World maps

Around 150 AD, Ptolemy wrote his Geography in Greek in Alexandria, locating places by latitude and longitude; the Greek text reached Florence from Constantinople around 1400 and was translated into Latin around 1406 or 1407. In 1602, Matteo Ricci and Chinese scholars such as Li Zhizao printed the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu in Beijing, reportedly at the request of the Wanli Emperor: six woodblocks printed on six panels of mulberry paper, about 1.5 metres high and 3.7 metres wide, combining European geographic knowledge with Chinese information on one sheet, with China at the centre of the known world and place names written in Chinese characters. The map also reached Japan, where a Japanese copy of about 1604, the Konyo Bankoku Zenzu, writes foreign place names in katakana.

First find what sits in the middle of the map, then see which script the place names are written in.