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On 18/03/2014 19:51, Frank Reed wrote:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> That's the island "El Hierro" in the Canaries. There are good details in
> the Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Hierro. It's
> the westernmost island in the Canaries, and as such it was the farthest
> point west known to classical geographers. Ptolemy himself supposedly
> (is this true?) was the first to suggest it, or whatever point should
> turn out to be actually farthest west in the Canaries, as the zero for
> longitude.

Here's an article about mapping Ptolemy's coordinates (>6300 places) to
modern ones:

http://www.hist-geo-space-sci.net/3/99/2012/hgss-3-99-2012.pdf

"Ptolemy locates the zero meridian at the 'Blest Islands' (IV.6.34). The
modern counterpart of that isles is disputed; two possibilities come
into consideration, the Canaries [...] as well as the Cape Verde Islands
[...]. Regardless of which zero meridian is taken into ac-
count, there remain large deviations between the converted
ancient and the modern longitudes."

   

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