Juan de la Cosa Map
The earliest known map to show America, discovered by accident at a Paris bookshop and now preserved in Madrid at Museo Naval.
De la Cosa was the captain of the Santa Maria, and later, after she was shipwrecked, the master of the Marigalante, and finally sailed on La Nina.Although Columbus was a mapmaker in his pre-expedition days, he left behind no known maps of his explorations. Luckily for us, Juan de la Cosa, who sailed with Columbus on three journeys, did – leaving us with the oldest known map showing America.
