Today we are likely to think of paradise as a tropical island, but medieval Europeans had a different concept of a Garden of Eden as a paradise still existing on earth but apart from it at the same time. Paradise was thought to be the perfect place for humans on earth as well as being a future heaven.
Medieval mapmakers were faced with the problem of where to place paradise on their maps. Often positioning it on the edge of their world maps, different mapmakers chose varied locations. One problem was finding an area at an altitude sufficient to have escaped the Flood during Noah's time. Over the centuries, scholars thought paradise might be located in the Middle East, Africa, the tropics, and even Armenia. At the end of the fifteenth century, paradise disappeared from the maps. Along with the scholars' inability to find a suitable location for paradise, reports from merchants and travelers of their discoveries contributed to its demise. Mapping Paradise was written by Alessandro Scafi and published by the University of Chicago in 2006.
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AuthorI am a Northwest artist making collages from mulberry papers stamped by hand from original images that I have carved. Archives
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