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What regions were included in Ptolemy’s map of the known world?
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Ptolemy
Ptolemy's theory of the solar system.
Ptolemy’s Guide to Geography depicted the inhabited world as it was known to a resident of the Roman Empire at its height. His world map encompassed a vast region, spanning from the following geographical extremes:
- North: Shetland Islands1
- South: Sources of the Nile1
- West: Canary Islands1
- East: China and Southeast Asia1
By recording longitudes and latitudes for approximately 8,000 locations, Ptolemy provided a detailed, albeit distorted, representation of these regions based on the cartographical work of Marinus of Tyre and contemporary trade route data.12