Did The Dark Ages Exist? (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Wile E. Coyote]

One of the more interesting things I stumbled across as I studied these circumnavigations was their discovery of giants....

I wish I had discovered this but its a Hat Tip to Robert Silverberg.

The most detailed chronicler of Magellans voyage is Pigafetta.

Pigafetta was not responsible for the official log, but he provides a lot of colour.... and is consistently quoted by the biographers.

Its June 1520, the explorers are traveling in high latitudes (no longitude at that time, of course, they are dead reckoning) along the eastern coast of what is now called South America...From the ship they catch sight of a strange figure of colossal size 'singing and dancing on the sand.'

Magellan, always up for a challenge sent some men ashore to inspect him. 'This man', we are told, 'was so tall that our heads hardly came up to his belt. He was well formed; his face was broad and colored with red, excepting that his eyes were surrounded with yellow'.

Pigafetta estimated his height at about eight feet. Magellan gave him some bells, a comb, and a pair of glass beads. This encouraged other giants to appear--eventually eighteen in all, including some females, also gigantic in size. Magellan captured several to take back to Spain as curiosities, but according to the account they died soon afterward aboard his ships......

Which is a pity.

But there again there were only 18 survivors and 1 ship from the entire voyage.

At the time mysteriously the circumnavigation did not register in a big way.

NOPE what really counted were the GIANTS.....

Pigafetta's account of the giants, whom Magellan called patagones, (Patagonian Giants) meaning 'big feet,' caused a great sensation in Europe... and this mania now starts to take off......

Sir Farncis Drake spots em in 1758, on his circumnavigation, but they have shrunk to seven and half feet.

Pedro Sarmiento, claimed to see giants in the same area in 1580.

Anthony Knyvet, who accompanied the circumnavigator Thomas Cavendish in 1592, wrote of two Patagonians twelve feet tall, and a boy whose height was over nine feet. (cripes!)

Willem Schouten and JacobLe Maire, two Dutch circumnavigators, touched down in Patagonia in 1615 and found some graves made of heaped stones, one of which they opened and saw within it 'the bones of human beings ten and eleven feet in stature'. (damn)

Giant spotting carries on for hundreds of years.....

See Robert Silverberg http://www.asimovs.com/2011_12/ref.shtml

Contemporary evidence shows Patagonians of normal height.......

NEXT.

Why is it our explorers were good at finding giants yet they were incredibly unlucky at coming across islands.....

[Hatty]

Yes, very interesting particularly as there are so many megalithic sites connected with the Polynesians. Megaliths and giants seem to go hand in hand. Do you think the sailors' accounts were coloured by existing native legends?

Reminded me of Cornish giants, whose legends were written up by a nineteenth-century scientist and antiquarian, Robert Hunt, studying in Falmouth, Cornwall. Many celebrated English sailors, including Drake of course, hailed from Devon and Cornwall.

Interestingly, Magellan also had a similar heritage. He was from Sabrosa in Portugal which, judging by Wiki, is prime Megalithic territory:

Although the municipality was established on 6 November 1836, the history of the region extends back to vestiges from different tribes and groups that lived in area, remoting to the pre-historic period.[1] During this period ancient Neolithic tribes constructed dolmen funerary structures, such as the Mamoa 1 de Madorras in the Serra da Padrela (Arcã), a monumental, yet well-preserved tomb.

[Ishmael]

I've got a lot more to add to this yet. Been too busy.

[Wile E. Coyote]

As Magellan sails furrther east after rounding the cape, he would have been faced by the central Pacific islands, a horseshoe of fifty-eight coral atolls and reef islands, commonly divided into five groups--the Gilberts (16), Ellice (9), Tokelau (4), Phoenix (8) and Line (11)--with 4 unattached outliers.

Magellan did not know they were there.

Something interesting now occurs, which orthodoxy puts down to chance.

Magellan manages to avoid every one of the major islands along which he threaded his route.

For three months and twenty days his three ships traverse the Pacific (so-called peaceful ocean so presumably visibility is ok) yet they sight only two small and uninhabited islands, on which they found nothing but 'birds and trees'.

Magellan names these the Unfortunate Islands. We are still not sure which islands he discovered.

So the voyage came across rare Giants but winds through swathes of important islands.......which remained unmapped...

[Ishmael]

I began the discussion of Francis Drake by mentioning the odd concordance in the biographies of all three most-famous globe-navigators: Two were killed by Pacific-Islanders (Magellan and Cook) while the other (Drake) was attacked and 'nearly-killed' by Pacific Islanders.

This is not the full extent of the overlap between these persons.

Magellan encountered many adventures and challenges on his voyage around the world. Among these was a mutiny that occurred just before he entered the Pacific Ocean. He executed the mutineers in Puerto San Julian.

20 years later, the same thing happens to Francis Drake. In his case, the sole mutineer is executed in Puerto San Julian. Francis even notes the presence of the skeletal remains of Magellan's mutineers.

(Side note: How could there be but one mutineer?)

We should not fail to note that the most famous mutiny in all of history occurred during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe. That mutiny took place in the Pacific Ocean aboard the H.M.S. Bounty. The captain of the Bounty, William Bligh, surprised his crew with his intent to sail around the world, in imitation of his hero, Captain Cook. It was this change of plans that forced the hand of the ship's first officer. The crew rebelled, refusing to sail around the Earth.

(Note that the crews of Columbus' ships also came close to mutiny when he set sail over the 'round earth' for fear of their falling off its edge!)

Now Captain Cook's men never did rebel against him and this final voyage was cut short when he was killed by pacific islanders. However, on board Cook's ship was a very famous officer -- he was present there when Cook died. His name; William Bligh.

[Mick Harper]

There has always been some confusion about who actually made the first circumnavigation. It is agreed that it wasn't Magellan since he died before he got home. As I recall the story goes that Portugal singled out some fairly obscure dude for the honour.

It goes without saying that Portugal/Spain had a vested interest in saying one of their ships (or one of their nationals) did it even if, in actual fact, the boat(s) sent out never made it back. And, unlike being the first on the moon, the story is definitely 'containable'.

[Mick Harper]

I suppose historiography would rule out the theory that Portugal/ Spain (by this time one country) would invent the Magellan story when the English (with whom they were both at war) put out the Drake story.

Obviously it remains a possibility that Drake's voyage was made up and hence the compelling detail eg snow on their boots. Whoops! I mean '...and would you Adam-and-Eve it, Magellan's mutineers were right next door!"

[Mick Harper]

The fact that it is really difficult to tell whether this was a Portuguese expedition with Spanish input or vice versa points to it being made up (if it was!) after 1580 when there was a need to combine the two countries' naval traditions (as well as their colonies).

Ishmael might take it as not coincidental that the union of Spain and Portugal took place between 1578 (death of Sebastian I of Portugal) and 1580 (accession of Phillip II of Spain) whereas Drake's circumnavigation took place between 1577 and 1580.

[Ishmael]

It almost sounds to me as though someone in Spain who could barely read English got a copy of the tale of Bligh and Cook, conflated the two men mistakenly or intentionally, and repackaged the story with a Spanish hero named Magellan (who might have been a real Spanish captain of some renown).

The tale of Magellan was later copied by someone in England and added to the biography of a character named Drake (but that name likely did not belong to any real person).

We must remember that, in these days, the existence of duplicate tales in different countries, written in different languages, would pose no problem. Few could read and fewer still could read more than one language. Any country could freely copy the propaganda of another without fear of raising eyebrows.

[Ishmael]

[Ishmael]

And Francis Draco = Francis Devil!

[Ishmael]

Drake/Draco = Dragon = Leviathan, the fire-breathing dragon of the sea, associated with the constellation Draco: A serpent so large, according to Jewish legend, that it "encompassed the whole earth".

Sir Francis Drake "encompassed the whole Earth."

[Wile E. Coyote]

The architect of all this (the brains, the organisation) was Admiral Sir John Hawkins, Drakes cousin. Confidant to the Queen. (Johns father was confidant to Henry VIII).

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

Wiley has it figured.............


Hawkins=Aquinas

[Hatty]

[Ishmael]

Well my god but has no one noticed that "Leviathan" and "The Dragon" (Drake) are all pseudonyms for the Devil?

There are clearly then two "Francis" forces of some esoteric significance that have been somehow converted into historical personages: One is Francis the Saviour and the other is Francis the Serpent.

I wonder if it might not simply be east and west that are referenced -- with the serpent in the east and the saviour in the west. Though north and south would seem more intuitive, with Draco in the north and, in the south, the Southern Cross.

Note this "aboriginal legend" of the Southern Cross bears some resemblance to the legends of Leviathan: A great fish is killed and consumed to erect the cross in the sky, whereas, in Christian mythology, Leviathan is to be slain by Christ at the end-of-days and his flesh consumed by the saints.