ABSTRACT
Although early modern Jesuits went overseas in order to evangelize, their work also entailed the production of new knowledge about faraway lands for European audiences. Jesuits wrote detailed descriptions of diverse peoples and places, studied indigenous languages, classified the local fauna and flora, and made maps of previously unknown areas of the globe. Klein chanced upon a group of Palaos on a beach in the Philippines where the islanders had been shipwrecked in December of 1696. The pebble arrangement served Klein as the basis for a map that thereafter traveled to Europe. It appeared in missionary and scholarly publications in Spain, France, England, and Germany. Klein, who never set foot on the islands, became known as its creator. Like the Europeans, the Palaos were highly skilled seafarers, yet their system of orientation existed only in the form of mental maps passed down orally from generation to generation.
