Page 28 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

The Mercator map, showing Antarctica’s mountains and
rivers covered by ice.
Is it safe, or reasonable, for example, for us to continue to ignore the
historical implications of some of the maps made by the sixteenth-
century’s most famous cartographer: Gerard Kremer, otherwise known as
Mercator? Best remembered for the Mercator projection, still used on
most world maps today, this enigmatic individual (who paid an
unexplained visit to the Great Pyramid of Egypt in 1563 ) was reportedly
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‘indefatigable in searching out ... the learning of long ago’, and spent
many years diligently accumulating a vast and eclectic reference library of
ancient source maps.
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Significantly, Mercator included the Oronteus Finaeus map in his Atlas
of 1569 and also depicted the Antarctic on several he himself drew in the
same year. Identifiable parts of the then undiscovered southern continent
on these maps are Cape Dart and Cape Herlacher in Marie Byrd Land, the
Amundsen Sea, Thurston Island in Ellsworth Land, the Fletcher Islands in
the Bellinghausen Sea, Alexander I Island, the Antarctic (Palmer)
Peninsula, the Weddell Sea, Cape Norvegia, the Regula Range in Queen
Maud Land (as islands), the Muhlig-Hoffman Mountains (as islands), the
Prince Harald Coast, the Shirase Glacier as an estuary on Prince Harald
Coast, Padda Island in Lutzow-Holm Bay, and the Prince Olaf Coast in
Enderby Land. ‘In some cases these features are more distinctly
recognisable than on the Oronteus Finaeus Map,’ observed Hapgood,
‘and it seems clear, in general, that Mercator had at his disposal source

He left his graffito there. See Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, Harper &
10
Row Publishers, New York, p. 38, 285.
11 Maps, p. 102.

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