Beautiful Black Ocean Gemstone Inlaid Globe with Brass Base

This is a spectacular demonstration of hand-craftsmanship. This gemstone globe is painstakingly assembled by hand using over many different genuine gemstones from around the world! The globe itself is 8-1/2" in diameter! It is mounted on a beautiful pegasus-shaped heavy polished and plated brass stand. The dimensions of the base are approximately 15-1/2" by 11-1/2" and the entire piece is 21" tall. The ocean is black and each country is inlaid with a different gemstone, and the stones are individually cut and ground to exacting interlocking shapes, polished and set into this exquisite piece of art with care and attention to the detail. The latitude and longitude lines are very thin ribbons of brass, embedded through the globe. The globe is new and in mint condition. This is the ultimate gift for any world traveler, map or globe collector, nautical, maritime, boat or sailing aficionado or geography buff! These globes are generally sold only at high-end retail and specialty stores as they are of such high quality - they often retail for much greater prices, but we are offering these globes at wholesale prices!

In Greece, storytellers used to describe the world as a flat disk, surrounded by the "Ocean River." Hundreds of years later, Aztec Indians in Central America had a very similar idea: They believed the world was a flat disk with a great circle of water around it.

Around 250 B.C., the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes noticed that a post in the city of Alexandria, Egypt cast a shadow at noon on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. But at the same time in Syrene, a town due south from Alexandria, a similar post did not cast any shadow. Eratosthenes figured the sun must be shining its light at these two towns from different angles. The sun was directly above the post in Syrene, so the post did not cast any shadow. But the sunlight was shining toward Alexandria at an angle. This was because the earth's surface was curved, Eratosthenes reasoned. By knowing the distance between the two cities and by calculating the angle of the pole to the shadow, Eratosthenes was able to apply geometric theory to determine the size of the earth. In 140 B.C., a Greek known as Crates of Mallus built what may have been the first globe in history. It is hard to picture what was on that globe, since the Greeks only knew what a small part of the planet looked like. They had never traveled to China, Australia or the Americas, so none of those places could have been on the globe.

Before European explorers and conquerors sailed across the oceans in the 1400s and 1500s, cartographers in Europe made globes. In 1492, Martin Behaim, a German cartographer, made the oldest globe that still exists today. Years later, the Dutch would become famous for making the best globes and maps.