ABSTRACT
Scholars reflecting on the European past have often insisted on the many consequences of some singular events, such as the discovery, conquest and even “intellectual invention” of the New World after 1492. While the changes brought about by the culture of the European Renaissance had a very important long-term effect, in the field of anthropological and ethnological discourse the most significant shift had perhaps more to do with the growing definition of the plurality of worlds than with the mere recognition of the so-called new world as a novelty. The growth of empirical discourses concerned with the world outside Europe, even though staggering if the people compare it with the geographical literature of the ancients or of any other culture, was not by itself a determining process. Like Greek Geography, Renaissance cosmography was a mixed genre which included describing the world, locating specific places, measuring distances and representing the land.
