"We are Asia Major, India Superior": when the maps joined, then split, the Americas and Asia

SUMMARY"We are Asia Major, India Superior": when the maps joined, then split, the Americas and Asia (Nov 5, 2026). Tito: "Remember we are Asia Major, India Superior. The maps got funky at a point."
RECORD, the labels: Ptolemaic and medieval geography divided Asia into "Asia Major" and "Asia Minor," and the Indies into "India Major / India Superior" and "India Minor / India Inferior"; Marco Polo used "Greater" and "Lesser India." Columbus called the people he met "Indios," and in his own writings he says plainly that he was in the Indies, near Cathay: in June 1494 he had his crew swear before a notary that Cuba was the mainland of Asia, with penalties for anyone who later denied it; in his 1503 letter from Jamaica (the Lettera Rarissima) he writes that he reached the province of "Mango" (Mangi), which borders Cathay. Per his own words, he said he knew (P157). Wording rule: never write "he believed he had reached"; write "he said, in his own letters, that he was in the Indies."
RECORD, the map timeline (verify each map's labels before print): 1507, Johannes Ruysch's world map shows the newly reached lands as part of Asia; 1507, Waldseemüller's map names "America" and draws it apart from Asia; 1515–1520, Schöner's globes put Japan (Zipangu) just off Mexico (P195); 1531, Oronce Finé's (Orontius Finaeus) double-heart map joins North America to Asia, with Asian names (Cathay, Mangi) on North American ground; 1560s–1570s, the "Strait of Anián" appears (Ortelius 1570) and the maps separate the continents again; 1728, Vitus Bering sails the strait for Russia

PATTERNfor about 60 years European maps disagreed on whether the Americas were Asia; the names "Indies" and "Indians" stuck while the maps moved

LENS (WW9)the Americas are the real Asia Major / India Superior; the maps got rewritten to separate them

OPENa map-by-map table (date, maker, what the Americas are labeled), from the Library of Congress and David Rumsey collections; whether any map labels American ground "India Superior" directly. Needs deep research.