Henry VII (1500 CE) Map of Antarctica

Are you familiar with this map from School History of England, Fletcher & Kipling? Some interesting observations below






1) It shows Plato’s Atlantis to the east of America, clearly believed to be just ‘beyond the Pillars of Hercules’.

2) The Strait of Magellan is unmistakable (“Here is the Great Strait the which leadeth from us to Cathay”). Knowledge of the straight therefore existed long before Magellan departed on his epic journey of discovery (1520 CE). On practically all maps subsequent to Magellan’s voyage, this strait bears his name.

3) Navigators had already noticed that compass bearings became unreliable as the North Pole was approached.

4) A southern continent named Antarctica, no less. The continent of Antarctica was discovered only in 1820 CE and the name must therefore have been in use much earlier. The inhabitants are described as savages who worship Devils. There can be only one explanation for the latter peculiar description. The map would have been copied during the Middle Ages, probably by someone of a Christian background. Men worshipping serpents would have been interpreted as men worshipping devils. Antarctica was therefore the home of the Serpents (?)’.

5) It is not recorded when the description below the map was made, but it certainly indicates that the name America was already in use during that era. Waldseemüller published the first map to use the name America in 1507. Could the name Florida (it appears on the map) have been known before 'America'?

6) There is no South American continent. I have elsewhere received comment that 'Antarctica' here should be South America, but then there should be no strait. I would rather suggest that the two Americas are shown as one.

Any comments?

The map is fake. Look at how many variations of the letter 'S' it has. It also uses several styles of grammar when one would do. The treasure map in The Goonies was more authentic.

"The great Isle of Cipangu which some call Japan"

[edit on 22-3-2009 by Kandinsky]

weren't certain colours not available as dye back in those days?/?

It does look fake though

Either its fake, or its some sort of early version of Mapping For Dummies.

reply to post by Riaan


I'm not sure whether what exactly you're trying to draw by way of comments. The map itself doesn't claim to be 'authentic' per se. It's very much a creature of it's time - and by that I meant the Edwardian period - rather than a map from aany mediaeval period.

Everything about the typography and colour palette practically screams this. It wasn't meant to be an authentic 'forgery', hence a lot of errors - such as the fact that the phrasing is in modern English, where's the Latin the use of the 'medial s' is inconsistent, the illustrations are a mish-mash of 'stylised' mediaeval-type drawings as well as obviously well-observed 'modern' renderings of the animals, the insert at the bottom right of the cartographer and the merchant is fantastically Edwardian and so on.

Practically everything about the map is wrong when compared to mediaeval maps. Have you actually compared this to maps from the 15th C &c?

I just had a quick look at three maps I have, one from 1458, one from 1567 and the last one from 1664 and all of them are in Latin.

None of them are as crudely drawn as that.

1458 is of the Med, the other two are whole world maps, and neither show or indicate any area such as Atlantis.

Unless any further evidence presents itself, I would put it in the fake basket and let it go at that.

Originally posted by LenGXV6
I just had a quick look at three maps I have, one from 1458, one from 1567 and the last one from 1664 and all of them are in Latin.

I mentioned the lack of Latin in my own post above. It was one of the first things I thought of.

None of them are as crudely drawn as that.

The illustration isn't so much crude as stylised (and very much of its time) and aimed at a completely different market than genuine mediaeval cartography.

this is a fire drake.

this is a dire fake.


-

Seems very School child-ish map.
seriously.....i had a good laugh reading whats written on the map.

Some comments on the comments:

* It could certainly be fake, although I have to admit that the thought never crossed my mind. I have numerous ancient maps and books about ancient cartography and have not come across any reference to this particualr map, which probably supports the idea that it may be a fake. The map is reminiscent of the Waldseemuller map and others of that period.

* I posted this map because some of the names caught my eye. In line with my earlier thread about Tacitus and the Hebrews under Isis, I wondered whether some of the names may not be phonetically derived from Hebrew. Couple of examples (enjoy):

- Antarctica: an (where) tarach (to overburden) tuw (swept away) ka’ah (grieved): ‘Where those who would have overburdened (the ships - of the Noahs) and were grieved (at being left behind to die) were swept away (by the biblical flood’

- Canton (of the city in China): chen (gracious) tan (monster, sea-serpent): ‘The Gracious Sea-Serpent (Dragon)’, the Chinese remembering the Serpents (dragons) as being particularly gracious?

- Quinsay: quwn (wail, lament) sey (sheep): ‘City of the Wailing Sheep’? Osiris (Dumuzi) was known as ‘the shepherd’?

Originally posted by Riaan
Some comments on the comments:

The book that the map is taken from was written in the early 1900s. The design of the map, including the illustrations and typography is very much of the late Edwardian era.

It's an Oxford Press book, so even though it was aimed at younger students, it was still respected academically. You're looking at this backwards if youre comparing it to genuine 15th C. maps. What you should be asking is why, if this map has been in the hands of a Oxford University publishers, is why isn't this map found anywhere else? This kind of artefact would be in a lot of cartography collections if it was real.

LOL that map seems so fake.

What's written on there makes me laugh haha.

reply to post by Riaan
Fair play to you. You had some ideas and posted the map to get some answers. A lot of folk would simply be satisfied with their own conclusions but you've proven to be a better mind by being open to challenge

- Antarctica: an (where) tarach (to overburden) tuw (swept away) ka’ah (grieved): ‘Where those who would have overburdened (the ships - of the Noahs) and were grieved (at being left behind to die) were swept away (by the biblical flood’

Antarctica is derived from Arctic. Originally it was Latin, meaning 'Northern.' Arcticus or Articus if I remember right. Antarctic is the antonym of Arctic I think...

Canton (of the city in China): chen (gracious) tan (monster, sea-serpent): ‘The Gracious Sea-Serpent (Dragon)’, the Chinese remembering the Serpents (dragons) as being particularly gracious?

The Chinese name for the city is Guǎngzhōu, Canton was the British traders pronounciation of it - a century or two later.

It could be a later Victorian childs rendering of one of the maps that might have been floating around the public schools of the time. The books of that time for such institutions were not noted for their academic rigour.

Dear Kadinsky and Hanslune, thanks very much - this is exactly why I joined this forum, to iron out some flaws in my theories.

reply to post by Riaan


I took a look at it again, firstly I noted that you had included where the map came from which I missed earlier, Do'h on my part.

Yep, the map is in the style of early 16th century but with modern comments again in the style of those types of map but with modern info marked in.

The book seems to have drawn other criticism in 20th century too

§§ Mr. HUGH LAW asked the President of the Board of Education whether his attention has been drawn to the contents of the History of England written by Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Rudyard Kipling, and particularly to the paragraphs relating to Ireland and to the Irish Parliamentary party; whether he considers the book to be suitable for use in primary schools; and, if not, whether he will take steps to prevent such use?

Mr. PEASE I think I may say that some passages in the book seem to the Board by no means suitable for children in public elementary schools, and I hope the publicity given to the matter by the hon. Member's question will bring to the notice of local education authorities the views of the Board on the subject.

§ Mr. ARTHUR LYNCH May I ask whether the chief objection to this book is not merely its low and vulgar tone, but the fact that the philosophy of this school is founded upon a misunderstanding of Darwin?

Link

I sent a mail to the Kipling Organization requesting more info on the origins of this map in particular. Will of course post it here should anything worthwhile turn up.

I didnt know that Terra Australis was Antartica.

Very bad map.

I first spotted this map in Spence's The History of Atlantis and managed to obtain a copy of Kipling's book. What I missed was a statement that all pictures in the book had been drawn by Henry (Justice) Ford, although as pointed out by a correspondent from the Kipling Organization, there seems to be no signature of Ford on the map. He even speculated that Kipling himself may have drawn the map.

This certainly proves that the map would indeed be a fake had it been represented as an original. Kipling actually called this map "An Imaginary Map of America, 1500", so whatever the source was, he did not believe it to be a real either.

All the above nevertheless cannot prove (as yet) that whoever drew the map did not copy it from some older maps. Kipling's title reflects the general modern belief that the southern continent called Terra Australis Incognita which appears on many medieval maps, is purely imaginary.

TAI is definitely not Antarctica as argued by Hapgood in his Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings. Apart from my crazy theory about Tacitus' statement, I have also developed a theory that TAI was none other than Plato's Atlantis, which a comet had struck in the region of the Scotia plate, leaving only Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica, Australia and Niew Zealand above water www.riaanbooysen.com.... I got the impression from recent threads that continued discussions on Atlantis are not really welcomed at this forum anymore, so I opted rather to deal with isolated topics.

Very bad map indeed if it can be proven not to have been copied from earlier maps.

I see nothing remarkable at all in the map.

Nothing, that is, that would have been "out of place" in 1500.

The "straight" you refer to is certainly not the Straits of Magellan, though. It is the Florida Straits, which is plainly shown between Florida and Cuba, which the King of Spain owned at the time, precisely as stated on the map.

No one at the time had gone into the Gulf of Mexico far enough to realize that it wasn't the way to China.

Atlantis is shown on many old maps, in a position that it was at the time assumed to occupy.

Antarctica was a hypothesized continent even in the times of the Ancient Greeks.

They figured it was there to "balance out" all the land mass in the Northern Hemisphere.

It could be a fake, I'm no expert, but it doesn't contain any anomalous information that I can see.

Harte

[edit on 3/26/2009 by Harte]