The Lost Empire of Atlantis

by Gavin Menzies

  At night they steer by the stars. At sunset they note the star on the western horizon nearest west and steer towards it. When that sets they pick another star on the horizon nearest to where the sun set and so on until morning, when they revert to using the sun. They duly hit the coast at Tunis, fill up with fresh water, fruit and food and sail on. When they think they are near the Pillars of Hercules they adjust their latitude to that of the Pillars by using the pole star. So far so good: they know their latitude, and they are in the Atlantic.

  During this period, steering due west on the same latitude, they would have been able to check the height of the sun each midday at the same latitude – they could cross-check their latitude with Kochab. They would have noticed that the sun rose higher in the sky each midday towards summer, reaching its maximum height on midsummer’s day. They would have noted that a simple correction (declination) could be applied each day to the sun’s maximum measured height at midday (meridian altitude) to give latitude using this equation: Latitude = 90 ± Declination.

  They could also have learned how to make these calculations at Nabta, or other stone observatories. After they had recorded the daily declination, they would have been able to use the sun to calculate latitude each day if Kochab was not visible – i.e. south of the equator. They probably ran a sweepstake; a friendly bet on how far they would travel each day.

  When in the Atlantic, they turn southwest for the Canaries, where the ‘conveyor belt’ of the elliptical Atlantic current takes over, carrying them first southwestwards to the Cape Verde Islands, then westwards to the Caribbean. It is worth noting that cotton with chromosomes unique to North America has been found in the Cape Verde Islands. The Minoans record the time the voyage has taken so far. After resting and provisioning, the current carries them on their way northwest through the Caribbean into the Gulf of Mexico. All the time, the pole star is becoming higher in the sky. As soon as it reaches the latitude of the south tip of Florida they know they must head due west to reach the Mississippi.

  They then use ‘signposts’ set up in earlier voyages to guide them to the rich ores of Lake Superior. They steer north up the Mississippi or west up the St Lawrence River, using these dolmen stone sign-posts.

  On the return journey they again use the ‘conveyor belt’. This time it takes them across the Atlantic to the Outer Hebrides (Lewis) and the Orkney Islands, where their compatriots have erected ‘observatories’ of stone circles, as at Stonehenge. They then follow what are now known as the English, French and Spanish coasts, with the current. Now the pole star is sinking lower in the heavens. When it reaches the latitude of the Pillars of Hercules, they know they must head due east, which they do. On entering the Mediterranean they retrace their journey to Crete, reversing their outward bound passage until they reach their joyous point of return.

  Using latitude only would not have told them how far – in other words, for how many days – they needed to travel. For this they needed to be able to calculate longitude. As Charles II and the first British astronomer royal, the Revd John Flamsteed, knew, navigation is an art as much as it is a science. That art was so elusive that it became an international obsession in 18th-century Europe. In England, the struggle to perfect navigation became a longstanding joke: to be ‘discovering the longitude’ meant basically attempting the impossible.4

  MINOAN CALCULATION OF LONGITUDE

  Any heavenly event such as (i) an eclipse of the sun or the moon (ii) the rising and setting times of the planets (iii) the times when planets pass in front of the stars, sun or moon or (iv) the stars’ rising and setting times, can be used to determine longitude, provided the observers have accurate star tables and an accurate clock. This method is described in my book 1421 at Appendix 2 pages 598–607 and in 1434 at pages 24–38.

  The first requirement is for an accurate clock. Professors J. Fermor, J.M. Steele and F.R. Stephenson have summarised the inaccuracy of water clocks used by the Babylonians.5, 6, 7 There is no way they could in practice have used them to determine longitude. However Professor Steele, in a review of N.M. Swerdlow’s book, The Babylonian Theory of the Planets,8 writes:

  We know that Babylonian astronomers were capable of measuring longitudes if they wished; the existence of a fragmenting star catalogue proves this. Furthermore he [Swerdlow] notes that the preserved diaries do not contain as many reports of the distance of a rising or setting planet to a normal star (from which the longitude could be obtained using something like the star catalogue mentioned above) as one would need to derive the planetary parameters. However this does not necessarily imply that such measurements were not available, or could not have been made by the astronomers who formulated the planetary theories.9

  So how are these apparently contradictory positions reconciled? The answer I think is to do away with the water clock and rely instead on star tables, which show the rising of stars on the eastern horizon at sunset each evening for four years. At this point the cycle would repeat. In short the navigators would use the slip between sidereal and solar time, as explained in 1434.

  For example on, say, day sixty-eight the star tables published in Babylon state that Aldebaran rose simultaneously with the top tip of the sun disappearing below the western horizon. Out in the Atlantic on day sixty-eight, a second observer notes Betelgeuse not Aldebaran rose at sunset. The angular difference between Aldebaran and Betelgeuse was six hours, one quarter of twenty-four hours. Thus the Atlantic observer would know that his longitude was 90 degrees west, one quarter of 360 degrees. This eliminates the need for a clock. However, it only works if the observers are on the same latitude and if the Minoans had copies of Babylonian star tables – or had produced their own device, capable of both measuring geometrical angles and operating as a calendar.

  The fact is that such a device does exist. It was discovered in a shipwreck at Antikythera in 1900; then it was locked away – and simply forgotten about.

  THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM

  Antikythera is a tiny island just a few miles northwest of Crete.

  This is how the magazine Nature put it:

  Two thousand years ago a Greek mechanic set out to build a machine that would model the workings of the known universe. The result was a complex clockwork mechanism that displayed the motions of the sun, moon and planets on precisely marked dials. By turning a handle the creator could watch his tiny celestial bodies trace their undulating paths through the sky . . .

  . . . Since a reconstruction of the device hit the headlines in 2006, it has revolutionised ideas about the technology of the ancient world and has captured the public imagination as the apparent pinnacle of Greek scientific achievement.

  Now, however, scientists delving into the astronomical theories encoded in this quintessentially Greek device have concluded that they are not Greek at all, but Babylonian – an empire predating this [ancient Greek] era by centuries.10

  The importance of the Antikythera device is that it could provide planetary information – not least the position of the planets at sunset. Provided the observer at sea had the same set of tables as the observer in Babylon, the angular distance between the planets at sunset would give the difference in longitude. The Antikythera device could in fact be used as a longitude calculator – a vivid example of the brilliance of early astronomers. You can view the device in the second colour plate section.

  Hoyle believed that a highly sophisticated mathematical and astronomical civilisation was behind the creation of Stonehenge. He said:

  It is not until we come to Hipparchus and Ptolemy that anything of comparable stature can be found in the ancient world, and not until we move forward to Copernicus in the modern world. To paraphrase Brahms in his reference to Beethoven, we hear the tramp of the giant behind.

  Stan Lusby has actually tracked those giants’ footsteps. A sea surveyor and a specialist in ancient navigational techniques, Lusby used a computer programme, as he put it, to ‘navigate its way through myth’. He took Homer’s description of Odysseus
returning home guided by the stars literally, to see whether it would have been possible to cross the Atlantic:

  The late-setting Boötes and The Bear, which we also call the Wain, which ever circles where it is and watches Orion, and alone has no part in the baths of the ocean. For this star Calypso, the beautiful goddess, had bidden him to keep on his left hand as he sailed over the sea. For seventeen days then he sailed over the sea and on the eighteenth appeared the shadowy mountains of the land of the Phaeacians.11

  Lusby set up his ‘Skymap’ computer programme so that the night sky would appear as it would have done on 22 November 1350 BC, at latitude 23 degrees north and longitude 22 degrees 50 minutes west. The night sky would have been very similar to the period during which I believe the Minoans were exploring the Atlantic. The position Lusby chose to study, the point between the Canary and the Cape Verde Islands during the mid 14th century BC, is the very same course the Minoans would have steered en route to America. The ‘Skymap’ shows the perfect symmetry of the night sky at that date, with Libra and Aries on opposing horizons. Lusby argues that the ancients used ‘star maps’ to achieve certain latitudes then steered along that latitude – for example when voyaging south down the coast of western Europe the explorers would arrive at a latitude where Aldebaran could be seen to be vertically above Alnilam in Orion’s Belt. Then they would have time to turn west into the ocean to pick up the ‘conveyor belt’ which would carry them to North America.

  To quote part of Stan Lusby’s paper, ‘Odysseus, James Cook of the Atlantic’:

  The landfalls detected are too numerous to be confined to chance and they reveal the existence of a chart-in-the-sky for the North Atlantic that had a degree of orthomorphism [readability in terms of its good shape] part way between a modern Admiralty chart and a metro or underground schematic. It, together with Homer’s writings, indicates the safest, most efficient way to cross the Atlantic to take advantage of prevailing winds and currents . . .

  Even if they could not determine longitude, Lusby has illustrated that after an initial exploratory mission the Minoans would have been able to find their way to the sources of copper in Lake Superior and then navigate their way home by using latitude only.

  There is another reason why I feel that the Minoans were slightly more comfortable in calculating latitude than longitude and it has to do with a recent re-interpretation of the evidence on a tiny golden coin. After the collapse of Minoan power, the Phoenicians inherited the remains of their Mediterranean trading empire. There are many indications that the Phoenicians travelled to Iberia, Britain, Ireland, India, Africa and possibly even America. Did they inherit Minoan maps, I wondered, and if so could these maps be found? I searched for a long time with no success, then via our website a friend referred me to the work of Mark A. McMenamin, Professor of Geology at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts. A palaeontologist, geologist and celebrated fossil hunter, he is nevertheless a much published authority on the Phoenicians, their language, coins and maps – a very rare combination indeed.

  Professor McMenamin has studied a number of coins minted in Carthage, the Phoenician western capital, between 350 and 320 BC. The provenance and authenticity of these coins has not been challenged. Of relevance to this story is a particular golden coin, on which a horse stands proudly on top of a number of symbols.

  Scholars originally surmised that these symbols were letters in Phoenician script, a theory that was discounted in the 1960s. Fol- lowing 3D imaging analysis of the coin, McMenamin has interpreted the design as a representation of the Mediterranean, surrounded by the land masses of Europe and Africa with, at the upper left, the British Isles. If he is right the Professor has shed a radical new light on the ‘discovery’ of the New World.

  To the left of the Mediterranean, under the horse’s left rear hoof, is what he believes is a depiction of the Americas. So McMenamin postulates that the Phoenicians reached America – which I am quite sure they did.

  Latitudes on the McMenamin ‘Phoenician’ map are pretty good. The longitude of the Atlantic and of America, by contrast, is drastically foreshortened. This would be accounted for by the navigator determining longitude by dead reckoning – he would not have appreciated how far west he had travelled with the help of the current. The map would thus not show the true width of the Atlantic. Where I respectfully differ from Professor McMenamin is that I believe that the initial provenance of the map on the coin is Minoan.

  My reasoning is prompted first of all by the locations displayed on the map. It details all of the places which Minoan fleets visited, including the British Isles, the Baltic and the Indian Ocean. In short, Professor McMenamin’s map coin shows the Minoan trading empire. More importantly, there are some particularly Minoan aspects to the map – for instance the importance (from their size) of the representations of Crete and Cyprus. Most crucially, the Mississippi, which the Minoans followed to reach Lake Superior, appears on the coin’s representation of America.

  It seems to me that the initial information to compile this map came from Minoan sources: perhaps other maps which have since been lost.

  In the light of all this new evidence, I think the Minoans may have had the capacity to use dead reckoning to draw up simple world maps. I believe an original Minoan map will one day be found and authenticated. It will show all of the places the Minoans visited – from the relatively straightforward seas of the Mediterranean, Crete, Cyprus, the Middle East and Iberia, to the quite simply audacious: Ireland, Britain and the Baltic. Not to mention North America, Africa and India – destinations that took extraordinary levels of bravery and daring to reach.

  My belief is based upon the very exact geophysical locations of the observatories that, in my opinion, the Minoans either built or adapted. These sites in Kerala (South India); Malta; Stonehenge; northwest France; Ireland; and the Orkneys – and on the Elbe and the banks of Lake Superior – span nearly half the world in longitude from South India (77 degrees east) to the Great Lakes (89 degrees west) – a total of 166 degrees. Moreover, the latitudes allow for the cross-checking of results – Babylon (32 degrees north); Malta (35 degrees north); Brest, northwest France and Lake Superior (both 48 degrees north). To have done all of this required planning; a sense of overview. In other words, it required maps.

  By comparing lunar eclipses on the same day (achieved by counting sunrises) the Minoans could trace the moon’s passage across the sky and its position relative to a fixed star. This would help them create ephemeris tables (records of the co-ordinates of celestial bodies at specific times) of the moon for Kerala, Babylon, Malta, Stonehenge, probably northwest France and, as I was soon to find out, Lake Superior. Having an observatory in America would make a lot of sense, because it is such a long way west of our Bronze Age meridian of zero degrees longitude – the magical datum line I believe the brilliant Minoan navigators set at Stonehenge. They did this so they could cross-check and refine results and extrapolate them to make ever more accurate ephemeris tables, in the same way that declination tables could be made for each day, to enable latitude to be determined by using the sun. In short, they could make world star maps for the northern hemisphere from India to Lake Superior.

  I asked the former Royal Navy Admiral Sir John Forster ‘Sandy’ Woodward for his view on my theory. Could the ancients really have achieved all of this? His thoughts were:

  The whole business of going trans-ocean would have been very rough – enough to get you there but not all that much more. In fact, rather like my cross-channel voyages in a 21ft sail boat – I didn’t bother much with accurate navigation. I headed well to one side of my destination [the uptide/upwind side] and turned downtide/ downwind when I reached the coast until I reached the place I’d intended. OK, so a compass, the tide tables, etc., made my DR [dead reckoning] pretty good, but as I was keen to show with ‘pool navigation’, approximate navigation is usually entirely adequate. [Pool of Error navigation is discussed on my website.]

  In a ship, you can never forget a
bout obstacles: reefs and rocks, even icebergs. Even the ultra-modern Titanic was lost to an iceberg, four days into the ship’s maiden voyage. The cruel seas took 1,517 lives.

  This would have been a dangerous business, especially if the Minoans met with conditions of low or zero visibility, heavy rainfall or snow; mists and fogs. Yet copper and tin were the most valuable substances in the known world. Wouldn’t the Minoans have risked life and limb to find them?

  CHAPTER 33

  A METALLURGICAL MYSTERY

  Over the past seven years, since we set up our website, we’ve had hundreds of emails from North American readers of 1421 and 1434. They all tell a tale of a mysterious conundrum. To this day the perplexing story of America’s missing copper is taught in American and Canadian schools. The story began with Professor Roy Drier, who in the early part of the 20th century was Professor of Metallurgy at the Michigan College of Mining and Technology. The mystery itself, however, dated from the Bronze Age.

  In the 2nd millennium BC millions of pounds of copper were mined out of mineral-rich Lake Superior, in North America. Yet where are the Bronze Age artefacts to show for it? While Bronze Age relics do exist, there is a significant mismatch between the number of finds and the evidence left by the miners. The copper, and the bronze it helped create, appears to have vanished into thin air. Could the Chinese explorers I wrote about in 1421 have taken the copper ore back home to China, my correspondents asked?

  I didn’t have the answers, but I knew enough to start digging. I was also reminded by Dr Gunnar Thompson (see chapter 31) that some of the copper artefacts that are found in American burial mounds show evidence of foreign influence.