Where does this come from, and can I check it?

The Babylonian clay tablet shows the world as a disc around 600 BC. The figure is taken from British Museum, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

Is this really a records & extremes fact?

Yes. It sits on the Records & Extremes shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

What else can I read about it?

The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

The Imago Mundi is the oldest known world map

The Babylonian clay tablet shows the world as a disc around 600 BC The tablet, held in the British Museum, depicts a circular landmass ringed by an ocean with Babylon at its centre and cities marked as circles. It dates to about the sixth century BC and is the earliest map of the known world that survives. The clay disc is only about 12 centimetres across, yet the text around it describes distant regions and the creatures said to live there. It sits in Mondo's records & extremes collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

British Museum

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Babylonian tablets hold the oldest known recipesThe three Yale tablets record stews and broths from about 1750 BC The Code of Hammurabi established early written lawKing Hammurabi of Babylon carved nearly three hundred legal judgments onto a tall basalt stele The Cyrus Cylinder recorded ancient imperial tolerancePersian King Cyrus the Great proclaimed freedom for captive peoples after taking Babylon The Mercator projection inflates the poles enormouslyOn this map Greenland looks as large as Africa, though Africa is about fourteen times bigger Every flat map distorts area, shape or distanceA sphere cannot be flattened without stretching something, so mapmakers choose which error to accept The Peters projection trades shape for accurate areaIt keeps relative sizes honest but makes continents long and thin, and it is widely criticised

Tags: maps, babylon, clay-tablets

The Imago Mundi is the oldest known world map: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: The Babylonian clay tablet shows the world as a disc around 600 BC. The figure is taken from British Museum, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a records & extremes fact?: Yes. It sits on the Records & Extremes shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.