The Ptolemaic zero meridian ran through the Canary Islands

Evidence

Although there is surprisingly little firm information on the aboriginal inhabitants, known as guanches, who were living on the islands when the first European explorers and settlers arrived, the Canaries themselves were not unknown, even in ancient times. They figured on early maps (indeed the zero meridian shown on some Ptolemaic maps runs through them). In the Middle Ages, they were visited by Muslim traders, but if we are to judge from the reported consumption of pork by the natives at the time of the Christian conquest, Islam does not seem to have attained much of a foothold. The violent campaigns that established Spanish rule in the islands in the course of the fifteenth century reduced the population of native pagan guanches to a remnant of only a few hundred. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1887

Categorization

• XREF: Ptolemaic geography and the choice of a prime meridian connects to histories of cartography and navigation.