World Map

[Anonymoose]

Eorzea really looks like North America or Africa and the Doma area looks like Asia.

This is a parallel we've been using in general discussion for a while now. It really is quite analogous to Earth.

The Three Great Continents are essentially "The Old World", the known world prior to the Age of Discovery.

Eorzea is slightly-broken Africa, but being the melting-pot Vanilla game world, the culture doesn't quite match up as well as the others. Ilsabard is essentially Europe but it got moved over and stretched out and England went to go hang out to the west as Sharlayan. The Near East is basically Arabia and surrounding lands that empires like Persia and the Ottomans conquered. (Except Arabia actually broke off, apparently.) The Fear East is Asia, including, as you can now see, Japan (Hingashi). You can see this even in the styles of gear and furnishings. This carries all the way to the New World, where the tapirs and tomatoes and avocados in the game come from. I wonder if Meracydia, then, is another part of "broken Africa" or if Australia just took a really long swim. I hope the latter; "The Land Hellbent on Killing You" holding out the longest against the Allagans tickles me.

The one thing I'd like to know is the map's age.

The 2010 website suggested that Roddard Ironheart only mapped Eorzea around 1500, and it didn't give him credit for the rest of the world. Either he carried on his work after that and made this map, or someone else (perhaps his children) carried on, as his grandchildren are doing now.

The map still shows the Isle of Val (perhaps in the wrong place going by text in the Encyclopaedia Eorzea, or that might be worded wrong? Idk.), it still shows Idyllshire as Sharlayan, and there is no presence of Garlemald in Gyr Abania (including the absence of Baelsar's Wall).

This suggests somewhere between 1510 and 1557, I'd say?