The Zeno map is a map of the North Atlantic first published in 1558 in Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 by Nicolo Zeno, a descendant of Nicolo Zeno, of the Zeno brothers

Zeno brothers

The Zeno brothers, namely Nicolò and Antonio Zeno , were noted Italian navigators from Venice, living in the second half of the 14th century. They were brothers of the Venetian naval hero Carlo Zeno...

.

The younger Zeno published the map, along with a series of letters, claiming he had discovered them in a storeroom in his family's home in Venice. According to Zeno, the map and letters date from around the year 1400 and purportedly describe a long voyage made by the Zeno brothers in the 1390s under the direction of a prince named Zichmni

Zichmni

Zichmni is the name of an explorer-prince who appears in a 1558 book by Nicolo Zeno of Venice, allegedly based on letters and a map dating to the year 1400 by the author's ancestors, brothers Nicolo and Antonio Zeno...

. The voyage supposedly traversed the North Atlantic and, according to some interpretations, reached North America.

Most historians regard the map and accompanying narrative as a hoax

Hoax

A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...

, perpetrated by the younger Zeno to make a retroactive claim for Venice as having discovered the New World before Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

.

The evidence against the authenticity of the map is based largely on the appearance of many non-existent islands in the North Atlantic and off the coast of Iceland

Iceland

Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...

. One of these non-existent islands was Frisland

Frisland

Frisland, also called Frischlant, Friesland, Freezeland, Frislandia, or Fixland, is a mythical island that appeared on virtually all of the maps of the North Atlantic from the 1560s through the 1660s...

, where the Zeno brothers allegedly spent some time.

Current scholarship regards the map as being based on existing maps of the 16th century, in particular:

• The Olaus Magnus
  Olaus Magnus
  Olaus Magnus was a Swedish ecclesiastic and writer, who did pioneering work for the interest of Nordic people. He was reported as born in October 1490 in Östergötland, and died on August 1, 1557. Magnus, Latin for the Swedish Stor “great”, is a Latin family name taken personally, and not a...
  
   map of the North, the Carta marina
  Carta marina
  The Carta marina , created by Olaus Magnus in the 16th century, is the earliest map of the Nordic countries that gives details and placenames...
  
  
• The Caerte van Oostland of Cornelis Anthoniszoon
• Claudius Clavus-type maps of the North

Further reading

• Cooper, Robert L. D. (Ed.) The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers Nicolo & Antonio Zeno to the Northern Seas in the XIVth Century. Masonic Publishing Co. 2004. ISBN 0-9544268-2-7.