Guillaume Le Testu

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Guillaume Le Testu (* around 1510 in Le Havre ; † March 31, 1573 in Panama ) was a French cartographer and visionary who was also known as the "Seer of Dieppe " and was also a player .

His cartographic life's work is called Cosmographie Universelle selon le Navigateurs tant Ancien que Modernes (Universal Cosmography according to the [reports of] seafarers - earlier and modern). It is puzzling that in this world atlas from 1555 he first shows the exact coastline of Western Australia - 43 years before the then hypothetical southern continent Terra Australis incognita was officially associated with the fifth continent in a book printed at the University of Leuven .

Le Testu created his cosmography for Admiral Gaspard II. De Coligny (1519–1572), who was first a Huguenot leader and then a follower of Sir Francis Drake . The visionary cartographer placed a scale bar on the left edge of the map , which was by no means common at the time. At the mouth of the Fitzroy River , he put the name "Terra Australis" and was thus half a century ahead of the knowledge of the leading navigators and cartographers in the Netherlands at the time .

Where he got his precise knowledge from - or whether it came partly from his imagination - cannot be fully clarified. The Iles des Crifors in front of today's Joseph Bonaparte Gulf cannot be found, but the realistically mapped Fitzroy Delta and the indentations of the rivers and Cape Londonderry speak for solid sources or perhaps their own inspection. Because how else would you have known about armadillos and dingoes on the French Channel coast in 1555 , which, according to official reports, were not discovered until around 1660, but with which the map is adorned? Even a visionary could not have guessed such animals. Subsequent seafarers - e.g. For example, Francis Drake, who was still a pirate in 1577, or Alvaro de Mendana around 1595 or his pilot Pedro de Quiros - did not yet provide such detailed information; It was not until Willem Jansz , who landed in Northern Australia in 1606 , that there were similarly good coastal sketches.

Le Testu found the end of his life in Panama in 1573 , where he and Sir Francis Drake as a pirate attacked a Spanish silver transport near the port of Nombre de Dios , made rich booty, but was wounded and had to stay behind. While Drake was returning to his fleet, Le Testu fell into the hands of the Spaniards and was beheaded. His head was displayed on the market square to deter - including all talented players.

literature

  • Armin Sinnwell (editor) and Gerald Sammet: The world of cards. Historical and modern cartography in dialogue . Wissen-Media-Verlag, Gütersloh and Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-577-07251-9
  • Rosemary Burton, R. Cavendish, B. Stonehouse: Atlas of the Great Explorers. Part II (Australasia and the Pacific). Book club Donauland, Verlag Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1993

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Armin Sinnwell (editors) and Gerald Sammet: The world of cards. Historical and modern cartography in dialogue . Wissen-Media-Verlag, Gütersloh and Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-577-07251-9
  2. ↑ Rosemary Burton, R. Cavendish, B. Stonehouse: Atlas of the Great Explorers. Part II (Australasia and the Pacific). Book club Donauland, Verlag Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1993
personal data
SURNAME Le Testu, Guillaume
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French cartographer
DATE OF BIRTH around 1510
PLACE OF BIRTH Le Havre
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1573
Place of death Panama