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Behaim Globe (Erdapfel)

Type Object Region Europe Time 1492

The Behaim Globe, also called the 'Earth Apple' (Erdapfel), was made in Nuremberg by Martin Behaim in 1492–1494 and is the oldest surviving globe, de…

Timeline

  1. 1492Nuremberg · NurembergThe Nuremberg city council commissioned the returning merchant and navigational geographer Behaim to make a globe, presenting in three dimensions contemporary knowledge of the coasts of Eurasia and Africa and Atlantic islands.
  2. 1493–1494Nuremberg · NurembergArtists completed the coasts, islands, and textual annotations on the sphere, omitting the Americas; the globe is the earliest surviving example of a late 15th-century European rotatable teaching model of the spherical earth.
  3. 1494Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg · NurembergAfter completion the globe was used for display and teaching and became a reference for 16th-century European globe-making; the original, restored, still survives in Nuremberg and is key material evidence of pre-Columbian geographical conceptions.

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