a large map of a Javanese pilot, containing the Cape of Good Hope, Portugal and the land of Brazil, the Red Sea and the Sea of Persia, the Clove Islands [effectively a world map, therefore], the navigation of the Chinese and the Gores [an unidentified people, thought by some to be the Japanese, or the inhabitants of Taiwan and the Ryukyu archipelago]37 with their rhumbs and direct routes followed by the ships, and the hinterland, and how the kingdoms border on each other. It seems to me, Sir, that this was the best thing I have ever seen, and Your Highness will be very pleased to see it; it had the names in Javanese writing, but I had with me a Javanese who could read and write.38
This report of the tracing by a Portuguese cartographer (Rodrigues) of a map owned and used in the Indian Ocean by a Javanese pilot – and for no less a person than the Portuguese king himself – casts a very unusual sidelight on cartographic history. The events unfold in the early sixteenth century when Portugal was at the height of its maritime power and believed to be surpassed by none in its mapmaking sciences and achievements. Yet here we have a Portuguese emissary proudly sending back to his monarch a mere tracing of a mere fragment of a map owned by a Javanese pilot as though it were a classified military document of the highest order!
Remember that this is 1512 – a full decade after the superb Cantino map was created in Portugal. Some map scholars believe that the Cantino may have greatly resembled the padrao - the top secret ‘master map’, incorporating all the latest known discoveries, as well as relevant information from ancient charts, to which the kings of Portugal had special access. At the very least we can be absolutely confident that in 1502 the Portugese monarch would have had a map at least as good as the Cantino – and probably much better. Likewise, we can be certain, with continuous feedback from ever-widening Portuguese expeditions, that the padrao of 1512 would have been far superior to the padrao of 1502.
So it is against Manuel’s privileged access to such a superb Portuguese world map as the padrao that we must weigh the enthusiasm with which his emissary Albuquerque sends him a tracing of a fragment of a Javanese pilot’s map acquired in the Indian Ocean, describing it as ‘the best thing I have ever seen’ and assuring the King that ‘Your Highness will be very pleased with it.’
Good enough to have faith in
Nothing – absolutely nothing at all – makes any sense of Albuquerque’s letter unless the Portuguese themselves had reason to believe that maps were available in the Indian Ocean, in the hands of pilots of various nationalities, that might be better than their own. And, as we’ve seen before with such rumours of sophisticated ancient maps, there is also the recognition that they will sometimes have been outdated by geological changes. Thus, in the Suma Oriental Tome Pires informs us that:
The Gujaratees were better seamen and did more navigating than the other people of these parts, and so they have larger ships and more men to man them. They have great pilots and do a great deal of navigation.39
Yet mysteriously he also tells us that it has only been since about 100 years before his own time that these Gujeratis (the countrymen of da Gama’s highly skilled pilot Guzarate), had found the route through the Strait of Malacca between Sumatra and the Malaysian peninsula.40
This is strange because (a) the Gujeratis described by Tome Pires obviously knew a thing or two about navigation; and (b) the Strait of Malacca was being used by ships long before the fifteenth century – in the thirteenth century, after all, Marco Polo had sailed through it.
How are we to explain this anomaly? ‘Could it be,’ suggests Sharif Sakr,
that the Gujeratis possessed maps (Ptolemaic or otherwise) which failed to show the Strait of Malacca, such that they had either lost knowledge of it, or such that Pires had speculated, having seen such maps, that the Strait was only recently discovered?41
In other words, could the Gujeratis have been working with maps showing Ice Age topography?
We’ve already seen that the ‘mistakes’ on otherwise technically excellent maps of India such as the Cantino of 1502 and the Reinal of 1510 can be explained this way – as the results of Portuguese borrowings from Ice Age maps somehow in the hands of Gujerati navigators. So maybe the anomalous and unexpected Gujerati ignorance of the Strait of Malacca reported by Tome Pires is part of the same syndrome? Maybe the Gujerati navigators used maps that showed the Strait as ‘firme land’ from Sumatra Malacca – as it last looked about 8000 years ago – and simply didn’t bother to find out that things had changed. Maybe the old maps were generally quite good enough, despite such faults, to justify faithful reliance? That would make a strange kind of sense of the way in which the Gujeratis are reported to have adhered for so long to a much more roundabout route than the one through the Strait that was used by their competitors.
But is there any other evidence, except in maps of the Indian Ocean, which really suggests the survival of Ice Age topography?
The legendary Hy-Brasil – a glacial reality
Report by Sharif Sakr, 10 March 2001
Irish folklore tells of a small but significant island called Hy-Brasil, lying in the Atlantic Ocean not too far off the western coast of Ireland. The tale is at least as old as AD 1110, which is the date of the first written record of it (The Voyage of Maeldiun). The tale almost certainly existed prior to this, for an unknown length of time, as an oral record. Gaelic legends appear to hold that the land was lost to the ocean, but makes a brief reappearance once every seven years, such that it can be seen from the Irish mainland if one is standing in the right place.
Happily for us the legend of Hy-Brasil made its way on to the portolan charts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These graphic representations give a far more detailed and precise insight than verbal or written traditions ever could into what was believed about the size and location of the island.
The first recorded depiction of Hy-Brasil in a map is in the Dulcert portolan of 1325 or 1330. It appears again on Dulcert’s 1339 portolan-opposite. Although faint, it should be obvious that the map is generally very accurate. It even shows the tiny lump of rock known as Rockall, which was occupied by Greenpeace recently as part of a demonstration against oil-drilling in the area. Note, however, that the tiny land of Rockall is somewhat enlarged on the Dulcert map.
There are very similar depictions of the legendary island of Hy-Brasil on many other portolan charts, which probably represent copies (or copies of copies) of some original (perhaps the Dulcert, but probably some older portolan chart).
Below is part of the Catalan Atlas of 1375. Its representation of the British Isles is typical of all portolans, including the Dulcert, and, in addition to the legendary Hy-Brasil, its characteristic errors include a dry Donegal Bay on the north-west corner of Ireland.
The next map, overleaf, comes from the Ptolemaeus Argentinae collection of 1513, which represents a successful hybridization of the Ptolemaic and portolan traditions.
Hy-Brasil (circled) as shown on the Dulcert portolan, AD 1339.
Can it be coincidence that there is a relatively shallow submerged bank – it is marked on modern sea-charts as the Porcupine Bank – in exactly the same place as the legendary island shown on all these ancient maps?
Glenn Milne is currently unable to produce reliable inundation maps of this region with the required zoom and detail, partly because the region is so close to the ancient British ice-sheet – the exact behaviour of which has not yet been fully incorporated into the model. However, for our purposes bathymetrical maps will serve just as well. The one overleaf is state-of-the-art, with a resolution of 2 minutes. Depth can be gauged through the shading as well as by the contour line which I have placed at a depth of 55 metres beneath today’s sea-level.
Hy-Brasil as shown on the Catalan Atlas of AD 1375.
The light-shaded Porcupine Bank can easily be seen directly west of Ireland, in exactly the same place, and roughly the same size, as the legendary Hy-Brasil on the portolan charts. The entire bank lies between 40 and 200 metres beneath the surf
ace, and most of it (probably more than 600 square kilometres) would have been exposed at the Last Glacial Maximum, 21,000 years ago.
The correlation between Porcupine Bank and Hy-Brasil on the portolans is, in my view, too close to be coincidental. Even Robert Fuson, Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of South Florida, is convinced that Hy-Brasil is based on real observation. But rather than consider an Ice Age origin for the legend, he suggests it is based on some unknown but recent tectonic event. But I do not think it is necessary to speculate about recent tectonic cataclysms, or even to go all the way back to the LGM, in order to find a good correlation between past geography and the portolans. The black contour line is set at 55 metres below current sea-level and reveals that there would have been a significant island, with an area of perhaps 100 square kilometres, in the location of the legendary Hy-Brasil even in the later stages of the glacial meltdown -around 12,000 years ago.
Hy-Brasil as shown on the Ptolemaeus Argentinae of AD 1513.
Other features of the portolans correlate better with Ireland as it looked at this later period than with the geography at the Last Glacial Maximum. The island of Rockall was enlarged, such that it had roughly the same size as shown in the Dulcert and Argentinae maps. (Note that there would probably also have been two much smaller islands in the vicinity of Rockall, which are not shown on the portolans.) Also as shown on the maps, the Bay of Donegal, at the north-west shoulder of Northern Ireland, would have been dry land and there would have been a large island immediately off this coast. The many islands that today lie off the west coast of Ireland and between Northern Ireland and Scotland would have been incorporated into the Irish and Scottish mainlands respectively, but would have been replaced by other small islands further to the west which are now submerged but which are in keeping with the islands shown on the old maps. The same goes for the Isle of Man, which would have been replaced by a similar-sized island slightly further to the south. The Outer Hebrides would have been a single massive landmass, as represented on the Dulcert portolan (although this map has the island slightly too far south and east).
Bathymetric map of Ireland, with grey contour line at depth of 55 metres.
41. The towering ruins of Gigantija, Malta, thought to be the oldest free-standing temple in the world.
42. Ghar Dalam cave, Malta – site of an extraordinary archaeological controversy.
43. The Hypogeum, Malta.
44. Surviving part of monumental ‘Goddess’ figure from Tarxien temple, Malta.
45. ‘Sleeping Lady’, Malta.
46. Five of the six skulls that have survived from the remains of more than 7000 people found in the Hypogeum, Malta.
47. The Mnajdra temple complex, Malta, from the air.
48. Mnajdra: summer solstice light effect.
49. Mnajdra with the island of Filfla in the background.
50. Withered megaliths of Hagar Qim temple, Malta.
51. Entrance to Hagar Qim, Malta.
52. The author, left, with Chris Agius, Malta.
53. The author, right, with Anton Mifsud, seated in ancient cart-ruts, Malta.
54. The author diving on submerged cart-ruts, Malta. The submerged ruts are larger and deeper than their counterparts on land.
55. Cart-ruts at ‘Clapham Junction’, Malta.
56. Submerged cart-ruts, Malta.
57. Submerged channel and archway, Malta.
58. Underwater wall with battlement, Taiwan.
59. Exposed masonry blocks in the Taiwan underwater wall.
60. Giant megaliths of the Bimini Road.
The Antilia mystery
Hy-Brasil is by no means the only mysterious island looking for a home in ancient maps of the Atlantic Ocean. Even stranger, as we shall see in the next chapter, are two other islands – the fabulous Antilia and Satanaze – which beckon like the Holy Grail. They first appear on an anonymous portolan chart of 1424, and subsequently on many other maps of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Yet the islands themselves have never been found.
Is this because they never existed? Or might there be a better explanation?
23 / Looking for the Lost on the Road to Nowhere
There lies in the Ocean an island which is called The Lost. In Charm and all kinds of fertility it far surpasses every other land, but it is unknown to men. Now and again it may be found by chance; but if one seeks it, it cannot be found, and therefore it is called The Lost.
Honorius of Autun, De Imagine Mundi, about AD 11301
Give me some ships and I will find a new world for you.
Christopher Columbus, about AD 14802
For some reason that has never been explained properly there was, for a very long while before the time of Christopher Columbus, a firm and entirely correct belief amongst mariners in ancient Europe and around the Mediterranean that vast lands and extraordinary islands awaited discovery and colonization somewhere to the west across the wastes of the Atlantic Ocean. The belief was expressed in legends and traditions, some of which have been preserved down to modern times, and also in graphic form on maps and nautical charts.
The mystery of Hy-Brasil, introduced in the last chapter, is part of this very thorny unsolved problem of anachronistic geographical knowledge and, at the same time, a microcosm of the whole issue:
Ancient references to Hy-Brasil exist both in legendary and traditional oral and written sources and in maps dating back as far as the fourteenth century – for example the Dulcert portolan.
Belief in the existence of Hy-Brasil – i.e. physically, in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere – was strong enough to have inspired expeditions to find it. Records have survived of two such expeditions, the first led by a certain John Lloyd, that were sent out from the port of Bristol in the west of England in AD 1480.3
The location given to the ‘legendary’ island of Hy-Brasil by medieval mapmakers correlates strongly and closely with the location of the submerged Porcupine Bank – which was unknown in medieval times but parts of which, as we’ve seen, would have been exposed as an island at the end of the Ice Age.
The trouble with Hy-Brasil
If it were simply a matter of an old legend of a lost Atlantic island somewhere to the west of Ireland, and modern bathymetry showing a shallowly submerged bank in roughly the same vicinity, the most probable explanation would be coincidence. The appearance of Hy-Brasil on maps, however, cannot be accounted for so easily. Scholars universally conclude that these representations are no more than imaginative graphic expressions of pre-existing written and oral traditions. The consensus view is that medieval cartographers referred to many sources in constructing their maps, including legends. Since Hy-Brasil is obviously a ‘legendary’ island, it follows that the shape and location given to it on the maps must have come from legendary sources. But if the cartographer who placed Hy-Brasil on the Dulcert portolan were working only from legends he would have been free to draw it anywhere to the west of Ireland – giving him wide scope. What, therefore, must be the odds against his having imagined an island that is not only approximately the right size to match the antediluvian Porcupine Bank but that is also placed in exactly the spot on the map where the Porcupine Bank would have been exposed at the end of the Ice Age?
It could all be the result of some sort of extraordinary coincidence, I admit. Or it could be that the cartographer worked from a source map – like the hypothetical source maps behind the Cantino and Reinal world portolans – that somehow depicted genuine Ice Age topography and coastlines?
As we’ve seen in previous chapters, it is not unreasonable to suppose that maps belonging to the tradition of Marinus of Tyre could have been preserved in pockets in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere alongside the better known maps of Claudius Ptolemy. Nor is it impossible, as Arab eye-witnesses as late as the tenth century attest, that the original maps of the ‘Tyrian sea-fish’ might have been superior to those of Ptolemy (despite Ptolemy’s own propaganda to the contrary). It is not wild speculation on my p
art, but the argument of the distinguished historian of cartography A. E. Nordenskiold, that the preserved maps of Marinus may have formed the original corpus out of which emerged the astonishingly sophisticated portolan tradition in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. And it is a fact that the earliest representations of Hy-Brasil – Dulcert, Benincasa and many others – all appear on portolan charts.
There will be ways for scholars to underplay the significance of this, I’m sure. But what Hy-Brasil looks like to me is evidence not only for the survival of an ancient non-Ptolemaic mapmaking tradition but also for the preservation within the tradition of accurate records of Ice Age topography and coastlines. That in turn more or less automatically makes the tradition itself extremely ancient; logically it must be at least as old as the Ice Age features it represents. Moreover, despite its great antiquity, it is a mark of the respect accorded to the general accuracy and reliability of this tradition by mariners down the ages that expeditions to find Hy-Brasil – and other ‘ghosts’ of Ice Age topography – were still being launched as late as the fifteenth century. Though there seems to have been an inkling that cataclysmic changes and floods had intervened, as we saw in the last chapter, I think it is unlikely that the seafarers who set out from Bristol in 1480 to search for Hy-Brasil could have imagined that the island given that name on their portolan charts had been swallowed up by the sea more than 11,000 years previously.
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