[Tea on tuesday]

Originally Posted by SprintFun

Just curious T, since you apparently have intimate knowledge with the subject matter, how are there maps which exist of Antarctica from before the 16th century but it wasn't believed to be discovered before the early 1800s.

I assume Hancock refers to the piri reis map---I don't have fingerprints but a couple of his other books. The map was a compilation of about 20 earlier, mostly Portuguese, maps (the map maker denotes as such on the maps). Keep in mind this map was made over a 100 years before methods for determining not just latitude but longitude had developed---so they don't really reflect how maps look today. Anyways, the Portuguese typically drew South America bending sharply towards the east below Brazil, which is exactly what the piri reis map shows.

Regardless, you really have to think that the claims that the southern landmass is an accurate description of Antarctica are more than just a little whack when the map makers have Antarctica connected to Brazil.

There are better maps from around the same period that actually do show a southern landmass around about where antarctica should be, but not because anyone had actually seen it. Ptolemaic tradition dictated that there must be a large as yet undiscovered continent in the southern hemisphere to properly balance the landmasses of the northern and southern hemispheres.

Originally Posted by SprintFun

Compound the fact that these maps detail the landmass underneath a mile of ice, which wasn't even known what it looks like up until recently.

Yeah, but it doesn't at all. It actually looks like a somewhat decent representation of the coast of Argentina though.

Originally Posted by SprintFun

So far he hasn't used much of the process you described (though as I said I'm halfway through the book). Its been very general talk of contradictions throughout what is commonly thought but yet how they dont equate in common sense.

Most of those contradictions arise because of Hancock's laughably poor understanding of the actual history at work.

Originally Posted by SprintFun

His broad claim seems to be that there was a unknown "super" civilization which contributed to everybody across the world...I don't think I follow him to that but its definitely intriguing food for thought.

That's his shtick. It might be intriguing food for thought, but is it true and can it be verified? (It isn't and it can't.)

There's actually a really really really good book (actually several volumes of books) that looks at historical maps and puts them in context though the name escapes me at the moment.

Oh, here's the piri reis map...I don't know if Hancock has it in that book.

edit: That red island north of Brazil is actually the Yucatan peninsula (I'm pretty sure anyways---peninsulas often have the blocky island shape and it looks eerily similar to early European maps of the Korean peninsula---and the coast resembles the Mexican coast line). So, there's a contradiction that violates common sense. Turkish map makers could correctly draw the Antarctica underneath the ice, but they managed to connect it Brazil and can't properly draw the Mexican coastline with any degree of accuracy.