Introduction

The existence of Africa has been widely acknowledged in southern Europe since Antiquity. Its proximity to the coasts of Greece and Italy and the wide-ranging expansion of the Roman Empire had revealed the existence of African territories on the other side of the mare nostrum. The Portuguese expansion along the African seaboard, on the contrary, always had to fight against classical preconceptions at each new step. The cosmographical and cartographical problems posed by Africa in the Renaissance were too important in the general order of knowledge for these to have passed unnoticed by modern scholars. The work of Medeiros is addressed to the study of sub-Saharan Africa. William Randles has focused his interest on south-eastern Africa, and Albert Kammerer on Abyssinia and the Red Sea. The only difference between these two geographical entities is that none of the ancient authors ever wrote about the Americas, whereas Africa was routinely the object of long dissertations in their cosmographical treatises.