Posted on 11/25/2003 6:25:37 PM PST by Pharmboy
Even so, the map is an amazing piece of work.
That is the claim of some... but others with as much or more expertise disagree.
As with the Vinland map, the finding of Anatase by microscopist Walter C. McCrone was the start of the claims of "FAKE!" but many older manuscripts have now been found to contain Anatase... so, unless we agree that all those other manuscripts of known provenance are also frauds, the question of the authenticity of both the Vinland Map and the Piri Re'is map are back up in the air.
I recall reading one report on the Vinland Map where the author claimed to have found the source of the parchment... by matching worm holes... in the end pages of another manuscript... which, if true, would put IT back in the realm of fake.
The most intriguing evidence I have seen for Europeans in the New World prior to Columbus is the Latin American myths of Quetzalcoatl. They described him as having fair hair, fair skin, and a beard. He left them by embarking in a boat towards the East. When Cortez showed up many years later, many natives thought he was Quetzalcoatl.
Anothing thing that I find interesting is the decline of major civilizations in the New World a few hundred years prior to the Conquest. Archaeologist attribute the depopulation of sites in the Southwest to climate change. This is credible for the Europeans have recorded a mini Ice Age around the same time. What puzzles me about that theory is that civilizations throughout the Americas all declined or disappeared at around the same time. Even the mound cultures of the Southeastern Indians disappeared. I find this puzzling for they did not live as precarious an existence as the larger civilizations. The Southeastern civilizations could survive a climte change and still thrive, yet they did not. I believe, Europeans arrived several hundred years before Columbus and introduced diseases which helped bring down those civilizations.
It's been my experience that crow goes down better with a little white sauce...
McCrone did claim that the Piri Re'is Map is a fraud... but did not publish any papers on the subject. Anatase was again the reason for his claim... ignoring the fact that anatase was only started to be used in modern inks in the mid 1930s... but the map had a known provenance of 1929 when it was found in a chest in the Palace of Topkapi, Turkey.
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