Nova Asiae tabula majori in minorem hanc formani reducta a Joh. Bapt. Homann

Title

Nova Asiae tabula majori in minorem hanc formani reducta a Joh. Bapt. Homann

Description

Map depicts complete Asia with decorative cartouche.

ca. 1719

Artist

Weigel (1654-1725)

Christoph Weigel the Elder (1654-1725) was a German engraver, art dealer and publisher. Christoph Weigel learned the art of copperplate engraving in Augsburg. After various positions, including in Vienna and Frankfurt am Main, he acquired citizenship in Nuremberg in 1698. The first Weigel work from his own, successfully run publishing house in Nuremberg was Die Bilderlust from 1698. This publishing house published around 70 books and engravings during his lifetime. One of his most important works is the status book from 1698. In it, Weigel described and described more than two hundred types of handicrafts and services, each illustrated by a copper engraving, based on life. Because Weigel visited almost all the workshops himself, drew and observed on site, agreed the content of his articles with the master craftsmen and signed important equipment from the original. Weigel worked particularly brilliantly in the scraping and line manner. He was the first engraver to use a kind of machine for the underground. In Nuremberg he worked very closely with the imperial geographer and cartographer Johann Baptist Homann (1664–1724) to create his maps. His younger brother Johann Christoph Weigel ran an art dealership in Nuremberg around the same time and was also very successful.

Historical Description

Asia is Earth's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the Eastern and Northern Hemispheres. The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions: East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, linked by the interior mass of the Central Asian steppes. The coastal periphery was home to some of the world's earliest known civilizations, each of them developing around fertile river valleys. The civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and the Yellow River shared many similarities. These civilizations may well have exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel. Other innovations, such as writing, seem to have been developed individually in each area. Cities, states and empires developed in these lowlands. The central steppe region had long been inhabited by horse-mounted nomads who could reach all areas of Asia from the steppes. The earliest postulated expansion out of the steppe is that of the Indo-Europeans, who spread their languages into the Middle East, South Asia, and the borders of China, where the Tocharians resided. The northernmost part of Asia, including much of Siberia, was largely inaccessible to the steppe nomads, owing to the dense forests, climate and tundra. These areas remained very sparsely populated. The center and the peripheries were mostly kept separated by mountains and deserts. The Caucasus and Himalaya mountains and the Karakum and Gobi deserts formed barriers that the steppe horsemen could cross only with difficulty. While the urban city dwellers were more advanced technologically and socially, in many cases they could do little in a military aspect to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe. However, the lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large horsebound force; for this and other reasons, the nomads who conquered states in China, India, and the Middle East often found themselves adapting to the local, more affluent societies.