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Forged maps (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Jorn



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I have been looking at old maps lately, and I am starting to think that many of the oldest ones are fakes.

Let's not start with the oldest ones, but start with:
Ortelius was born in the city of Antwerp, which was then in the Habsburg ruled Seventeen Provinces. The Orthellius family were originally from Augsburg, a Free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire. From 1535, the family, had fallen under suspicion of Protestantism. Following the death of Ortelius' father, his uncle Jacobus van Meteren returned from religious exile in England to take care of Ortelius. Abraham remained close to his cousin Emanuel van Meteren who would later move to London.[1] In 1575 he was appointed geographer to the king of Spain, Philip II, on the recommendation of Arias Montanus, who vouched for his orthodoxy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Ortelius

Here is a small image of his map:


A link to a big map:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/OrteliusWorldMap1570.jpg

Are we really to believe that somebody Dutch in 1570 did not know what the coast of Scandinavia looked like, but knew more or less the rest of the world?

If that wasn't enough, he placed Flanders, the place where he was born as an island in the Atlantic ocean. Vlaenderen as it is called on the map. Frisia is also an island in the Atlantic.

The question then becomes why was it forged? My guess is that it has something to do with the reformation, but I don't know. Perhaps somebody did it in the 18th century just for money?

Is "Arias Montanus" a pun on a mirage, like an Air Mountain, something that can be seen, but isn't there in reality?
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Ishmael


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Jorn wrote:
I have been looking at old maps lately, and I am starting to think that many of the oldest ones are fakes.


Fomenko's discussion of maps is a tour de force. The rationale he employs I thought good enough to form the basis of a new principle of Applied Epistemology:

Nothing ever gets worse.

That is, absent convincing evidence to the contrary, we must assume that lower quality items are the antecedents of higher quality items. When we employ this principle to maps and to artwork, the results are stunning---and convincing.

Note that, in the map you cite, Baja California is shown correctly as a peninsula, yet most maps of the time and for a hundred years to follow, would show California as an Island. This too suggests this map is an anachronism from a later time.
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Mick Harper
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I find it difficult to believe that anybody would take this ferociously accurate map to be of sixteenth century vintage. We ought perhaps to distinguish between art collectors and historians since in theory both should be prey to different kinds of error. Though hardly at this epic scale.
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Jorn



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Ishmael wrote:

Nothing ever gets worse.

That is, absent convincing evidence to the contrary, we must assume that lower quality items are the antecedents of higher quality items. When we employ this principle to maps and to artwork, the results are stunning---and convincing.

Note that, in the map you cite, Baja California is shown correctly as a peninsula, yet most maps of the time and for a hundred years to follow, would show California as an Island. This too suggests this map is an anachronism from a later time.


One thing I have noticed gets worse, was empirical knowledge got worse, when Latin became the language for medicine. In the 18'th century you could still find many that looked down on empiricism as something primitive.

Just one example: Scurvy.

I just read today in a local history book in Norwegian, about how the the first Medicus they employed in Trondheim, was shocked at how the locals used Cloud-berries to treat scurvy.

Here is a map that I think is real:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Waldseemuller

Large version:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/
Carta_itineraria_europae_1520_waldseemueller_watermarked.jpg

I am becoming more and more sure that the Roman Empire did not understand the 4 Cardinal directions, North, South, East and West, and that they were totally land based, and that they did not understand that the world was round.

Let me just note for now that the map itself is too accurate for the Romans to have drawn the coastline themselves, but the rest seems to have been done by somebody without any real geographical knowledge or sense of absolute cardinal directions. As the map is turned 90 deg from reality, you probably got all the strange mountain ranges, so that the distances became correct.

If you look on the bottom middle figure, you have a lousy compass/sundial, where Septen trio is pointing in a easterm direction. In non roman terms, that sundial kind of says that they took sunrise as "east" and "dawn" as west, and mid day as noon, Accurate enough if you are only going by road, river or coastline. I haven't completely figured out how they saw their world, but they seem to ha thought that they put it the correct way.

If you look at the left side you find the
MEMBRAS*RO*IMPERI with the seven electors, and their coat of arms.

On the right side you find ARMAS*REGNOS*HISPANI*

Before I continue, this kind of looks like the shitty Latin you find on what looks like the oldest Latin inscriptions.

On the top of the map, you find a coat of arms with two keys, where it says members of the roman heresy, and you basically find the countries that later went through the reformation. I think this is map is pre-reformation though, so that would make them Greek Orthodox perhaps.

That Norway and Sweden are called Indicans is not something a forger would have done.

I think the reason this map survived, was that it was some kind of present to a German Noble, and that by the time it was found again, nobody schooled in Latin doubted antiquity existed.

To sum up, I don't think this map looks like something you would forge.
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Mick Harper
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I have jiggled an URL to prevent too much width. Paste the whole URL if you want the big map.
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Jorn



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Mick Harper wrote:
I find it difficult to believe that anybody would take this ferociously accurate map to be of sixteenth century vintage. We ought perhaps to distinguish between art collectors and historians since in theory both should be prey to different kinds of error. Though hardly at this epic scale.


Why don't you try to look if somebody thinks it is fake? I could not find any.

I can agree that most of these were probably faked to make money, but since there are many maps with the same pattern of mistakes, I don't think all of them were faked in order to make money.

I think they were faked because either the Protestants or the Catholics wanted to deceive.

It is standard practice for fishermen in Norway to lie about their fishing grounds, so that they could keep them to themselves, and if you suspected that they had caught on to you, you could try to flood the market with almost correct information, so I kind of expect traders and countries to do so as well.
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Mick Harper
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Why don't you try to look if somebody thinks it is fake? I could not find any.


I always assume I/we are the first to cotton on to anything. If you browse around you will find plenty of my forgery theories elsewhere on this site but I have bigger fish to fry presently, on the Tin Exporting in Ancient Britain thread, which I notice you have not commented on. Can you see it? Some people can't for some obscure software reason.
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Jorn



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Mick Harper wrote:
Can you see it? Some people can't for some obscure software reason.

I Can't see it. I will try another browser.

edit. I have tried, still can't see it.

Perhaps the database only refreshes the menus once in an hour or something?

I have noticed that I find your theories. I even found my Viking-ship theory yesterday,
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Mick Harper
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I have sent you a private message. Any other members having the same problem should let me know. Non-members cannot access this area.
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Jorn



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Mick Harper wrote:
I have sent you a private message. Any other members having the same problem should let me know. Non-members cannot access this area.


I can see them with now.
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Jorn



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I have tried to look some more at old maps, they go from bad to far too good too quickly, but it is very hard to see where the backdating of old maps began.

As I have mentioned, you don't need realistic maps to go over land, up and down rivers, or to jump along the coast. You just need something that works.

the Romans used Itenaries

An itinerarium (plural: itineraria) was an Ancient Roman road map in the form of a listing of cities, villages (vici) and other stops, with the intervening distances. One surviving example is the Peutinger Table (Tabula Peutingeriana); another is the Antonine Itinerary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itinerarium


And the Vikings used daymarks, landmarks, descriptions, together with North, South, East, West, to find their way. These were probably written with runes on twigs, until paper became cheap enough so that fishers and traders could write books. There are thousands of these books that exists today, as they were passed down from father to son.

Both of the systems worked so good, that one did not really need maps until the maps were so good that they actually were an improvement. As for the Romans, only a few survive. Why? Has this something to do with the church having to be infallible, so that they have a hard time admitting that they ever did anything that can be viewed as primitive?

When the Fishers and Traders in Scandinavia got maps, at least very many, did not throw away the skull-books, but seem to have taken pride in that their ancestors managed quite well without maps.

The question is then, who needed maps?

Large cities is one answer, but then you don't really need cardinal directions.



Link to large image:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/JBAM_068.JPG

This image is a good clue as to who needed accurate maps. Along the coast from Belgium to Denmark, there are very few natural daymarks, and the landscape is constantly changing, especially after storm floods. These people seem to have started with floating barrels and and high towers and such artificial daymarks first, so they were willing to use money in order to reduce risk.

These first maps were most likely state secrets of the Hanseatic league, so they would not have been published.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League

Another thing I find interesting is that the double map showing the submerged have two dates.
oldest Anno J 240.

The date from a reign of a king, would work quite well for a city, kingdom or an empire. Not so for the Hanseatic league, as they were subjugated to many rulers. Using an anno Jesus number would thus solve this. I have read enough old low German to understand that they really needed the letters J and W, so it is probably they that came up with them.

I don't rule out Monks and Latin Scholars being ignorant enough to read anno J100 as anno 1100, but it could also be intentional.
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Ishmael


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Jorn wrote:
One thing I have noticed gets worse, was empirical knowledge got worse, when Latin became the language for medicine. In the 18'th century you could still find many that looked down on empiricism as something primitive.


I rather think that, during the 18th century, "empiricism" was emergent and its critics merely characterized it as primitive.
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Ishmael


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Jorn wrote:
...the map is turned 90 deg from reality....


....from reality?

Aren't these things relative?

Fomenko says that maps like these are drawn from the perspective of a sailor headed out from the north coast into the Mediterranean. The map is drawn relative a standard "facing" direction.
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Ishmael


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Jorn wrote:
I Can't see it. I will try another browser.


Special permission is required to view the book-writing section.
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Ishmael


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Jorn wrote:
The question is then, who needed maps?


Maps are the property deeds of states.

And this is why so many were forged.
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