Page 37 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Chapter 3

Fingerprints of a Lost Science

We saw that the Mercator World Map of 1569 included an accurate
portrayal of the coasts of Antarctica as they would have looked thousands
of years ago when they were free of ice. Interestingly enough, this same
map is considerably less accurate in its portrayal of another region, the
west coast of South America, than an earlier (1538) map also drawn by
Mercator.
1
The reason for this appears to be that the sixteenth-century geographer
based the earlier map on the ancient sources which we know he had at
his disposal, whereas for the later map he relied upon the observations
and measurements of the first Spanish explorers of western South
America. Since those explorers had supposedly brought the latest
information back to Europe, Mercator can hardly be blamed for following
them. In so doing the accuracy of his work declined: instruments capable
of finding longitude did not exist in 1569, but appear to have been used
to prepare the ancient source documents Mercator consulted to produce
his 1538 map.
2

The mysteries of longitude

Let us consider the problem of longitude, defined as the distance in
degrees east or west of the prime meridian. The current internationally
accepted prime meridian is an imaginary curve drawn from the North Pole
to the South Pole passing through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich,
London. Greenwich therefore stands at o° longitude while New York, for
example, stands at around 74° west, and Canberra, Australia, at roughly
150° east.

1 Maps, p. 107.
2 Ibid.

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