What You can Learn from an Old Map

I enjoy roaming through thrift stores because it is always a quest for the unknown; you never know what you will discover. Recently I found an amazing treasure at a thrift store. My husband and I were looking at some chairs and as I turned around, my eyes fell on a map that was matted on foam core. I love maps so I studied it for a few seconds before I recognized it was an old map of Amsterdam! The writing on it was not in English and although I have never been to Amsterdam I recognized it instantly. I first noticed the canals running in a c-shape throughout the town, old ships, houses of red roofs and windmills surrounding the outside of the city. I snatched it up for $2.99 – best deal ever!

I spent the next few days studying my map and becoming familiar with its origins. I also made some connections with facts I already knew about what Amsterdam was like in the 1600s. I learned Johannes Blaeu created the map in 1649. It is titled “Celeberrimi Hollandiae Emporii Delineatio Nova” which roughly translates to “New Delineation in Amsterdam, the Most Famous Port in Holland.” The mid 1600s were the Golden Age for the Dutch, they were successfully involved in world trade and Amsterdam was the leading trade city in Europe. Blaeu made the map to celebrate Dutch independence from Spain after the Eighty Year War and show the dominance of the Dutch’s position in world trade.

Blaeu’s map is oriented with southwest at the top, which is typical for the 1500 and 1600s. With this orientation. Amsterdam is drawn above the Ij Inlet, (labeled Ya Flavius) the waterway that gave the Dutch access to the entire world, and made Holland the most famous trading post at the time. The water on the map is filled with ships of all types; large ships line the docks of the Ij Inlet and the canals are filled with smaller sloops.

Johannes Blaeu and his family were all well known for their cartography skills.  Johannes’ father Willem was a Dutch cartographer, publisher, globe, and atlas maker. He gained his expertise of being a globe maker when he worked with the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. The Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer painted Willem’s maps into the backgrounds of three of his paintings.

On Johannes’ map, the buildings of Amsterdam are tightly fit side-by-side, and covered by distinctive, maroon-red roofs. At the center of Amsterdam none of the houses have a yard. Further out from the center, many homes are without a yard but have access to a commons area. The land outside of town was for farming and divided into strips of land filled with various crops and animals.

The Amsel River runs through the center of Amsterdam and the map shows various sizes of ships, coming and going along this path. In the very center of town, the river is dammed and without canals. This area is home to the fish market and Henry Keyser’s Stock Exchange; it is covered with land and roadways instead of canals.

Around the outside of the city was a series of medieval walls in a zig-zag pattern. Inside each peak of the wall is a windmill. This system of walls and windmills was one way the Dutch fought to keep their land from being flooded. Windmills constantly pumped water out of the lowlands and back into the nearby rivers and inlets and kept land available for planting and homes.

So why does it even matter that I found an old map of Amsterdam from the 1600s? To me, it brings to life a time and a place that I have never been before. It allows me to see people living their daily lives along the streets and canals of Amsterdam more than 350 years ago. With this map I see little children sitting on the front stoop of their tidy houses waiting for a ship to come into the canal by their home. When one arrives, they excitedly jump up and down, and call their little friends to join them in the discovery, as goods from other parts of the world are unloaded.

I picture yards filled with trees and gardens, busy with activity. When the trees were loaded with fruit and the gardens filled with extra produce, families gathered the excess into baskets to bring to the market at the center of Amsterdam. I can guess that they sometimes trade their extra goods for a new painting or vase from a newly arrived ship; and these luxury items are brought home, enjoyed by all who enter the house - a unique idea for the time.

I imagine the borders of the city where windmills slowly turn keeping excess water on the outside edge of the dykes. These areas are home to families who are fishermen, and are also able to do the upkeep against the ever-encroaching water. They gather piles of long grass to put on top of the earthworks to keep the water of the Netherlands out of the farmlands and city. I visualize older children walking in their wooden shoes to bring a cloth sack filled with food to their father for his lunch. As they walk over the soggy land along the dyke, their feet do not sink because the shoes hold them up.

I see docks at the edge of the Ij Inlet lined with warehouses. During this time the Dutch East India Company bought items from all over the world, and because of the joint stock business model, they could buy more than they needed. The excess was then stored in warehouses until the demand increased for the items elsewhere in the world and they could be sold for a higher price.

The South American explorer, Alexander von Humbolt said, “The richness of your life, depends on what you are able to see.” Keep this in mind the next time you glance at a map, and take a deeper look. Dive into the details; allow the lines and labels to teach you about the people who lived out their lives there. Explore the map enough so you can understand the people who walked the paths of the map each day; places where they loved and lived and died.

Science and Religion

Looking to the past one may find innumerable examples of how expanded knowledge leads to a better understanding of the world. Early mariners had maps of the Earth showing the known landmasses, oceans, sea serpents and the edge of the world that one would most certainly fall off of if they got too close. Then one day, a brave sailing captain navigated to the very edge of the map – and continued sailing. He and his crew did not fall to their deaths off the edge of the world; instead they kept gliding on into unknown waters, eventually finding land that was not recorded on any maps. This new knowledge changed what had been previously known, which in turn, led to even more discoveries and further knowledge.

We see yet another example in the field of medicine. To cure individuals of diseases and illnesses the practice of bloodletting was once used. It was believed that bleeding a person would help restore the proper balance of their bodily fluids and allow them to heal. Though surprising to us today, this was not a unique exercise but one that was used for almost 2,000 years by the Egyptians, Greeks, Aztecs and others as well as by doctors during the U.S. Civil War. Today we understand that bloodletting is not helpful to those who are ill. This new knowledge has changed the way medicine is practiced and thankfully, doctors no longer use bloodletting to cure illness.

These two examples demonstrate the provisional nature of scientific knowledge. We, as a species, are continually learning more about the world around us and as a result, we understand more how and why things work the way they do. Many times new discoveries require us to think and understand issues differently than we have in the past. Living during this time of continual learning and research requires us to keep up with what is new in our ever-changing world. We need to be aware and honest enough, to correct information, even from our own belief windows, that has become flawed.

I experienced an interesting event recently. My husband teaches science and is also a religious individual. Some people have asked him how he can ‘believe’ religion and science at the same time and he has explained that they complement each other; his growing knowledge of science has actually strengthened his spiritual beliefs. He was asked to give a talk in our congregation and he spoke about the importance of finding truth in our lives. He discussed how it is valuable to find truth in the secular world, such as in his science classroom, and how it is also vital to continue to learn spiritual truths as well.

A few weeks after his address, the leader of our congregation called my husband in and reported that a few members of the congregation had some concerns about the talk he had given. They were worried that my husband actually believed all of the science he taught in his classroom. After some discussion, he asked my husband if he could assure these few, fatuous members that he did not think all of the science principles he taught were true. I tried to keep my jaw from dropping and could not believe what I was hearing. As my husband respectfully refused to declare that the science he taught in his classroom was untrue, my mind I was immediately transported to a lavish room in Italy at the top of an ornate spiral staircase. The room, with its frescoed ceiling was filled with several persons who were decision makers as well as the individual they were cross-examining. The accused had spoken what were considered to be blasphemous statements, which he acknowledged to be true because of recent evidences he had discovered while studying and experimenting with them. The ideas he shared did not fit with the archaic notions that rattled around in the minds of the accusers so they were certain he spoke falsehoods. This individual’s blasphemous idea was that the sun was the center of the solar system and not the Earth. So on June 22, 1633 Galileo Galilei was convicted of the heinous crime of “having held and believed the doctrine which is false and contrary to the Sacred and Divine Scriptures, that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to west and that the Earth moves and is not the center of the world” (Sobel, 274).

Galileo believed that there was much to be learned about the world around him and that is was prudent to continue to gain knowledge. In a letter to his friend, Castelli, Galileo stated, “I do not think it necessary to believe that the same God who gave us our senses, our speech, our intellect, would have put aside the use of these, to teach us instead such things as with their help we could find out for ourselves, particularly in the case of these sciences of which there is not the smallest mention in the Scriptures” (Sobel, 65). Galileo could see that truth could be found everywhere; both in secular and spiritual aspects of life and that those truths in the secular world did not threaten the truths of the spiritual world.

We live at a time with access to unlimited knowledge but do not always take advantage of it. The age-old battle between science and religion is not really a battle but a blending of truths from both arenas. By losing our fear of change and being brave enough to let go of outdated information we can expand our knowledge in so many more areas of our lives. As Galileo said about those who were against the truths he found through the lens of his telescope, “They seem to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment and growth of the arts, not their diminution or destruction” (Sobel, 67). As we bravely go to the comfortable edge of our knowledge and then proceed beyond, we can learn more than we ever thought possible. We will realize that the illusory brink was never actually there and that a remarkable horizon is before us, leading us to greater truths in every aspect of our lives.

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Dava Sobel. Galileo’s Daughter. New York: Penguin Books. 2000.