HC SVNT DRACONES

Those of us who love dragons know that there are certain places on old maps which say "here there be dragons." Except . . . there are actually no maps which say that. There is a mere one that says "HC SVNT DRACONES," which is Latin for the phrase in question. It's the so-called Lenox Globe, which is in the New York Library. Believed to have been built in the early 1500s, the Lenox Globe is the first known world map to include the New World. Sadly,there are very few photographs of it and none of them show off the crucial phrase, which apparently hovers off the coast of Asia.

Even worse for dragon fans and early C programmers who commented the phrase into various chunks of code is the revelation that in fact the "DRACONES" in question weren't the swoopy, firey, toothy type. As map historian Erin C. Blake notes:

[No scholar] links "hic sunt dracones" to dragons, though.
[Nineteenth-century cartographer] Da Costa writes, "In this region [i.e. China, called East India on theglobe] near the equatorial line, is seen 'Hc Svnt Dracones,' or hereare the Dagroians, described by Marco Polo as living in the Kingdom of'Dagroian.' These people... feasted upon the dead and picked theirbones (B.II. c.14, Ramusio's ed.)" However, in his translation of DaCosta's article, Gabriel Gravier adds that Marco Polo's Kingdom ofDagroian is in Java Minor, or Sumatra, well away from the spotindicated on the Lenox Globe.

I hate it when good history undermines my beloved myths. It seems likely that nobody really thought there were dragons off the coast of Asia. Just cannibals. And C programmers.

Here There Be Dragons on Old Maps [via MapHist]