Although the words themselves were actually quite rare,
the sentiment was common among medieval European cartographers, who often scratched dragons and sea monsters into terra incognita—blank spaces—on maps.
For thousands of years, people around the world made both functional maps—trade routes, settlements, topography, water sources, shapes of coastlines, or written directions—and what's known as cosmography, the Earth and its position.
Depicting the cosmos, often including constellations, gods, and mythical places. From the Middle Ages to the mid-17th century, cartographers from Eurasia and North Africa produced many new maps of the world with characteristics from both traditions.
Often created by rulers and other powerful people,
these maps were intended to show the geography of the world, but were not necessarily useful for navigation.
And given their creator's imperfect knowledge of the world, they were indeed hypotheses—some of which have been clearly disproved.
In medieval Europe, the new popularity began with what was known as the mappe market. Many of these became close to cosmographies, including the Garden of Eden or the mythical dragon.
They all followed the same format,
showing the world's land divided into a large T-shape and surrounded by a ring of ocean.
Islamic cartographers also created world maps in this format, emphasizing dramatic elements over geographical details.
One of the earliest and most accurate such maps was made by Ibn Hawqal, whose own travels informed his mapping. In 1154, the King of Sicily commissioned the Islamic cartographer al-Idrisi to create the "Tabula Rogeriana", also known as "Guide to Pleasant Travels in the Faraway Lands".
This book of maps included a map of the world based on Idrisi's own travels and interviews with other merchants and travelers.
He correctly depicted the world as a flat circle,
but thought that Europe, Asia, and North Africa wrapped around it. "Da Ming Honey Tu" was created in China in 1389 on a piece of silk that could fill an entire room.
Although the mapmakers had never been to Africa, they tried to depict the continent based on the accounts of traders who had been there. Amazingly, this provided them with enough information to create an accurate picture of sub-Saharan Africa.
Beginning in the 15th century,
European cartographers began to expand the scope of their world maps as their explorers traveled the world—but without error.
In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller mapped America—as a thin sliver of land where the east coast would be. Spanish cartographers took a stab at the west coast of America based on accounts of their expedition to the Baja Peninsula.
Unfortunately, the explorers' perceptions of the land led them astray:
100 years later, Spanish maps showed the "Island of California" separate from the rest of the continent.
Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, famous for his maps of the world, also created a never-before-seen map of the North Pole that was published in 1595.
Mercator hypothesized that the North Pole featured prominently in the "Rupus Negra," a giant magnetic rock. Surrounded by a vortex that explained why all compasses point north.
Even as Europeans built toward a more complete picture of the Earth, they did not completely let go of the idea of empty spaces filled with mythical beasts.
In late 1657, the English scholar Peter Helen explored Australia with Utopia and Fairyland.
But with the exception of the North Pole,
these so-called terra incognita were not really unknown - at least not to the people who lived there.
There weren't really dragons anywhere on Earth, but there were people and cultures—many of them exterminated by those who placed their lands on world maps.
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