Polar and sub-polar regions were terrae incognitae for most of documented history, but at the same time occupied an important position for cosmological concepts of different cultures. Therefore, narratives about the “margins of the world” were among the earliest geographical information communicated beyond the borders of early civilizations of the Eurasian continent.
In his Polar Talk #16, Alexander Jost first discusses the emergence of empirical, speculative, and imaginary geographies in relation to the Far North. Starting from the Chinese perspective, he introduces the concept of a “Polar Utopia”, which can be found in the mythologies of various Eurasian cultures of antiquity. He then discusses the special role of the Mongols in connecting the subpolar and temperate regions of East Asia. Finally, he demonstrates the persistence of mythological ideas and established half-knowledge about North Asia on both the Chinese and European sides in the context of Jesuit Chinese cartography during the 17th century.
Wang Junfu (fl. 1650): Da Ming jiubian wanguo renji lucheng quantu. Complete Map of human traces and travel routes within the myriad states of the nine borders of the Great Ming. Harvard-Yenching Library (© Foto Alexander Jost)
Polar Utopiae between China and Greece
The Daoist philosopher Lie Yukou (Liezi), whose writings date back to the 4th-5th century BCE, describes a land of the “ Extreme North” (zhong bei), in which beyond mountains the harsh climate transforms into a mild one and in which an ideal society leads a happy life in equality and harmony, without fear of illness and death, and full of devotion to dance and music. Numerous aspects of this narrative can also be found in the works of classical authors of European antiquity, above all Pindar, who describes the Hyperboreans beyond the North Wind and the Riphaean Mountains with similar attributes down to the last detail. The legend of the Uttara Kuru people in the Sanskrit epics of the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata, which in turn place a very similarly characterized society far north of the Himalayas, presents itself as a “missing link” – or even an origin – for a possible underlying transfer of this material from one end of the Eurasian continent to the other. While the problematic chronological classification of these Indian texts in particular makes it difficult to conclusively understand such transfer processes, it can in any case be said that the attempt to comprehend the inaccessible northern edges of the world must have played an important role in the contexts of still relatively sparse connections across the vastness of Eurasia. The imaginary geographical concept of a warm, habitable world beyond the extreme cold of the north obviously proved to be both credible and popular.
Depiction of the Daoist Philosopher Liezi (5th century BCE) by Zhang Lu (1464–1538), Shanghai Museum (© Wikimedia Commons)
“The name of this country is ‘Extreme North’; I don’t know where its borders are. Its climate is mild and there are no epidemics. The people are gentle and compliant by nature and do not fight.”
Liezi, 4th -5th century BCE
Mongol Siberia
As the image of the Great Wall of China, which has been repeatedly renewed throughout history, shows, that the steppe belt and the nomadic peoples inhabiting it have been more of an obstacle than a link between China and the tundra and taiga of Siberia since at least the first millennium BCE. This constellation changed significantly with the Mongol conquests of the 13th century. Not only did Genghis Khan’s armies advance far into the forest areas around Lake Baikal in the first years of their expansion, but from the reign of Ögedei Khan (r. 1229-1241) onwards, there were also several organized expeditions to the north, to Sakhalin and at least twice along the Angara and Yenisei rivers to their mouths in the Kara Sea. One expedition under Godan (1206-1251) reached the “mountain at which the sun never sets” and was able to dispel various legends about the people of the north, while another at the behest of Sorghaghtani Beki (1190-1252), the mother of Hülegü and Khubilai, in search of the silver of Siberia ended in disaster and the death of two-thirds of its participants, according to Rashīd al-Dīn.
Book illustration of Sorghaghtani Beki (1190-1252) in Rashid al-Din (1247-1318). From ‘Compendium of Chronicles’, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
However, these expeditions had opened up the waterway to the north and made it possible two to three decades later, after the founding of the Yuan dynasty under the leadership of the Chinese astronomer Guo Shoujing, to carry out a calendar reform and a survey of the empire. Astronomical measuring stations were also established in these regions, for example in the Tiele area along the Angara River (probably near the present-day city of Bratsk) and under the name of “North Sea Measuring Station”, presumably at around 65° northern latitude on a tributary of the Lower Tunguska River. Through their claim for universal rule and their promotion of astronomy, the Mongols had paved the way for an important first step towards a rational understanding of the seemingly immeasurable vastness of the north.
Jesuit Cartography and the Arctic
In 1602, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), with the support of his Chinese comrades-in-arms Li Zhizao and Zhang Wentao, took an important step in bringing the latest European cartography from the Age of Discovery to China with his ‘Complete Map of the Innumerable Lands of the Earth’. While the detailed depiction of the five continents (plus the terra australis or ‘Magellanica’) represented a revolutionary opportunity, large parts of the areas north of the Arctic Circle were literally still in the dark. Ricci visualised these regions by inserting imaginary islands, to which he generously added labels to fill the void and at least superficially create the impression that the Jesuits were not at a loss for answers, even to these obvious terrae incognitae.
Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) et al.: Kunyu wanguo quantu. Complete map of the myriad countries of the Earth. Kano Collection, Tohoku University Library, Japan (© Wikimedia Commons)
In addition to commonplaces about the harsh weather conditions, Ricci interestingly drew not only on the wealth of legends from ancient and medieval Europe about the Far North, but also incorporated a great deal of Chinese half-knowledge, especially from the Tongdian, an encyclopaedic work from the 8th century. The use of these legends, which were presumably relatively well known, seems to have contributed to increasing the credibility of his work at this time and led to his incorporation of European legends, such as the Geranomachy, the battle of the Pygmies with the cranes, already known from Homer, into Chinese and Japanese maps of the following decades.
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Written by the APRI-Media Team.
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Cover photo: Shamanic stele at lake Baikal, © Christoph Ruhsam
About the scientific author
Alexander Jost is Senior Scientist for global history at the University of Salzburg and scientific director of the Forum Asia-Pacific of the University
