a) The actual size of the planet and its distribution of the land is represented. b) An explanatory reconstruction of the map of Toscanelli by Kretschmer. c) Resetting the profiles of the coast of this map on a globe of size 3 / 4 of the actual, we see that the Asia of Toscanelli extends throughout the hemisphere Pacific and beyond. d) If the longitudinal length of Eurasia had been assessed correctly, the distance that Columbus should have expected to travel without a stop would be 15000 km. 

Contexts in source publication

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... expanding Earth conception is today considered the major alternative to the plate tectonics, and is going to overcome the rival theory on the basis of a larger number of intercon- nected explanations of phenomena, not only in the field of Geology and Geophysics, but also in more general fields (Scalera, 2012). Its main merit is that it has freed the Earth sciences from subordination to Physics and Cosmology. The expanding Earth suggests strongly that our knowledge of the physical world must be based starting from the only celestial body be experi- enced directly, taking as a ”test-body” what lies beneath our feet, and not viceversa boxing the properties of the planet so that does not contra- dict the still uncertain cosmological principles. The typical experiments that it was necessary to perform under this conception were of a new kind, namely cartographical experiments. It can be said that the expanding Earth transformed the cartography in experimental science. The idea of significant changes in the size of our planet has no placed stable roots in the scientific-philosophical culture before the second half of the 19th century with the rise of the first ideas on the expansion of the Earth. Previously, only hints in pure academic dis- putes, or unaware realization of world maps – with Earth radius less than real – were proposed without any practical follow-up in the technical field of cartography. As to why in the antiquity there has been not a discussion about the constant or variable size of our planet is not easy to say, and on the subject and I believe that no literature exists. One of the few statements that I was able to find relevant to the possibility of change in the radius of the Earth over time is of Nicholas Oresme (1323 - 1382). Oresme envisaged an increase in size for quite di ff erent reasons – pure geometrical case – and he does not seem at all interested in the possibility that the case be actual and geological (Scalera, 1999). Before him I have a total lack of references. The ancient Greeks do not treated this possibility in any of their philo- sophical systems. Why they have not seen the global change in volume as feasible problem can have several causes. One of these may be the presence of di ff erent ideas about the shape of the Earth holding the debate at a lower level: still needed to be discussed and ascertained the sphericity of our planet (Scalera, 1999). A first mythological concept of expanding land or Earth (but it is questionable whether in global or topographic sense only) can be read in the text about the origins, the Avesta- Vendidad, belonging to the people of Parsi Zoroastrians. In Fargard (Chapter) 2 – verses 8 to 19 – the god Yima (Jamshed) fulfills three times, at di ff erent times, the prayers of his people and expands the land available to men and herds: In total, Yima made the land larger (eventually in radius) of about 3.7 times the original size. Something like that is in the Arabic fables (www.arab.it, 2012), where Allah inflicts to the men the punishment of the falling from the sky of a grain of sand for every bad deed commit- ted. So, the deserts are created quickly in a way that is reminiscent of a marginal version of the expanding Earth (Myer, 2012). But ironically you may be wondering why today the Earth is not a whole ball of sand with radius much greater than Jupiter or the Sun. However, we must not fell in the error to consider only increasing of the Earth’s size. We have to look for traces more generally of volume changes. The idea of expansion is ev- idently symmetric to that of contraction, once it is accepted that we can speak of variations in size. A rare reports of conceptions in which it is told of strong changes in the volume of the Earth comes in 1562 from the book The Rhetoric - Ten Dialogues , by Francesco Patrizio da Cherso (1529-1597) – Dalmatian philosopher and writer of Renaissance –, which contains facts and tales collected by Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529; famous for his book in four dialogues The Book of the Courtier). This time we deal with a decrease in volume of Earth, like a catastrophic implosion. Here is a selection of the text of Patrizio contained in the first dialogue of The Rhetoric: It is clear the analogy with the Christian legend of the fall of the rebel angels to Hell, in which, however, the relationship is lost both with mankind and with the Earth, which in the Christian story does not appear. Instead, the map that Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli sent to Christopher Columbus (Fig. 1) was an unaware application of mapping on radius less than the real (Chiarelli et al., 1992). There were two errors in it, which fa- vored the enterprise of Columbus. The first was produced by a confusion between Arab and European units. The Arab mile of 1973 meters, was longer than the European one, 1481 meters. The correct estimation of the length of the meridian in Arab degrees was decreased in Europe by about a quarter, because given in European miles. Consequently, radius and circumference of the Earth were decreased by a quarter. As a second error, caused by the di ffi culty of estimating longitude, Toscanelli strongly overestimated the longitudinal length of Asia. Without this error – common to many other cartographers (see Figure 4 in Scalera, 2000) – the distance Portugal-Asia (going towards west) would be assessed from Colombo still prohibitive. If the width in longitude of Eurasia had been assessed correctly, the distance that Columbus should have expected to travel without a stop (d) would be 15,000 km, perhaps beyond the technical possibilities of the time and beyond the possibility of obtain- ing trust and support from the sovereigns and the papacy. The wrong evaluation of Toscanelli constituted the driving force for what happened – the discovery of the New World – and the indirect cause of all that was right and wrong ensued. The XIXth century perfects and leads to a higher level of awareness the first insights of Abraham Ortels (Ortelius, 1527-1598), Francis Bacon (1561-1626), René Descartes (1596-1650), Fran ̧ois Placet (1666), Thomas Burnet (1635-1715), Theodor Christoph Lilienthal (1717-1781), about possible continental matches of shape and displacements. In full XIXth century began to circulate ideas far more precise on a possible ancient closeness between the continents today facing on the Atlantic. In 1838 Thomas Dick (1774-1857) – American theologian and philosopher – wrote on the ” striking correspondence between two adverted ” [Africa, South America], and that the ” prominent parts of the one corresponding to the indentings of the other. ” (pag. 93). Also Alexander von Humboldt (1769- 1859) – in 1801 and 1845 – wrote on the geometrical and geological similarity between the coasts of America and Africa, hypoth- esizing that the Atlantic had been flooded by a catastrophic event. Until to the famous book of 1858 by Antonio Snider-Pellegrini (1802-1885) Italian-American traveler, essay- ist, Biblical commentator, in which successive decreasing in the Earth’s size were proposed in synchronism with periods of the biblical sequence of events. Often reproduced in texts of the history of science was also the cartographic exercise by Snider-Pellegrini, who in two en- gravings represented the globe before and after the fracturing and separation of the continents. It is not di ffi cult to imagine how much influence all these ideas of changes in the Earth’s size and movement of continental fragments had to have for the birth of ideas about significant expansions of the planet. In this fertile and uninhibited cultural climate of the nineteenth century a first book saw the light, accompanied by a map, which defended a particular version of the idea of expanding Earth. Richard Owen (1810-1890, American chemist and geologist who studied in Hofwyl on the Swiss Alps) in this book proposed the principles of what him-self called (p. 22) Anatomical ...

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... the map that Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli sent to Christopher Columbus ( Fig. 1) was an unaware application of mapping on radius less than the real ( Chiarelli et al., 1992). There were two errors in it, which fa- vored the enterprise of Columbus. The first was produced by a confusion between Arab and European units. The Arab mile of 1973 me- ters, was longer than the European one, 1481 meters. The correct ...

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... the palaeogeography on perspex globes referring to the isobath of 500 fathoms (about 914 m). Starting with a perspex sphere of diameter 50 cm, continen- tal fragments would have to be adapted to the greater curvature of a globe of 27 cm (ra- dius 0.55 of the actual Earth), which would have been completely covered by the conti- nental sialic crust (Fig. 10). The easiest way was chosen to always use the sphere of 50 cm and to build spherical continental outline of glass fiber with the same curvature but of proportions increased by a factor of 1/0.55 = 1.82. Also in this case the effective car- tographic projection was the equidistant one. Creer (1967) published the same 'experiment' on the ...

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... the continental outlines ad data from a 34.3 cm globe to a 23.6 cm one, with a declared awareness of the criticism of Jeffreys (in Barnett, 1962) and Dennis (1962). The aim of this experiment was to try to prove that the ancient fold belts prolong from a con- tinent to the adjacent ones, when the Earth's crust was nearly completely sialic (Fig. ...

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... Heezen between the fifties and sixties and perfected with the help of Marie Tharp ) (Heezen et al., 1959;Heezen, 1962;Heezen & Tharp , 1977). Many expansionists would have no difficulty in admitting that in the plani- sphere of Heezen & Tharp painted by the Austrian artist Heinrich Caesar Berann ) is written the history of an expanding Earth (Fig. 11). This rare blend of art and sci- ence, despite the fact that it is not variable radius cartography, has greatly contributed to strengthen and passing down the ideas of the expanding Earth ...

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... the final steps of perfecting the globes, taking photos of them, retouching using a graphic software and their virtual rescaling, Fig. 18. Above: The portrait of James and Anita Maxlow besides The World Geology Map of CGMW (1990,2000) transformed in an interrupted sinusoidal projection with 24 gores. Below: The series of globes of James Maxlow photographically scaled to the old size of Earth. The original series of 30cm diameter high-density polystyrene foam spheres can ...