Much later, in 1912, German meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed in a lecture and an article that the continents had once been locked together based on data he collected. Some have argued that the concept of continental drift is at least partly rooted in Ortelius’s 16th-century-era suggestion that the continents had once been joined together as a single mass of land before the Americas were pulled away from Europe and Africa. When he lined up maps of the coastlines of the continents, they matched - much like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. While creating his atlas, Ortelius observed that the coast of America shared geometrical similarities with the shores of Europe and Africa. It was the first of its kind and is now recognized as the first modern-day atlas. He eventually published Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theater of the World) - a comprehensive collection of maps that he bound into a book. Ortelius refocused his work in mapmaking after that fateful encounter. In 1554 he attended the annual Frankfurt Book Fair, where he met the highly respected cartographer Gerardus Mercator. Gleaning what he learned from his uncle, he became a dealer in books and prints. Ortelius was better known as a student of history and a collector of books and old coins than a cartographer - only initially garnering modest praise for his skills at mapmaking. Ortelius entered the Guild of Saint Luke in 1547 to become a map copier and colorist, but his hobbies overshadowed his studies. After his father's death when he was ten, he was raised by his uncle Jacob Van Meteren - a financier and printer of early English versions of the Bible. Ortelius was the eldest of the three children of an Antwerp merchant. He is one of the best known and most frequently collected of all sixteenth-century mapmakers, and today, hand-colored, copperplate-printed Abraham Ortelius maps continue to command avid interest. Abraham Ortelius is widely recognized as the inventor of the atlas and one of the most prominent geographers in history.
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