Peter Martyr d'Anghiera
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Peter Martyr d'Anghiera (in Italian, Pietro Martire d'Anghiera; in Spanish Pedro Mártir de Anglería, Latin, Petrus Martyr Anglerius or ab Angleria) (February 2, 1457 – October 1526) was an Italian-born historian of Spain and its discoveries during the Age of Exploration. He wrote the first accounts of explorations in Central and South America in a series of letters and reports, grouped in the original Latin publications of 1511 to 1530 into sets of ten chapters called "decades."
His Decades are of great value in the history of geography and discovery. His De Orbe Novo (On the New World, 1530) describes the first contacts of Europeans and Native Americans, Native American civilizations in the Caribbean and North America, as well as Mesoamerica, and includes, for example, the first European reference to India rubber. It was first translated into English in 1555, and in a fuller version in 1912.
