Roman travelers, further validate the assignment of the name to Sri Lanka. However, on the maps of the Middle Ages, the fashion of using Latinised names and delineating places with fanciful figures contributed to absurd designs and confusion regarding the actual place of Taprobane. In the fifteenth century, Niccolò de' Conti mistakenly identified Taprobana as a much smaller island. In 1507, Martin Waldseemuller still assigned Taprobana to Sri Lanka. Sebastian Munster's 1580 map identified Taprobana as Sumatra, where the German title, Sumatra Ein Grosser Insel, means, "Sumatra, a large island". Munster's map created a debate on the identity of Taprobane. Due to this debate following possibilities were considered valid for Taprobana in the Middle Ages: Sri Lanka, as in Ptolemy's map and climes Sumatra, as in the birthplace of Enrique of Malacca A phantom island However, this issue was resolved with the rediscovery of Ptolemy's work in the 1400s. Ptolemy's map had been lost since the time of its production around the 2nd century AD. However, copies were rediscovered in the Middle East around 1400 AD. Moreover, by that time, the Portuguese had made their way into Asia. They had knowledge of both Sri Lanka (then Ceylan) and Sumatra from at least 80 years before. Munster apparently based his identification of Taprobane with Sumatra on 16th-century knowledge. Therefore, it can be mostly believed that this one-off identification of Taprobane with Sumatra was possible due to misassignment. Taprobana is mentioned in the first strophe of the Portuguese epic poem Os Lusíadas by Luís de Camões (c. 1524 – 10 June 1580). In literary works, Taprobana was mentioned in Tommaso Campanella's The City of the Sun, written in 1602. Jorge Luis Borges mentions the island in the story The Lottery in Babylon in the collection The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) of his book Fictions (1944). Toprobana is the fictional location of the sky elevator in Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction novel The Fountains of Paradise (1979). British rock band My Vitriol's 2001 debut album Finelines features a track called Taprobane, courtesy of the band's lead singer Som Wardner who is of Sri Lankan origin. See also Waldseemüller map References External links Islands of the Indian Ocean Names of Sri Lanka Ancient Greek geography of Sri Lanka Ancient Greek geography