoax #zeno

🧵 6/10

The story had everything: shipwrecks, a monastery in Greenland with geothermal heating, cannibals who had to be taught how to fish, and a hostile island whose locals chased them off. The map was initially taken seriously and incorporated into the work of major cartographers, including Gerardus Mercator!

#museum #paris #monsters #oldmaps #hoax #zeno #adventure

🧵 7/10

But records show that at the time of the supposed voyage, one of the brothers was on trial for embezzlement in Venice, and later wrote his will there, years after he was allegedly dead on a fictional island.

The prevailing scholarly view it was a hoax fabricated by Nicolò Zeno to make a retroactive claim for Venice having discovered the New World before Columbus, a motive made more pointed by Venice's rivalry with Genoa, Columbus's hometown.

#museum #paris #monsters #hoax #zeno

🧵 8/10

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography sums it up pretty well: "one of the most preposterous and at the same time one of the most successful fabrications in the history of exploration."

#museum #paris #monsters #oldmaps #hoax #zeno