Maps drawn during the European exploration of the Americas typically depicted areas not yet visited by Europeans as blank or filled with imagined creatures and landscapes. The same regions, however, had been inhabited by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years and were known to local communities in considerable detail. Cartographers occasionally noted, in marginal annotations, that they had received guidance from Indigenous informants whose knowledge they had recorded in fragmentary form.
Which conclusion most logically follows from the passage?
- Acheck_circle
European cartographic conventions can convey conclusions about land that reflect particular vantage points rather than the limits of human knowledge
- B
Indigenous peoples had no knowledge of their own regions
- C
All territories depicted on European maps were entirely uninhabited
- D
European maps were always created independently of any local sources
Explanation
Blank areas inhabited and known to others, plus acknowledged Indigenous sources, supports A. B, C, D contradict the passage.