Page 40 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

from nowhere.’
10
Indeed, with their accurate longitudes, Cook’s Pacific maps must be
ranked among the very first examples of the precise cartography of our
modern era. They remind us, moreover, that the making of really good
maps requires at least three key ingredients: great journeys of discovery;
first-class mathematical and cartographic skills; sophisticated
chronometers.
It was not until Harrison’s chronometer became generally available in
the 1770s that the third of these preconditions was fulfilled. This brilliant
invention made it possible for cartographers to fix longitude precisely,
something that the Sumerians, the Ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and the
Romans, and indeed all other known civilizations before the eighteenth
century were supposedly unable to do. It is therefore surprising and
unsettling to come across vastly older maps which give latitudes and
longitudes with modern precision.

Precision instruments

These inexplicably precise latitudes and longitudes are found in the same
general category of documents that contain the advanced geographical
knowledge I have outlined.
The Piri Reis Map of 1513, for example, places South America and
Africa in the correct relative longitudes, theoretically an impossible feat
11
for the science of the time. But Piri Reis was candid in admitting that his
map was based on far earlier sources. Could it have been from one of
these sources that he derived his accurate longitudes?
Also of great interest is the so-called ‘Dulcert Portulano’ of AD 1339
which focuses on Europe and North Africa. Here latitude is perfect across
huge distances and the total longitude of the Mediterranean and Black
Seas is correct to within half a degree.
12
Professor Hapgood comments that the maker of the original source
from which the Dulcert Portulano was copied had ‘achieved highly
scientific accuracy in finding the ratio of latitude to longitude. He could
only have done this if he had precise information on the relative
longitudes of a great many places scattered all the way from Galway in
Ireland to the eastern bend of the Don in Russia.’
13
The Zeno Map of AD 1380 is another enigma. Covering a vast area of
14
the north as far as Greenland, it locates a great many widely scattered
places at latitudes and longitudes which are ‘amazingly correct’. It is
15

10 Ibid.
11 Maps, pp. 1, 41.
12 Ibid., p. 116.
Ibid.
13
14 Ibid., pp. 149-58.
15 Ibid, p. 152.

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