by Lionel
Who exactly was the Oronteus Finaeus who drew the mysterious and controversial map? Research shows that his name could be varied in several ways: Oronce Fine (or Finé), Orontius, and even Orotius. But despite the numerous name variants, he’s the same man. Born in Briançon in 1494 or 1495, he managed to upset the law in 1518 and found himself in jail as a consequence. After being released, Oronce took a medical degree at the Collège de Navarre in 1522 and then decided to specialize in maths rather than medicine. He designed and built many things, from scientifically accurate sundials to the very effective city defences of Milan. He even calculated π to 22 and 7/9 divided by 7. That gives a figure of 3.174603174. He later recalculated and came up with 47/15, which works out to 3.133333. His third and final attempt at π was 3 and 11/78, which works out at 3.141025641, whereas the real value of π is 3.141592654. Even allowing for the fact that Oronce was then professor of mathematics at the Collège Royal, his calculations were remarkably good for a man working with sixteenth-century equipment. That kind of mathematical skill encourages confidence in his cartography.
Another very interesting piece of evidence Professor Hapgood unearthed and studied was the map made by Philip Buache, perhaps as early as 1737, but certainly not later than 1739. This Buache map appears to be based on a report of a voyage made by two French ships, the Aigle and the Marie, which left Port de l’Orient on July 19, 1738, and sailed down to examine as much of Northern Antarctica as they could. There is a degree of controversy and disagreement about the importance of this map: a great many details of Antarctica are shown — far more than the Aigle and the Marie could have found out, according to some expert researchers. On the other hand, it is only fair to accept that a map drawn after their epic voyage of 1738 probably owed more to keen eyewitness observation from the valiant crews of those two French ships than to the ancient cartographical traditions linking the maps of the prehistoric sea kings to an ice-free Antarctica that shifted mysteriously when the moving lithosphere slid it towards the South Pole.
Interesting and puzzling as these old maps are, they are reinforced by several other enigmatic charts and portulans (medieval maps that showed the route from one port to another) that lend credence to Hapgood’s theories and the researches of Graham Hancock and the Flem-Aths. These pioneering examples of the early cartographers’ skills include the work of the Majorcan Cartographic School. The oldest known maritime charts, which not surprisingly came into existence at about the same time as the first known nautical compass, date from the late 1200s and are concerned mainly with the Mediterranean — affectionately referred to on the charts as “Mare Nostrum,” meaning “our sea.” In the middle of the twelfth century, Aragon and Catalonia were part of the same kingdom to which the Balearic Islands were added nearly a century later. There was a flourishing trade with North Africa at the time, because Africa was believed by all the more adventurous medieval merchants to be the most lucrative source of gold and ivory. Arabian and Jewish cartographers were acknowledged to be outstandingly good at that time, and were accordingly admired by mariners and merchants alike. Majorcan maps were highly prized; Ramon Llull, a renowned Catalonian academic, maintained that his contemporaries should never venture out to sea without both a map and a compass. In the middle of the fourteenth century, Peter, then king of Aragon, decreed that every ship under his royal aegis must carry two sea charts.
Angelino Dulcert created a superb map as early as 1339 when he worked in Palma on Majorca. Dulcert carefully incorporated details of mountains, lakes, and rivers — in the same way they were shown on the puzzling old maps of the Antarctic landmass. The Catalan Atlas made in 1375 goes further afield than Dulcert’s work. It even shows parts of the Orient, and Marco Polo’s travels made an important contribution to it.
Another great contributor to the fascinating world of early maps and the mystery of their ancient sources was Martin Behaim from Nuremberg. Born in 1459, Behaim created what he described as his Erdapfel, his globe of the Earth. But long before Behaim’s work, the great Italian mathematician Giovanni Campani from Novara, working in the thirteenth century, described with great accuracy how to construct a globe in his Tractus de Sphera solida. Behaim found great success in Portugal, was knighted by King John, and made a number of voyages to the African coast. He later returned to Nuremberg, where he constructed his Erdapfel. It showed the Antarctic Circle right enough, but the space where the tantalizing details of the land below the ice might have been depicted was used instead to show the names of three prominent citizens of Nuremberg who had been instrumental in commissioning Behaim’s globe. Behaim himself acknowledged that his geographical work was based on Ptolemy’s Cosmography.
Claudius Ptolemaeus, widely known as Ptolemy, was a brilliant Greek astronomer and geographer who did most of his scholarly work in Alexandria in Egypt. Born in 85, Ptolemy lived until 165. His works were regarded by most cartographers for twelve or thirteen centuries after his death as a sound basis for their own maps.
Another very unusual feature — perhaps the most significant and mysterious feature of the entire Behaim Globe — was his inclusion of the supposedly mythical Isle of Antilia. It was otherwise referred to as Septa Citade, meaning the Island of Seven Cities. There was a legend to the effect that in the year 734 a Portuguese archbishop from Porto, assisted by six other bishops, had taken care of their respective refugee flocks and fled with them to escape from the Moorish expansion into Spain. Complete with their essential household goods and domestic cattle, the refugees had landed on the Isle of Antilia, somewhere far across the Atlantic, and prospered there.
One of the best theories ever offered as an explanation of the Oak Island Money Pit mystery was put forward by the authors’ great Nova Scotian friend George Young, now sadly deceased. George’s hypothesis was that the Money Pit had been created by religious refugees from across the Atlantic, who had created the pit to house the mortal remains of their esteemed leader — or leaders. If the allegedly mythical Isle of Antilia portrayed on Behaim’s Globe was really Nova Scotia, it would fit very well with George’s excellent theory. Religious refugees arriving there in the eighth century would have been welcomed and hospitably treated by the friendly indigenous Canadians, who would, over the course of centuries, have absorbed them into their own Micmac Nation.
Many of the mysterious and controversial old maps indicate that at one time there were rivers flowing over an apparently ice-free Antarctic continent. Rivers inevitably carry materials down to the sea, and they create characteristic sediment where they reach the coast. Various tests carried out by reputable and prestigious academic teams have indicated stratification and sedimentation of types usually associated with rivers around parts of the Antarctic coast. Experts have also dated those sediments as being up to nine thousand years old. Allowing for reasonable margins, doesn’t this agree with the possibility of an ice-free Antarctica close to the dates suggested for the loss of Plato’s Atlantis?
A united expedition of Norwegian, Swedish, and British academics, researchers, and explorers carried out sonar and seismic investigations of what lay below the Antarctic ice cap in 1949. Their findings were known to Ohlmeyer, who included them in his correspondence with Hapgood in 1960. These investigations appeared to confirm that the rivers and general topography below the Antarctic ice were largely in accord with the Piri Reis Map and Hapgood’s fascinating theories about it.
Further enthusiastic support for Hapgood’s ideas about a mobile lithosphere came from no less an intellectual giant than Albert Einstein. He felt that there was considerable mileage in the theory that as the vast masses of ice around the poles were by no means symmetrical or evenly distributed, the Earth’s rotation could produce a centrifugal momentum that would encourage the Earth’s lithosphere to move.
Was there really an ancient, technologically advanced culture of ancient sea kings who spread their knowledge over most of the world? One of the most powerful pieces of evidence in favour of Hapgood’s thoughts about just such a
prehistoric culture comes from medieval China. A carved rock column there dates from the middle of the twelfth century. According to Hapgood, it demonstrates the same grid system, the same knowledge of spherical trigonometry, and the same very advanced technology found in the Piri Reis Map and the other old charts and maps known in the West. If Hapgood was correct about the mysterious Chinese sea chart carved on the old pillar, it would seem to be a very powerful argument in favour of the worldwide dissemination of the knowledge held by the hypothetical ancient sea kings.
To give a fair balance to the argument, however, it needs to be accepted that when Hapgood, Mallery, and other cartographers carried out their detailed examinations of the ancient maps, they seem to have made certain modifications and adjustments in an attempt to get back as closely as possible to the information that appeared to be the prerogative of the ancient sea kings — if they and their hypothetical culture ever existed.
The academic processes involved are broadly parallel to techniques used by some Bible scholars: if errors are found in, say, a thirteenth-century copy, the researchers go back to an earlier fifth-century draft and give the older data priority. If part of the Piri Reis Map doesn’t fit the modern Antarctic coastline too well, an assumption could be made that the originals — from which Piri Reis supposedly copied his map — were better than the copy that he made.
The most honest and objective researchers can sometimes be carried off course by the powerful currents of their own enthusiasm. There is a cautionary tale that every investigator should ponder while weighing the evidence for and against his, or her, favourite theories.
A pyramidologist had spent half a lifetime working out his theories about the Great Pyramid. He had convinced himself by many years of complex mathematical calculations that the measurements of the Great Pyramid were a code to the future, an enigmatic prophecy in stone. Finally, he was able to visit the huge monument and study it firsthand. Things went well for a while; then he encountered a stone that contradicted his cherished calculations. A watchful attendant observed the distraught pyramidologist attempting to saw a piece of stone away so that the pyramid would fit his beloved hypothesis. There are times when we are all tempted to cut away the stones of fact if they endanger our preconceived ideas. It’s a widespread human weakness.
When the famous western gunfighter Wyatt Earp was old, frail, and dying, a young journalist begged him for the truth about the gunfight at the OK Corral. Earp smiled gamely and said, “Hell with the truth, kid. Print my legend!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Legendary Voyages: Odysseus, Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts
Academic experts in folklore, myth, and legend have a natural curiosity about how real some of their heroes and locations might actually be. To say that there is no smoke without fire is proverbial, almost clichéd, but it is a truism nevertheless. Myths, legends, and folklore had to come from somewhere. Exaggeration has a lot to do with their genesis; misunderstanding of causality also plays a major part; and yet, in the final analysis, myths, legends, and folktales can usually be traced back to a real time, a real place, and real people.
What does the Homeric legend say about Odysseus, alias Ulysses? He was the son of Laertes and ruler of the little island kingdom of Ithaca. Renowned like Robin Hood and Brer Rabbit for his ability to outwit his enemies by superior cunning, Odysseus played a major part in the Trojan War. In addition to his cunning, he was as great an orator as Shakespeare’s Antony — and this combination of intelligence and verbal persuasiveness made him a formidable opponent. Before his marriage to the faithful and fearless Penelope, Odysseus was one of the suitors who competed for the hand of Helen, who was ostensibly the cause of the Trojan War. The real reason was far more likely to have been trade rivalry — but Homer (or the Homeric Writers’ Co-operative) decided that going to war over the most beautiful woman in the world made a far more exciting storyline than fighting over who sold olive oil and wine in the best overseas markets.
When Menelaus won the contest to marry Helen, Odysseus, camouflaging his personal disappointment, suggested that it would be a wise move for Menelaus to ask the other suitors to swear to defend his exclusive rights to the lady. That was how Odysseus found himself in the ironic position of trying to get Helen back from Paris, Prince of Troy, in order to return her to the man who had beaten him to it in the marriage competition!
Odysseus was physically heroic as well as cunning. When the Trojans were getting the better of things in a pitched battle with Menelaus’s Greeks, it was Odysseus who stood like a granite boulder and held the field; it was Diomedes and Odysseus who led an audacious night raid on the Trojans; and it was the cunning mind of Odysseus that thought up the Trojan Horse ruse that won the war for the Greeks.
Odysseus’s powers of oratory came to the fore when he and Ajax were competing for the magnificent armour that had become available when Achilles was slain. Odysseus’s speech won the armour for him — and the frustrated Ajax went insane and committed suicide.
His return to Ithaca after the Trojan War was a ten-year catalogue of problems and misadventures. This was explained to the satisfaction of the Greek theologians by the concept of a pantheon of rival gods and goddesses, some of whom were determined to destroy Odysseus, while others were equally determined to help him. In the Homeric view he was a pawn on the divine chess board, or a puppet whose strings were alternately in friendly and unfriendly divine hands. He saved his men from the hungry Cyclops, from Circe’s magic, and from the mind-eroding pleasure drugs available from the Lotus-Eaters. Pluto, Ruler of the Underworld, allowed Odysseus to get useful advice from his dead mother and from Ajax that proved helpful on later adventures.
Odysseus then encountered the Sirens and the monsters, Scylla and Charybdis. Charybdis had started life as a nymph. The daughter of Poseidon and Gaia, she had a habit of flooding lands for her father’s underwater kingdom — the opposite of Dutch land reclamation work. Zeus finally turned her into a monster and gave her the job of sucking water in and out three times a day. Charybdis lived in a huge cave at one side of the dangerous Strait of Messina. Opposite her was an even less friendly monster called Scylla, who, like Charybdis, had once been a beautiful nymph, daughter of Phorcys, himself a sea god and the son of Pontus and Gaia. Sailing between Scylla and Charybdis has become as proverbial as being jammed between a rock and a hard place, or being between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Because of jealousy over the handsome Glaucon, Circe the enchantress — never renowned for her placid nature and generous inclination to forgiveness — had poured some rather nasty magical toxins into the pool where the lovely Scylla regularly bathed. What came out of the water had six heads, twelve feet, and a body that consisted mainly of howling, barking dogs. Each time a ship came too close, every head seized a sailor, whose fate was swift and certain because each head had three rows of teeth.
As a punishment for eating sacred cattle that belonged to the sun god, a bolt of lightning destroyed the ship and Odysseus alone was saved. He found himself next on the island of the deliciously nubile nymph Calypso, and wasn’t entirely inconsolable for the next seven years — during which she insisted on keeping him there as her lover. Zeus, whose sense of justice and fair play probably made him intervene for brave and loyal Penelope’s sake, finally rescued Odysseus from the deliciously insatiable Calypso and popped him into a small boat. In this, Odysseus reached the island inhabited by the Phaeaceans, who treated him extremely well and then took him home to Ithaca.
Once home again, he disguised himself as a beggar to reconnoitre; he saw that his brave and faithful Penelope was holding off an army of unpleasant suitors who were trying to force her to marry one of them in order to take over the kingdom. With a little help from his father and his son, Odysseus used his famous bow to take out the suitors, rescue Penelope, and live more or less happily ever after as the restored king of Ithaca.
There are many theories about where these voyages really took Odysseus, and these theo
ries create yet another intriguing unsolved mystery of the sea. Most hypotheses centre on the Mediterranean coasts and islands, which seems logical enough, but there are a number of scholars and researchers who look further afield. One such bold theory put forward very convincingly by E.J. de Meester even takes Odysseus as far as Scotland and Ireland!
It is clear from most theories of where Odysseus really went that the first part of his trip is comparatively easy to pin over a real map of the Mediterranean. He left Troy intending to head home to Ithaca. That would have been approximately southwest, not far from Cephalonia (Kefallinia in contemporary Greek), which is the largest of the Ionian islands and lies to the west of the Gulf of Patraikos. Along with Ithaca and some smaller islands in the vicinity, Kefallinia is a department, or administrative district, of modern Greece. It was once an important centre of Mycenaean civilization, and Homer almost certainly referred to the island as Same. Some classics scholars think that Odysseus was actually based in Kefallinia rather than on Ithaca itself.
The Romans added it to their Empire in 189. The Normans were there in the eleventh century. Then the Neapolitans and Venetians were in charge until the Turks drove them out towards the end of the fifteenth century. The Turkish occupation wasn’t a long one, however, because the Venetians recaptured it in 1499. All of the Ionian Islands were a British Protectorate until 1864, when they went back to Greece. Despite the terrible earthquake damage of 1953, several important Mycenaean tombs can still be seen on the island.
The size of Kefallinia makes it a useful signpost for today’s researchers hoping to find the one hundred square miles that make up Ithaca itself. It was not only the home of Odysseus, but perhaps the island of Homer as well — or of one or two talented and influential authors who served on the Homeric Writers’ Co-operative. The island is thought to have taken its name from Ithacis, a Cephalonian prince, who settled there with his brother and built a fountain that provided the islanders with good, clear, clean spring water. Inhabited for at least four thousand years — possibly much longer — Ithaca could well have been the capital of the Cephalonian State during the Mycenaean era when the Trojan War was raging and Odysseus was the king of Ithaca. The Cave of the Nymphs is situated very close to Vathy, Ithaca’s capital city, which also boasts one of the largest natural harbours in the world. There are also some interesting ruins at Stavros that are well worth a research visit.