Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
Page 99
83. Mifsud and Mifsud, op. cit., plate 1; and see discussion on page 64
84. Ibid., 120, footnote 152
85. Ibid., 64, 105, 109
86. Frendo, in Mifsud and Ventura, op. cit., 30–31; and see discussion in Mifsud and Mifsud, op. cit., 65–6
87. Evans, op. cit., 19
88. Mifsud and Mifsud, op. cit., 105
89. Ibid., 64
90. Ibid., 120, footnote 152
91. Frendo, in Mifsud and Ventura, op. cit., 30
19 / Inundation
1. David Trump, Malta: An Archaeological Guide, 14–15, Valletta, 1990
2. Anton Mifsud and Simon Mifsud, Dossier Malta: Evidence for the Magdelenian, 12–13, Malta, 1997
3. Ibid., 27, 97
4. Ibid., 31, footnote 71
5. Ibid., 23
6. The Tyrrhenian Sea is the arm of the Mediterranean between Italy and the islands of Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily
7. ‘Meltwater pulse 1-A’ corresponds with the first of the three episodes of cataclysmic post-glacial flooding identified by Professor John Shaw of the University of Alberta (see chapter 3)
8. Van Andel, ‘Late Quaternary Sea Level Changes and Archaeology’, 737, Antiquity, 63, 1989, describes these Adriatic plains as ‘one of the richest environments in the whole central northern Mediterranean’
9. Malta: Echoes of Plato’s Island, 34, The Prehistoric Society of Malta, 2000
10. See chapter 17
11. Van Andel, op. cit., 737
12. See chapter 3
20 / The Morning of the World
1. See discussion by Trump, in Anton Mifsud and Charles Savona Ventura (eds.), Facets of Maltese Prehistory, 96, The Prehistoric Society of Malta, 1999; David Trump, Malta: An Archaeological Guide, 49, Valletta, 1990
2. See J. D. Evans, The Prehistoric Antiquities of the Maltese Islands: A Survey, University of London, 1971: compare plate 33 (11 and 12) with plate 47 (11, 9 and 10)
3. Trump, in Mifsud and Ventura, op. cit., 96; Trump, Archaeological Guide, 49
4. Paul I. Micallef, Mnajdra Prehistoric Temple: A Calendar In Stone, Malta, 1992
5. Richard Walter, ‘Wanderers Awheel in Malta’, 253ff, National Geographic, March 1940
6. Micallef, op. cit., 35
7. Micallef makes these points in more detail in his unpublished paper ‘Alignments along the main axes of Mnajdra’, 5 June 2001, pages 6–7
8. Alexander Thorn’s proposed megalithic yard is discussed in Douglas C. Hegge, Megalithic Science: Ancient Mathematics and Astronomy in Northwest Europe, 55ff, Thames and Hudson, London, 1981
9. The boats appear in the form of roughly inscribed sketches or graffiti on slabs near the entrance to Tarxien
10. Use of obliquity errors for dating of other structures discussed in Fingerprints of the Gods and Heaven’s Mirror
11. Micallef, op. cit., 32
12. Ibid., 32
13. See chapter 18
14. Evans, op. cit., 116–17
15. Personal communication from Anton Mifsud, and see Trump, op. cit., 176ff
16. Evans, op. cit., 95
17. Ibid., 80–81
18. Ibid., 172
19. Ibid., 172
20. Trump, Journal of the Accordia Research Centre, vols. 5–6, 173–7
21. Evans, Antiquity, vol. 35, no. 137, 143–4
22. Trump, Journal of the Accordia Research Centre, 173–7
23. Renfrew, Antiquity, vol. 46, 141–4
24. Trump, Antiquity, vol. 37, no. 148, 302–3
25. Anton Mifsud, Simon Mifsud, Chris Agius Sultana and Charles Savona Ventura, Malta: Echoes of Plato’s Island, 34, The Prehistoric Society of Malta, 2000
26. Ibid., 34
27. Ibid., 34–5
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., 18
30. Indeed, the idea of the Maltese archipelago as one larger single island survived until at least the late sixteenth century on some maps. For example, in Tabula Europae VII, one of a group of Ptolemaic maps published in Venice in 1598. See Mifsud et al., op. cit., 50
31. Ibid., 18–20
32. Ibid., 20–24, citing Ventura
33. Ibid., 24
34. Ibid., 22
35. Ibid., 49
PART FIVE: Ancient Maps
21 / Terra Incognita
1. Damiao Peres, A History of the Portuguese Discoveries, 56–72, Lisbon, 1960
2. Ibid., 87
3. Ibid., 87
4. Ibid., 87
5. Ibid., 87
6. Ibid., 87
7. Ibid., 113
8. Ibid., 88
9. Ibid., 89–90
10. Ibid., 93: ‘This was the contemporary expression for shipwrecked ships from which there were no survivors or remains’
11. Ibid., 92
12. Ibid., 89–91
13. Ibid., 93
14. Ibid., 93
15. Ibid., 94
16. Ibid., 113
17. Ibid., 113
18. Ibid., 114
19. Ibid., 115
20. Ibid., 115
21. Thomas Suarez, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia, 64, 85, Periplus, Hong Kong, 1999
22. Peres, op. cit., 112
23. Notes on the 1502 Cantino, 1, see http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/Ren/Reni/306mono.html
24. Peres, op. cit., 99
25. Notes on the 1502 Cantino, op. cit., 1; Peres, op, cit., 99; John Goss, The Mapmaker’s Art: A History of Cartography, 64, Studio Editions, London, 1994
26. Notes on Cantino, op. cit., 1
27. Goss, op. cit., 64
28. For example, see ibid., 64; Peres, op. cit., 99ff
29. Goss, op. cit., 34
30. Ibid., 34
31. Ibid., 34
32. Ibid., 34
33. See Ibid., 35
34. Ibid., 35–40
35. Ibid., 35
36. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, vol. 9, 775
37. O. A. W, Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps, 75, Cornell University Press, 1985
38. Ibid., 75; Mostafa El-Abbadi, Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria, 141, UNESCO, Paris, 1992
39. Dilke, op. cit., 75
40. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, vol. 9, 775
41. See discussion in Dilke, op. cit., 80–81
42. J. Oliver Thomson, History of Ancient Geography, 337, Biblo and Tannen, New York, 1965
43. Ibid., 336
44. Robert H. Fuson, Legendary Islands of the Ocean Sea, 11, Pineapple Press Inc., Florida, 1995
45. Ibid., 18–19
46. Ibid., 18
47. Ibid., 15–16
48. Ibid., 17. Curiously enough, Poseidonius had previously estimated the earth’s circumference at 27,000 miles – much closer to the correct figure -then changed his mind. See Gregory C. Mcintosh, The Piri Reis Map of 1513, 15, The University of Georgia Press, 2000
49. J. Lennart Berggren and Alexander Jones, Ptolemy’s Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters, 22, Princeton University Press, 2000
50. Ibid., 22
51. Dilke, op. cit., 72
52. Cited in ibid., 73
53. See also ibid., 81: ‘Research by E. Polashek makes it seem likely that different groups of manuscripts represent successive recensions of the coordinates in antiquity, at least the first of which may be attributred to Ptolemy himself’
54. See Fuson, op. cit., 18
55. Dilke, op. cit., 155–6
56. Ibid., 157
57. Goss, op. cit., 25
58. Ibid., 25
59. A. E. Nordenskiold, Facsimile Atlas to the Early History of Cartography with Reproductions of the Most Important Maps Printed in the XV and XVI Centuries, 45, Dover, New York, 1973 (reprint) (first published 1889)
60. Ibid., 45
61. Ibid., 45
62. Goss, op. cit., 41
63. Dilke, op. cit., 180
64. Goss, op. cit., 41
65. Dilke, op. cit., 180
66. Ibid., 180.
Additionally, Barry Fell has reported strong evidence of use of magnetized needles by sailors in Spain in pre-Latin times: Occasional Publications of the Epigraphic Society, 3/57, Arlington, PA, USA
67. Nordenskiold, op. cit., 46
68. Charles H. Hapgood, Maps of Ancient Sea Kings, 116, Adventures Unlimited Press (reprint), 1996
69. Fingerprints of the Gods
70. Sharif Sakr, e-mail correspondence with G. Mcintosh, 9 October 2000
71. Goss, op. cit., 41
72. Nordenskiold, op. cit., 48
73. Peter Whitfield, The Charting of the Oceans: Ten Centuries of Maritime Maps, 16, Pomegranate Art Books, California, 1996
74. Ibid., 17
75. Ibid., 19 (emphasis added)
76. Ibid., 19
77. Ibid., 19
78. Goss, op. cit., 41; Dilke, op. cit., 180–81
79. Goss, op. cit., 41
80. Nordenskiold, op. cit., 48
81. A. E. Nordenskiold, Periplus: The Early History of Charts and Sailing Directions, 45, Nart-Franklin, New York, 1967 (reprint)
82. Ibid., 45
83. Nordenskiold, Facsimile Atlas, 48
84. Ibid., 48
85. Ibid., 48
86. Ibid., 48
87. Ibid., 48
88. Svat Soucek, Piri Reis and Turkish Mapmaking after Columbus, 27, The Nour Foundation in association with Oxford University Press, 1996
89. Nordenskiold, Facsimile Atlas, 43
90. Frances Gibson, The Seafarers: Pre-Columbian Voyages to America, 253, Dorrance and Co., Philadelphia, 1974; Mcintosh, op. cit., 31; Fuson, op. cit., 119
91. E.g. see Goss, op. cit., 54–5; Soucek, op. cit., 61–4; Fuson, op. cit., 119; Dilke, op. cit., 177
92. Nordenskiold, Periplus, 10
93. Fuson, op. cit., 9
94. Ibid., 119–20
95. E.g. Catalan Atlas, see http://www.bnf.fr/enluminures/manuscrits/aman6.htm
96. Christopher Columbus, 1484, quoted in Historie, 1571, cited in Fuson, op. cit., 185
97. Nordenskiold, Periplus, 15
98. Ibid., 14–15
99. Dilke, op. cit., 180
100. David Lewis, We the Navigators: The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific, 292, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1994
101. Ibid., 292
102. Ibid., 292
103. Ibid., 90
104. See chapter 14
105. Documented in Glenn Milne’s inundation maps reproduced in chapters 7 and 11
106. Nordenskiold, Periplus, 47
22 / The Secret Memories of Maps
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, vol. 9, 571
2. Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, 205-n, Wordsworth, Classics, 1997; Marco Polo, The Travels, 243–9, Penguin, London, 1982; Robert H. Fuson, Legendary Islands of the Ocean Sea, 203, Pineapple Press Inc., Florida, 1995
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, vol. 9, 571–3
4. Polo, Travels, Penguin, 243; Polo, Travels, Wordsworth, 207
5. Polo, Travels, Wordsworth, 207
6. John Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World, 153, Yale University Press, 1999
7. Polo, Travels, Penguin, 258
8. Polo, Travels, Wordsworth, 224; Polo, Travels, Penguin, 258
9. Polo, Travels, Wordsworth, 224 (emphasis added]
10. Ibid., xv
11. Polo, Travels, Penguin, 258–9 (emphasis added)
12. Cited in Thomas Suarez, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia, 44, Periplus, Hong Kong, 1999 (emphasis added)
13. See in particular chapters 7 and 11
14. Chapters 7 and 11
15. Suarez, op. cit., 44
16. Ibid., 44
17. Ibid., 44
18. Ibid., 44
19. Ibid., 44: ‘Ptolemy’s Geographia, and maps constructed from it, were virtually unknown in Europe at this time, even among academics, and remained so until a century after Polo’s return. Thus Polo clearly did not fabricate this key Ptolemaic error, which he himself did not understand. Ptolemy’s Geographia was, however, known to Arab scholars, and had profoundly influenced the Arab conception of Southeast Asia. But the fact that the map seen by Polo retained such an incorrect dimension for Ceylon supports the view that native pilots guided their vessels by navigational texts and did not refer to the charts themselves.’
20. E.g. Taprobana identified with Sumatra on some maps
21. See chapter 21
22. See chapter 21
23. See discussion in chapter 21
24. Suarez, op. cit., 44
25. See chapter 21
26. Sharif Sakr, ‘Was the World Mapped Before the End of the Ice Age?’, research paper for GH, 5 February 2001
27. Luis Vaz de Camoes, The Lusiads, 221, Oxford University Press, 1997 World’s Classics
28. Sharif Sakr, op. cit.
29. The most detailed description of the inundation of Sundaland is given in Oppenheimer, Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1998
30. Armando Cortesao, The Suma Oriental of Tome Pires and the Book of Francisco Rodrigues, vol. 1, xi, Asian Educational Services, New Delhi, 1990
31. Cortesao, Introduction to Suma Oriental, ibid., vol. 1, xiii
32. Cortesao, Foreword to Suma Oriental, ibid., xi
33. Cortesao, Introduction to Suma Oriental, ibid., xiii-xviii
34. Ibid., xiii
35. Ibid., xiii
36. Ibid., lxxviii
37. Ibid., 128, footnote
38. Ibid., lxxviii (emphasis added)
39. Ibid., 45
40. Ibid., 45–6
41. 3 September 2001, ‘Very interesting stuff from Pires’ – e-mail from Sharif Sakr to GH
23 / Looking for the Lost on the Road to Nowhere
1. Cited in Robert H. Fuson, Legendary Islands of the Ocean Sea, 62, Pineapple Press Inc., Florida, 1995
2. Cited in Gregory C. Mcintosh, The Piri Reis Map of 1513, 74, The University of Georgia Press, 2000
3. Fuson, op. cit., 43
4. Ibid., 62
5. Frances Gibson, The Seafarers: Pre-Columbian Voyages to America, 9ff, Dorrance and Co., Philadelphia, 1974
6. Ibid., 9ff
7. Ibid., 9–11
8. Cited in Fuson, op. cit., 23
9. Plato, Timaeus and Critias, 38, Penguin Books, London, 1977
10. Ibid., 37–8 (emphasis added)
11. Fuson, op. cit., 28
12. Ibid., 30
13. Svat Soucek, Piri Reis and Turkish Mapmaking after Columbus, 58, The Nour Foundation in association with Oxford University Press, 1996 (emphasis added)
14. Mcintosh, op. cit., 140
15. Soucek, op. cit., 59; Mcintosh, op. cit., 50–51
16. Mcintosh, op. cit., 73
17. Ibid., 73
18. An extensive discussion of the Bahriye is found in Soucek, op. cit., 84ff
19. Ibid., 99
20. E.g. Mcintosh, op. cit., 17, 19
21. Ibid., 17, 19
22. Fuson, op. cit., 186
23. The persistence of lost islands in nautical charts is discussed extensively in Fuson, op. cit.
24. Ibid.
25. E.g. see Mcintosh, op. cit., 31 and 72; Dora Beale Polk, The Island of California: The History of a Myth, 24, University of Nebraska Press, 1991
26. George Firman, Atlantis: A Definitive Study, 33, California, 1985
27. Where the work of Vitaly Koudriatsvev, another Atlantis researcher, makes use of isostacy and the fore-bulge theory
28. Firman, op. cit., 33, 36–7
29. Ibid., 33
30. Ibid., 33
31. Ibid., 75
32. Plato, op. cit., 37–8
33. For some reason, never explained, the Soviet Union took a great interest in the underwater search for the remains of a lost civilization, principally in the Atlantic
34. Carried in National Geographic News (national geographic.com/news), 13 July 2001
35. Cited in Plato, op. cit., Appendix on Atlantis, 158
36. Please note that although not of significant size there were also a number of antediluvian islands on the eastern side of the Atlantic, one of them extremely close to the Straits of Gibraltar. Using inundation maps of this area, French scientist Jacques Collina-Girard of the University of the Mediterranean in Aix-en-Provence noticed an island (geologists call it Spartel) near the western end of the strait measuring 14 kilometres long by 5 kilometres wide that existed from the Last Glacial Maximum until it was flooded by rising sea-levels around 11,000 years ago. Despite its small size, and largely on account of its relationship to the Straits of Gibraltar mentioned by Plato, Collina-Girard had proposed this palaeo-island as a candidate for Atlantis. See NewScientist.com, ‘Sea level study reveals Atlantis candidate’, by Jon Copley, 18 September 2001. Note that there have been persistent reports by divers of significant unidentified underwater ruins off the coasts of Spain and Morocco. One long-running story, reported in the US in the Orange County Register in 1973, concerns an expedition by Maxine Asher of Pepperdine University to discover the ruins of Atlantis at a site about 20 kilometres off Cadiz in southern Spain. Before Spanish police stopped the expedition Asher’s team did claim to have discovered ‘pre-Roman and pre-Phoenician’ underwater ancient ruins at the site (see Orange County Register, 27 March 1973, 17 July 1973, 22 July 1973, 26 July 1973, 22 August 1973). Presumably the problems with the Spanish police have ceased, because further expeditions have been mounted as recently as 2000 and Maxine Asher, reportedly, remains very much on the case. Good luck to her.
37. For details of the discovery see J. Manson Valentine, ‘Underwater Archaeology in the Bahamas’, The Explorers Journal, December 1976, 176–83
38. National Geographic Research Reports, vol. 12, 1980, 35
39. Ibid., 22–4
40. Nature, vol. 230, 2 April 1971, 287–8
41. Nature, vol. 287, 4 September 1980, 11–12
42. The Explorers Journal, December 1976, 177
43. Dr David Zink, The Stones of Atlantis, 50, Prentice-Hall, NJ, 1978
44. Mahlman and Zink, 1982 Conference on Underwater Archaeology, 4, University of Pennsylvania, January 1982
24 / The Metamorphoses of Antilia
1. I was given this story in some detail in July 2001 in a filmed interview with an octogenarian resident of Bimini, Alvin Taylor, who said he used to watch ‘Captain Webster’s’ barges from the US loading stone from the Bimini Road.
2. Mahlman and Zink, 1982 Conference on Underwater Archaeology, 4, University of Pennsylvania, January 1982, 2–3