Ted Widmer, director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, sits near the library’s Waldseemuller map, which he believes could be the first map to show the word “America” (see detail above right). That assertion is also made by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., which has its own map made by the German monk Martin Waldseemuller. Each claims their map dates from 1507.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

PROVIDENCE An old debate is dusted off: Where’s America’s birth certificate?

It’s in Washington, according to the Library of Congress.

It’s in Providence, according to the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

Both institutions possess the same thing: a map, each made in the early 1500s by a German monk, Martin Waldseemuller, and each depicting the same tantalizing detail.

“The key is that little word America,” which had never before appeared on a map, says Ted Widmer, director of the John Carter Brown Library. The question is which map came first. The answer — to institutions that archive American history — is significant.

“It’s enormous,” Widmer says. “It’s probably the most important word of the last 1,000 years and it’s the first time it’s being used.”

Last month, the Library of Congress began exhibiting its relatively recently acquired Waldseemuller map, which it promotes as the “Map that named America.” Naturally, this prompts a response from people at Brown.

“We may have America’s birth certificate,” says Widmer, who notes that a definitive claim, by either side, may be elusive. But, he adds, “I welcome the debate.”

The debate involves claims and counter-claims, logic and reason, inconsistency and inaccuracy, promotion and profit, and perhaps some historical revision or, at least, an explanation. Discoveries and dates don’t always add up.

“School is open on this thing,” says John Hebert, chief of the geography and map division of the Library of Congress. “You’d have to know Latin, cartography, the movement of history and the flow of information at that time.”

Let’s see what we know.

In 1893, Henry Stevens, a British book dealer, bought a book at auction in London, paying 2 pounds and 4 shillings. Inside was a map of the world by Waldseemuller, about 20 inches by 24 inches. It shows Europe, Africa and Asia, and what appears to be modern-day Greenland (colored in green) and the Red Sea (colored in red). And across the Atlantic, all by itself, in what’s now modern-day Brazil, is the word America.

Waldseemuller and those who worked with him in the tiny town of St. Die in northern France needed a name for the newly discovered land mass. Two explorer candidates came to mind.

“They were all about giving (Amerigo) Vespucci credit,” Widmer says. “Somehow they decided Vespucci was a hero and didn’t much care about (Christopher) Columbus, which was a little odd.”

Stevens deduced from the map’s lettering, type, paper and watermarks that it was made “as early as 1505, but not later than the early part of 1506.”

Stevens, however, may have lacked objectivity, according to Toby Lester of Boston, who’s writing a book, The Fourth Part of the World, about Waldseemuller maps, that’s to be published next year by The Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster.

“The consensus in the map world is Stevens was overly attached to the idea that he found the first map,” Lester says. “It meant a lot to him as a matter of pride, and he also had a very serious financial incentive in that being the case.”

In May of 1901, Stevens sold the map to the John Carter Brown Library for 1,050 pounds, a 525-fold profit. Five months later, another Waldseemuller map, 12 times larger, 6 feet by 9.5 feet, and in much greater detail, was discovered by an Austrian Jesuit priest in a German castle.

Stevens, who volunteered to act as an agent to sell this larger map, offered it to the John Carter Brown Library for roughly $300,000. The library declined, and declined again in the mid-1960s, when Thomas Adams of Providence was the library’s director. The asking price then was $1 million.

“I made an effort to raise the money,” Adams says. “But I was not successful.”

In between the two offers to Brown, Stevens wrote a book comparing the Waldseemuller maps, and concluded the one at Brown was older.

One of the most compelling arguments, according to Widmer, is logic. Brown’s Waldseemuller map is small and rudimentary, whereas the Library of Congress’ map is large and elaborate, with land masses not indicated on the Brown map.

“You don’t have the sophisticated thing first and the primitive thing second,” Widmer says. “It’s just obvious. So it’s very likely this is the first map with the word America, which means it’s an unbelievably important artifact in world history and it also undermines, to put it mildly, the claim of the Library of Congress.”

The Brown map shows the word America on what would appear to be an island situated where Brazil is now. The Library of Congress map shows the continents of North America and South America, and the Pacific Ocean.

“History teaches us that Balboa discovers the Pacific in 1513 around Panama,” Widmer says. “If he did discover the Pacific in 1513, why is there a map from 1507 that shows clearly the Pacific Ocean?”

The answer, according to Hebert of the Library of Congress, is that an earlier explorer may have made the discovery.

“There is a lot of information that isn’t reconciled on the map, including the remarkable closeness of the shape of South America as we know it today,” Hebert says. “It would suggest someone had to be on the west coast of the continent to do some measurements.” At various locations on the Library of Congress map, Hebert says, the width of South America is accurate to within 70 miles. But he also points out that the map includes islands that don’t exist.

“Some of it is real. Some of it is not.”

The most important real element, according to Hebert, is a booklet, dated 1507, that accompanies the Library of Congress map in which Waldseemuller says, “I have made a large map, and on the map we have placed the word America.”

Brown’s map has no such accompanying dated material, and one theory, according to Lester, is that the map was one of several published in 1513.

“Someone may have drawn a copy of the Waldseemuller map and inserted the word [America]. But it’s impossible to tell.”

The Library of Congress purchased its Waldseemuller map in 2003 for $10 million from Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wolfegg, in whose family castle it had remained since it was discovered there in 1901. Last month, the map was put on display in a special argon-gas-filled display case.

Hebert says documentation indicates the Library of Congress map is from 1507.

Widmer says deduction indicates the John Carter Brown map is from earlier in 1507.

“I’m persuaded,” says Widmer, “but I’m not a famous expert on cartography.”

brourke@projo.com