Contents
1. From the Vatican Library
2. Ptolemy’s Map of the Universe
3. Ancient trans-oceanic travel
4. The map in Doge’s Palace
5. The Zheng He World Map
6. Advanced Map-Making
7. Knowledge of the Atlantic in 1424
8. Circle World
9. Hindu Maps
10. A map showing Atlantis
“We know that Columbus discovered America in 1492. Before that, there were no maps of America because nobody had ever traveled there”
Said just about every parroting automaton ever.
It’s the “we know” that irks me. Let’s debunk it.
1
From the Vatican Library
Interesting stuff is tucked away in the Vatican Library, some of it secret, some public. This gorgeous pre-cataclysm map is called “Vatican Ptomely”.
The beauty of it, is that it was drawn by Nicolas Germanus before Columbus even set sail.
The map was drawn by Nicolas Germanus for the Pope. Nicolas Germanus died in 1490.
Columbus set sail in 1492. The first maps of America were published “as we know” in the 1500s.
As on many other pre-cataclysmic maps, we see Australia as part of an ice-free Antarctic, a mysterious landmass in the Pacific and a North America that stretches to Europe (Greenland and Canada connected).
The name of the map, “Vatican Ptomely” is in honor of a man who already depicted America 1400 years prior.
2
Ptolemy’s Map of the Universe
A “map of the universe” according to Greek geographer and astronomer Ptolemy, who lived in Alexandria between the years 100 and 170.
I’ll ignore the museum’s suggestions of what I’m supposed to be seeing and say what I see. Is it allowed to form one’s own thoughts? Yes?
We see the continents, surrounded by a ring of water (today a ring of ice), then a ring of fire, then other realms.
The center appears to be the North Pole, there is no South Pole.
To the left I see Europe and Asia.
To the right I see the North American continent in pink, with South America merging into the ice-ring.
There is water between California and the rest of the Continent and a narrow waterway instead of the Great Lakes of Eerie and Michigan. That matches precisely what America looked like on old maps, pre-1600s.
Across from California again a large Continent in the pacific. The now sunken Lemuria?
The yellow on the left appears to be Africa but “the wrong way around”, possibly due to cataclysmic changes.
3
Ancient trans-oceanic travel
“We know there was no trans-oceanic contact prior to Columbus”.
For thousands of years your ancestors never ever crossed the ocean. How gullible would you have to be to believe that? We have been seafarers for thousands of years.
The Pacific Islanders were expert seafarers. We find their traces in South America, Hawaii, Fiji and New Zealand. Isn’t that a much larger trans-oceanic distance than crossing the Atlantic?
Thousands of years before Columbus, the Phoenicians traveled from Europe via Africa and India all the way to China. Or so we are told. The trip takes months. But they never ever undertook the trip from Europe to America which can be done in a week?
Maps are not the best evidence of pre-columbian trans-oceanic contact. There are coins, statues, ruins, excavations and even travel reports that do a much better job of that. But I chose to prove it via maps because it’s the more challenging undertaking.
4
The map in Doge’s Palace
My two best pieces of proof for pre-Columbian maps in America are Vatican Ptomely and the map in Doge’s Palace, Venice. The reason we find both in Italy, in my view, is because the Venetians had been secretly traveling to America before Columbus.
This map has been dated to 1428, but some say earlier.It’s drawn based on information brought back by Marco Polo and Nicolo da Conti from their travels to China. It can be found in the wonderful “Maps Room” at the Palace.
While myself visiting the Doge’s Palace, I didn’t recognize it as an early representation of America because it’s upside down from our way of seeing.
Let’s turn it around:
Interesting: The tour guide failed to mention this fact!
The tour guide was talking about the map tracing the route of Marco Polo or brought back by Marco Polo or something, and failed to mention that the map debunks 600 years of lies around “Columbus discovered America”.
I should have noticed the red lettering of CALIFORNIA. But Venice being noisy and crowded, I wasn’t in my sharpest state.
We see the Pacific, China, India and to the right we see North America.
We see all the city names of the “native Americans”.
Further north it says “Terre Incognite d Antropofagi” which means “unknown land of cannibals”. Just like the many maps claimed to be from the 1500s (but are probably from earlier centuries).
Norse Mythology says that when you travel “eastward” beyond Greenland and Iceland you finally reach a land of cannibalistic Giants.
I quote from a book titled 1434 by Gavin Menzies:
Small wonder, given their centuries of trade with China, that Venetians were the first Europeans to obtain world maps from their trading partner. Di Virga’s map of the Eastern Hemisphere was published in 1419, and Pizzigano’s map of the Caribbean appeared in 1424. Today, you can see on the wall of the Doges’ Palace a world map published prior to 1428 that includes North America. As the roundels on the walls testify, this map was created from evidence brought back from China by Marco Polo and Niccolò da Conti. The inscription relating to da Conti says:
“ORIENTALIS INDIAS HAC TABULA EXPRESSUS PEREGRATIONIBUS ET SCRIPTIS ILLUSTRAUNT EN NARATIS
MERCANTORIAM AD JIUVIERE SAECOLO XV NICOLAUS DE COMITIBUS. EDITO ITENERARIO LUSITANE POST
MODUM VERSO NOVAM LUCEM NAUTIS ALLATURO.”
My translation:
“Oriental India [viz China and the Indies in fifteenth-century terminology] as drawn in this way is clearly a result of the foreign
travels and illustrated writings not least the narratives of the merchant of the fifteenth century, Niccolò da Conti. Publication of this itinerary sheds new light on the [travels of] mariners.”
This map was probably completed before 1428 (inauguration of Doges’ Palace) but destroyed by fire in 1486; the original maps (of which a copy was given to Dom Pedro) were hung on the walls. According to Lorenzetti, the map was repainted by Ramusio in 1540 after the fire—the same Ramusio who had said that Fra Mauro’s world map was copied from one in the Camolodensian Monastery on the (current) Island of the Dead in the lagoon. Giovanni Forlani’s map shows Oregon and the Bering Straits before Bering or Vancouver. Zatta’s map shows Vancouver Island also before Cook or Vancouver and
places on it “Colonia dei Chinesi” (Chinese Colony).
So before 1421 was published I sought a map that would have been published before Magellan set sail but still have depicted the strait. There were several candidates. In the Venetian Doges’ Palace there is an early-fifteenth-century map showing Asia and the Pacific. This map has two roundels, which state how it was composed from information brought home to Venice by Marco Polo and Niccolò da Conti. Marco Polo returned in 1295 and Niccolò da Conti by 1434, possibly as early as 1424.
Despite showing the Pacific and America, the doge’s map does not show the southern part of the Americas. There is another map in the map room that does show South America and a route from Atlantic to Pacific, but unfortunately it is undated.
Gavin Menzies is an author who has argued, across several books that the Chinese “discovered” America in 1421. That’s almost as myopic as thinking “Columbus discovered America”.
Other’s claim “The Viking’s discovered America”, “The Phoenicians discovered America”, etc. Why so narrow-minded?
There were humans there all along. And they’ve traveled back and forth all along. For some reason this knowledge has been eradicated and replaced by a false History that claims our ancestors were dumb and primitive.
From another book by Gavin Menzies, titled 1421:
During my researches in Venice I was told of a description by the Portuguese
historian Antonio Galvão (died 1557) of a world map the Portuguese dauphin,
Dom Pedro, Henry the Navigator’s brother, had brought back with him from
Venice in 1428:
“In the yeere 1428, it is written that Dom Peter, the King of Portugal’s
eldest sonne, was a great traveller. He went into England, France,
Almaine [Germany] and from thence into the Holy Land, and to other
places; and came home by Italie, taking Rome and Venice in his way:
from whence he brought a map of the world, which had all the parts of
the world and earth described. The Streight of Magelan was called in it
the dragon’s taile: the Cape of Boa Esperança, the forefront of Afrike
and so foorth of other places: by which Map Dom Henry the King’s third
sonne was much helped and furthered in his Discouveries”.
Here was an unequivocal assertion that by 1428 both the Cape of Good Hope
(Boa Esperança) and ‘the Streight of Magelan’ (separating Argentina from
Tierra del Fuego) had been charted on a map. It was an extraordinary claim.
How could the Strait of Magellan have appeared on a map – for simplicity, I
shall call it the 1428 World Map – nearly a century before Ferdinand Magellan
discovered it? To emphasize that this was no mistake, Galvão continued:
“It was tolde me by Francis de Sousa Tavares that in the yeere 1528, Dom
Fernando, the King’s sonne and heire did show him a map which was
found in the studie of the Alcobaza [a renowned Cistercian monastery
traditionally used as a library by Portuguese kings] which had beene
made 120 yeeres before which map did set forth all the navigation of the
East Indies with the Cape of Boa Esperança according as our later maps
have described it; whereby it appeareth that in ancient time there was as
much or more discovered than now there is”.
In ancient times there was more discovered than there now is? I couldn’t agree more.
5
The Zheng He World Map
The Zheng He World Map from China, 1418.
This is one of the maps author Gavin Menzies uses to prove Chinese discovery of America prior to Columbus.
Of course Academics say “Well, it can’t be from 1418 because WE KNOW that America was discovered in 1492″.
This is called circular reasoning. I come across it frequently in Academia.
Notice how in 1418, California is separate from the mainland. An Island, just like the ancient legends of the native Americans said.
6
Advanced Map-Making
To give you an idea of how non-primitive these people were, here’s a part of the Cantino map (1502) alongside a modern map.
Some say it’s impossible to achieve that level of accuracy without advanced knowledge.
This is the Piri-Reis map of 1513 which shows a part of South America in meticulous detail and parts of an ice-free Antarctic about 500 years before both were known in any detail. The remainder of the world map is “missing”.
7
Knowledge of the Atlantic in 1424
This is called the Pizzigano portolan seafarers chart. It’s from 1424 and shows western Europe and the islands of the Atlantic Ocean.
It contains surprisingly accurate outlines of the Canary Islands, Madeira Islands and the Azores. Academics say “It features both real and mythical Islands”.
I’ve talked about the advanced mapmaking of portolan charts elsewhere, but let me reiterate that portolan charts never dealt in mythology, only in facts and meticulous detail. Rather than being “mythical”, the Islands of Antille and Satanazes (large red and blue on the map), are probably sunken.
The map is written in Portugese and Venetian. Portugal and Venice were both expert navigators of the Atlantic.
History books say that “We know the Azores were discovered in 1431″.
The problem? This map shows the Azores in 1424.
The Azores, by the way, are almost half-way to America, surrounded by vast stretches of Ocean. If you had ships that could travel to the Azores then you had ships that could travel to America.
Satanazes, the Island of the Devil, is located where we would today find Bermuda. Maybe no coincidence.
Portolan maps of the 1300s and 1400s were so precise it’s hard to imagine these people had zero knowledge of other Continents. They’re more precise than later maps, as if we regressed over time. This is what they say pre-Columbian maps looked like, this one being from 1482:
These cut-off maps are ridiculous, given as chicken feed to the non-elite. They pretend the Norse never knew Iceland or Greenland and that the world abruptly ends in the middle of Africa. On the other hand they tell us Egyptians, Romans and Phoenicians circled Africa.
This map, by the way, is also claimed to be by Nicolas Germanus. That’s really strange, because earlier we saw that Germanus was familiar with all Continents.
This completes the hard-proof section of this article. The next section presents speculative evidence of pre-Columbian knowledge of America.
8
Circle World
The date of the Chinese world Map, called the “Harris Map”, seems to be unknown. In a brief online search I found one source saying it’s from 1328. Another said 1700AD. And other “from the 1800s”. But just because someone publishes, copies or catalogues a map in the 1800s, doesn’t mean it was drawn then.
I’ve talked about this in previous articles: I believe this is what the Earth looked like a long time ago, prior to the year 1000 (which is actually the year 0 of Christ, if you know 1000 years have been added to our timeline).
The map mimics many others from this time.
If I flip the map it’ll make more sense to you:
Still confusing? Somebody made an English-language version of the map:
The Americas were once part of a landmass that, along with “Antarctica” and “Australia”, were circling the Earth.
Too far fetched? Not if you consider that your contemporary school maps are a distortion and that continents actually look like this.
Except that the North Pole is at the center, not Cairo.
Pre-1700s maps show Australia and South America as part of Antarctica, which used to be fertile. I’ve gone into this in previous articles.
This is an old Japanese map that I downloaded from the Library of Congress website.
They claim it was created “between 1800 and 1850”. That creation-date is disputed. Who is disputing it?
I am.
If you tell me something was “made some time between 1974 and 2024” I realize you don’t really know when it was made. And if you don’t know when it was made, the dating is up for grabs.
Nobody, much less the Japanese, believed this is what the world looks like as late as the 1800s.
It’s how the world was seen in the 1200s to 1500s. Here, Australia is part of the Antarctic. Notice it forms a circle that connects antarctic, the Americas and the Arctic.
A map showing Russia and America United
Here’s a map from the days America and Russia were ONE and the Antarctic was fertile. Francesco Ghisolfi, 1565.
9
The Hindu Maps
This is an ancient Hindu map, claimed to have been in use for thousands of years, depicting the “four corners of the world”.
In the western Corner we have Cetu-Mala which happens to be the ancient Mayan name for one of their regions in central America. The town of Cetumal or Chetumal can be found at the southern tip of Mexico, exactly at the center of the American Continent.
Too speculative? Maybe. Maybe not.
Maybe earth did look more orderly, being surrounded by circles, as seen in Ptomely’s model.
The map is from the 1883 book “Researches into the Lost Histories of America”. From this book I quote:
“The Japanese have maps. They are constructed in the most
simple and unscientific manner, without spaces for oceans, and
with rivers unnaturally large : but they are not so badly
drawn, as to make the identification of countries impossible.
These maps are remarkable, as exhibiting the coast line of the
land, now known to exist, at the ant-arctic pole. In fact, they
have that coast well defined, all across the Southern Ocean; as
if the Japanese navigators had penetrated further than modern
British sailors. These maps have America as largely and as well
delineated, as the lands of Asia and Europe”.
Where have these maps disappeared to, I wonder?
“The form of the map proves the Hindoos to have had the most
imperfect idea of the art of map construction; but the contents
of it, equally show that they must have had a very extensive
knowledge of the whole Globe. The antiquity of the map is
proved by the nomenclature of the countries. The Hindoos
are in possession, of great geographical knowledge, and
their books are replete with ancient histories, in a mythic
form, similar to those of Greeco. By these books it is shown
that the names of countries into which the old continent is
divided, in the present map, are the sons of Agnidhra, who
himself is the son of Adima and Iva. In this map, Asia and
Europe are drawn in the unnatural form of an oval encircled
by the Ocean.
The observant reader will not fail to notice that in this
map, America is distinctly delineated. The ocean is made to
surround the old continent. Although there may be inaccuracy
in the form in which it is drawn, yet the fact is
plain. The ocean, here represented, comprises the Atlantic in
the West, and the Pacific in the East. Africa is here mentioned
by name, and must be comprised in the oval; so that
the Geography is not incorrect.
Beyond the ocean there is another land, which surrounds
the ocean; of course, that is America, In a map formed
upon the construction of a dish, which is the form in which
the maps of Herodotus and others are drawn, the geography
is perfectly correct. This encompassing land has a chasm
in the west. The chasm does really exist. It is the Caribbean
Sea and the gulf of Mexico, which divide the two great
insular continents of North and South America, and which
serve as an inlet of approach to both.
But the actual identity of this land with America is seen
by the name which is given to it and the character said to
inhabit it. It is Suvarna Bhumi or the land of Gold. In
the geography of India, Suvarna is joined to Swetain dwipa.
They are said to be two parts of one whole. This Swetam
dwipa is a very important place in the Indian history and
antiquities, as will afterwards appear. Now Vishnu is said
to preside over Swetam dwipa, so that Swetam dwipa must be
a part of America. In the Asiatic Researches, Swetam dwipa
is always called the White Island in the west. Under these
circumstances, it is plain, that Swetam dwipa and Suvarna
are Hindoo names for North and South America.
Then, the reader will notice, that this land is called the
land of darkness, and that it is full of waters, and the abode
of the Great Spirit Vishnu. In this epithet, appears the
exact name which the North American Indians invariably
give to their God. In a later part of this work, it will be
shown, that the blue and water God, Vishnu, is an impersonation
of America. On the whole, the teaching of the map
is too plain to be misunderstood. America is distinctly delineated
in the oldest Hindoo map.
10
A map showing Atlantis
The final map of this article is a spectacular misfit. Then again, maybe not. It’s said to have been drawn in 1518 by Pietro Coppo.
Who saw the world like this in the 1500s? Nobody else. It contains items that remind me of much earlier maps. The way the mountain ranges are drawn, as orderly, artificial looking fortresses is similar to maps from the 1000s and 1100s.
There’s a huge landmass in the Atlantic. Do you remember my article on the mirror-moon map? The moon-map says there is a land-mass at this exact location. Could this be Atlantis?
Conclusion
The mainstream teaching about the “discovery” of America is hostile to human reason, sentience and ability. It frames human-kind as dumb: They were too dumb to cross the ocean, they were too dumb to draw accurate maps, they were making stuff up in their maps. For tens of thousands of years, humans were confined to a small part of the world and never ventured beyond. I don’t believe that because I have a higher view of humans. People are capable of extraordinary things and taking a ship across the sea is stroll in the park.