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From: Trevor J. Kenchington (no email)
Date: Sat May 08 2004 - 19:30:15 EDT
Kieran,
You wrote:
> It is the evidence of the maps themselves that Menzies is holding up for
> scrutiny. The existence of these very accurate and detailed maps of
> Magellan's Passage, Greenland and the east cost of America centuries before
> Europeans arrived would I believe require some rewriting of history.
Indeed (though I don't see the reason to list Greenland). But what
evidence is there that such maps existed, as distinct from somebody
having the capability to do the surveying if they once travelled to
those places? I know something of the early (but post 1500) maps of the
eastern seaboard of North America and I wouldn't call them either
accurate or detailed.
Greenland is an exception not because maps from before European arrival
would not be exciting but because, by 1421, the country had been
occupied by Europeans for upwards of 400 years. An accurate map with
that date would point to careful European surveying (maybe by servants
of the Archbishop of Bergen, seeking to establish the proper level of
taxation? That seems to have been a major concern for the Greenland
colony). A Chinese arrival there is no more plausible than a landing in
Iceland in the same era.
> Thanks for the assistance. At least we know it may have been possible for
> the Chinese to calculate longitude on land when they did. I remain a sceptic
> about a lot of Menzies claims but ever since I was a child I have wondered
> how Magellan knew there was a straight at the bottom of South America that
> he could sail through to get to the Pacific Ocean. If nothing else, Menzies
> supplies one possible explanation.
I haven't read any detailed account of Magellan's geographic concepts,
so you may know far more than I do. However, he was really only faced
with two options: Either there was a strait linking Atlantic and Pacific
at the southern end of the Americas or there was not (the latter meaning
that the Americas and what we now call Antarctica were one unbroken land
mass). He could have tossed a coin and had a 50% chance of getting the
right answer but he might better have drawn an analogy with Africa,
which Da Gama had shown ended in the Cape. Armed with that knowledge, it
was a pretty good guess that the Americas ended similarly.
Is there any reason to think that he had anything firmer to go on?
Trevor Kenchington
--
Trevor J. Kenchington PhD
Gadus Associates, Office(902) 889-9250
R.R.#1, Musquodoboit Harbour, Fax (902) 889-9251
Nova Scotia B0J 2L0, CANADA Home (902) 889-3555
Science Serving the Fisheries
http://home.istar.ca/~gadus
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