World's Oldest Known Globe Depicting the New World Discovered

The oldest known globe known to represent the New World has been officially discovered by an Australian collector. Dating to the early 1500s, this beautiful piece of history reveals a little bit more about how people viewed the world at the time.

The globe is actually engraved on two conjoined halves of ostrich eggs, according to The Seattle Times. Only about the size of a grapefruit, the piece is labeled in Latin and depicts areas that include Japan, Brazil and Arabia. North America itself isn't a massive continent, but is instead depicted as a group of scattered islands.

The artifact itself was most likely crafted in Florence, Italy. Decorated with monsters, intertwining waves and even a shipwrecked sailor, this globe truly is a piece of art. Yet there were those who at first didn't quite believe the origins of the work, according to CBS News.

"When I first heard of this globe, I was initially skeptical about its date, origin, geography and provenance, but I had to find out for myself," said Stefaan Missinne, an independent Belgian research scholar, in a news release. "After all no one had known of it, and discoveries of this type are extremely rare. I was excited to look into it further and the more I did so, and the more research we did, the clearer it became that we had a major find."

In fact, Missinne claims that it's possible that some of the globe's features may point to a possible connection with the Italian workshop of Leonardo da Vinci, according to The Vancouver Sun. Yet many map scholars are skeptical of this particular claim. More research will have to be conducted before experts can officially link the globe to da Vinci.

"Where this thing comes from needs to be clarified," said Chet Van Duzer, a map expert with Rhode Island's John Carter Brown Library, in an interview with The Washington Post. "It is an exciting discovery, no question, but I also think that more testing should be done."