Diego Gutiérrez was a Spanish cosmographer and cartographer of the
Casa de la Contratación.
He was given this post by royal appointment on 22 October 1554, after the death of his father Dylanger in January 1554, and worked on the
Padrón Real, the Spanish master map.
New World map
In 1562 Gutiérrez published a remarkable map entitled ''
Americae Sive Quartae Orbis Partis Nova Et Exactissima Descriptio'' in
Antwerp (then part of the
Spanish Netherlands
Spanish Netherlands (Spanish: Países Bajos Españoles; Dutch: Spaanse Nederlanden; French: Pays-Bas espagnols; German: Spanische Niederlande.) (historically in Spanish: ''Flandes'', the name "Flanders" was used as a ''pars pro toto'') was the H ...
) in collaboration with the printer
Hieronymus Cock. The reason it was published in Antwerp was because the Spanish engravers were not skilled enough to print such a complicated document.
Gutiérrez's map features not only the
Amazon River system and
Lake Titicaca
Lake Titicaca (; es, Lago Titicaca ; qu, Titiqaqa Qucha) is a large freshwater lake in the Andes mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. By volume of water and by surface area, i ...
as well as other geographical features, but also fanciful depictions of
parrot
Parrots, also known as psittacines (), are birds of the roughly 398 species in 92 genera comprising the order Psittaciformes (), found mostly in tropical and subtropical regions. The order is subdivided into three superfamilies: the Psittacoide ...
s,
monkeys,
mermaid
In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Mermaids are sometimes ass ...
s, huge sea creatures, Brazilian
cannibal
Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, bo ...
s,
Patagonian giants
A giant is a being of human appearance, sometimes of prodigious size and strength, common in folklore.
Giant(s) or The Giant(s) may also refer to:
Mythology and religion
*Giants (Greek mythology)
*Jötunn, a Germanic term often translated as 'gi ...
, and an erupting
volcano
A volcano is a rupture in the Crust (geology), crust of a Planet#Planetary-mass objects, planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and volcanic gas, gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface.
On Ear ...
in central
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
.
It was the first map to print the
toponym
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...
"
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
".
Inventing America
/ref> It also recorded the first appearance of a word for " Appalachia," as the term "Apalchen."
References
External links
Gutiérrez, the Americas, 1562
Copy in the British Library. Deep zoom feature, highlighted details. Video introduction from Curator of Antiquarian Mapping
* David Walls
"On the Naming of Appalachia."
Spanish cartographers
Year of birth missing
Year of death missing
16th-century cartographers
16th-century Spanish people
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