Map · French
Mountain chains and volcanoes of Central Asia, by A. von Humboldt (map accompanying Asie centrale, Paris 1843)
Chaines de montagnes et volcans de l'Asie centrale ... par A. de Humboldt, dessine a Berlin en 1839 et 1841
Alexander von Humboldt (drawn in Berlin 1839-1841)
How we know
mixed Part firsthand observation, part drawn from other sources.
Mixed: Humboldt's own 1829 journey to the Altai and Dzungarian frontier plus compilation (Klaproth, Ritter, Russian surveys); the map is a physical-geographic synthesis.
Research notes
- Compiled physical map; Humboldt's text (Asie centrale, 3 vols, 1843) discusses Chinese sources via Klaproth. Not a Tartary map as such (labelled supplement).
- Check manually on Gallica; Zimmermann's Central-Asien maps (Denkschrift, 1841-45) were not found on Rumsey, Europeana or Gallica by title (0 hits) and remain a gap.
Why it matters
Documents the 1843 scientific redefinition of the region as 'Asie centrale' (physical) in place of Tartary; together with Berghaus 1847 and Ritter's atlas it explains why German and French scholarship dropped the term in the 1840s.
Places named
Central Asia: Altai, Tianshan, Kunlun, Himalaya; Dzungaria; Tarim; Mongolia; Tibet
Who copied whom
Earlier in the chain
- this one was drawn from it (probable)Humboldt 1843 draws on Klaproth and Ritter