Novelty and the creation of the New World in XVI C Spain Luis Lobo-Guerrero Published as: Lobo-Guerrero, Luis, S. Alt, and M. Meijer (eds.), Imaginaries of Connectivity: the Creation of Novel Spaces of Governance, London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, pp. 13-38 Between 1488 and 1492, the years in which Bartolomeu Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope in Africa and Christopher Columbus reached what was years later called America, the ‘European’ cosmographic imaginary of the world ventured beyond the Greco-Roman Occidental limits of Ptolemy’s Geographia (IIC. A.D.). Dias’s African expedition challenged the southern limits of Ptolemy’s oikoumene and provided the possibility of sailing eastwards and northwards opening up a connection with the Indian Ocean and the Orient. Columbus’ ‘discoveries’ were followed 27 years later by Magellan/Elcano’s circumnavigation of the planet and exposed European sailors to phenomena for which ancient cosmography and Western knowledge had no explanation. The twelve hundred year Ptolemaic cosmological order was suddenly disrupted by exposure to different latitudes and longitudes, new sea currents and wind systems, special climates, unknown fauna and flora, unfamiliar illnesses, and different cultures. The challenge was met at times by the adaptation of known techniques and knowledge, but mostly, by the development of new ones to tackle emerging realities. Not only were western understandings of experience and knowledge insufficient, so were the knowledge and belief systems on which European people and organisations operated. The doctrine of Christianity, considered at times as the pivot that supported the connection between