L'asie divisée en ses principales régions, Map of asia and its main regions

Step back to the year 1700 and look at how Europeans pictured Asia. This hand colored map, titled "L'Asie divisée en ses principales régions," was made by French cartographers during a golden age of mapmaking. The continent sprawls across the page in soft pinks, greens, and yellows, with regions like Tartary, the empire of the Mongols, India, China, and Japan all labeled in elegant French script. The decorative frames in the upper corners, full of swirling shapes and tiny figures, show off the playful style of the period, when maps were as much art as they were tools.

What makes old maps like this so fun is spotting what they got wrong. Coastlines bulge and twist in odd ways, Korea sometimes looks more like an island than a peninsula, and the far reaches of Siberia fade into guesswork. These were the days before satellites and accurate surveys, so mapmakers leaned on sailors' reports, traders' tales, and a fair bit of imagination. Maps like this one were prized possessions, hung in homes and studies to show off both wealth and curiosity about a wider world that most people would never see for themselves.