r/oldmaps • u/_pow_pow_ • 4d ago

What do these symbols mean?

Old world globe with 9 oval circles in the ocean. Anyone know what they represent? There are lines radiating out from all around the oval on each one.

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u/Disastrous-Year571 4d ago edited 4d ago

Those are called compass roses or wind roses and began to be used on Portolan charts in the 1300s - here is a bit of their interesting history:

https://www.oldworldauctions.com/info/article/2014-07

This is a modern decorative globe, though, meant to look old, and the map is imaginary and AI generated, as you can see by the labels that do not make sense and the various interruptions in the coastlines and rhumb lines. On a real map, the compass roses would not look like that, nor would there be so many on this size of a globe.

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u/_pow_pow_ 4d ago

Thank you!! Very interesting