Nexus - 0304 - New Times Magazine-pages

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ROSSELLI'S MYSTERIOUS MAP OF ANTARCTICA ROSSELLI'S MYSTERIOUS MAP southern continent and also raised doubts _ like a loose orange-peel slipping around the OF ANTARCTICA about the very existence of an Antarctic surface of an orange. The displaced polar © 1995, George M. Hollenback land mass. Some maps drawn as late as the ice-caps rapidly melted, causing great Among the enigmas explored in Graham early 19th century feature southern polar floods. The temperate areas that shifted Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods is the projections with Antarctica conspicuously _ into the polar regions began to freeze over. depiction of Antarctica on maps made cen- absent. When Antarctica was finally dis- Antarctica shifted so far south that it ended turies before that continent was ‘officially’ covered and explored, it began to reappear up enclosed within the Antarctic Circle. discovered in 1820. on these maps. The ensuing glaciation of the continent Now the appearance of a large southem What is extraordinary about the pre-dis- forced its inhabitants to set sail for other land mass on pre-15th century maps is covery maps cited by Hancock is their parts of the world, leaving behind traces of nothing extraordinary in itself. An ancient uncanny accuracy. Antarctica is not some their advanced civilisation. storyteller could have spun a convincing sprawling, amorphous figment of a cartog- After reading Fingerprints of the Gods, 1 yarn about such a place, and early map- rapher's imagination: on these maps, did some cartographical research of my makers could have incorporated the myth Antarctica does indeed look like own and made a significant discovery. into their cartography. Subsequent voy- Antarctica. The oldest map cited is the Piri There is a map even older than the Piri Reis ages of discovery would then apparently Reis map of 1513—produced three cen- map which also accurately depicts corroborate the myth. turies before the official discovery of Antarctica. This map, shown in Figure 1, For example, when Magellan first sailed Antarctica. was made by Francesco Rosselli of through the narrow strait separating the tip The upshot of all this is that some Florence, circa 1508. It shows an oval pro- of South America from the island of Tierra ancient, advanced civilisation must have jection of the globe with its centre located del Fuego, it was believed that Ticrra del mapped Antarctica long ago, and that just under the horn of Africa. Located at Fuego was a part of this large southern land Antarctica must have had a sufficiently the bottom of the map is a large, horizon- mass. When early explorers first sighted temperate climate to facilitate such map- tally elongated land mass clearly labelled New Guinea, it, too, was believed to be a ping. Later cartographers drew upon the "“ANTARCTICVS" (Shirley, p. 32). part of the same land mass. remnants of this ancient, lost knowledge The general size and shape of Rosselli’s Some 16th-century maps depict a large and incorporated it into their own maps. Antarctica correspond reasonably well to ‘supercontinent’ stretching from the north According to a theory tentatively modern renditions of the continent. In shore of New Guinea, down across the endorsed by Hancock, Antarctica at one addition, there are also specific features of South Pacific to Tierra del Fuego, across time was situated a couple of thousand Rosselli's Antarctica which correspond rea- the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and miles further north of its present location. sonably well to features on modern maps. back up to New Guinea. The boundaries of The temperate climate allowed an To the upper right of the continent is an this landmass would have enclosed the advanced civilisation to flourish there. island that looks more like a cut-off penin- entire continents of Australia and Asymmetrical accumulations of ice on the ula. To the right of this is a large inlet. Antarctica, along with the southernmost Earth's poles, coupled with the centrifugal These features bear a very strong resem- portions of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian force of the Earth's rotation, caused the blance to the Antarctic Peninsula and the oceans. entire Earth's crust to slip over the mantle Weddell Sea. When Tierra del Fuego and New Guinea were found to be islands, the north coast of Australia then became part of the coast of this supercontinent. When it appeared that Australia was probably a separate land mass, New Zealand promptly became a part of the dwindling superconti- nent. In his voyages of 1772-1775, Captain James Cook actually cir- cumnavigated Antarctica itself—with- out ever sighting land! These voyages dispelled the notion that New Zealand was part of a NEXUS ¢ 55 JUNE-JULY 1996