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The
Biggest Lie |
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The
Biggest Lie |
The historians and cartographers of all the world know very well the so called Planisphere of Alberto Cantino, which is preserved in the Estense Library in the City of Modena, located north of Bologna, in Italy
Modena is a celebrated city because of the manufacturing of racing cars of two famous marks such as Ferrari and Maserati. This city has today 175 thousands of inhabitants but in 1598 had an increase development of humanism because the Dukes of Ferrara moved from Ferrara to Modena City.
The Estense Library possesses many rare books and also an excellent collection of original maps including the Planisphere of Alberto Cantino.
This map is considered to be made by an anonymous author, but today we know that it was done by a Portuguese cartographer in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1502.
On the left inferior corner of this map there is a legend that says the following: “Owner Alberto Cantino, to Duke of Hercules (of Ferrara)”. This is the beginning of its unlucky story.
It is now general knowledge that Alberto Cantino was an Italian spy in Lisbon, Portugal, at the end of XV and beginning of the XVI centuries. He was a very astute and efficient spy because he even became one of the private secretaries of King Manuel I. The most demonstrative facts are the two letters he wrote to Duke d’Este, then Duke of Ferrara, describing all the details of the return trip made by Gaspar Corte Real to Newfoundland in 1501. On these two letters dated from Lisbon on October, 17th and 18th of 1501, it is Cantino himself that states that he heard everything because he “was in the King’s presence”, when Gaspar Corte Real made his presentation to the Portuguese monarch.
This Alberto Cantino is the same that was sent as a secret agent for Hercules d’Este, at the time Duke in City of Ferrara, to Lisbon to obtain information about the Portuguese discoveries because at that time they were already famous and caused much enviousness through out all Europe
With the excuse of going to Lisbon to buy Portuguese horses Cantino was able to bribe a Portuguese cartographer who made for him a nautical chart containing all the secret information that existed in the so called “House of India” in Lisbon. Cantino paid for this map a very high price at the time: twelve golden Ducados
We know by another letter signed by Cantino that he sent this map to his boss, Duke of Ferrara, on November 19th, 1502, ending his letter this way: “ a carta (the map) é di tal sorte, et spero che in tal manera piacerà a V. Exa.” Translation: “This map is of high quality and I hope Your Excellency will be very pleased with it”
This Cantino’s Planisphere was for 90 years in the Duke’s Library until Pope Clement VIII decided to transfer it to another palace in the city of Modena. But this Planisphere had bad luck because due to a rebellion in 1859, it disappeared from the Library and it was found nine years latter at the entrance of a sausage factory as a folding screen, in the City of Modena. The Director of Modena Library was called to the place and he took it back to his library where it has been ever since 1868
The Cantino’s Planisphere of 1502 is today considered a masterpiece of the Portuguese Cartography and one of the most important cartographical charts of the world. This map is the first one to represent the largest area of the world including: Europe, North, Central and South Americas, all Africa, and Asia up to the Orient.
It is a very rich chart with much detail and topographic names. But the part that we are most interested in the Cantino’s Planisphere is the region western of the Azores, that is, the Lands of the Americas.
In this region we see a vertical line – the so called Line of the Tordesillas Treaty of 1494 – which divided the world between Portugal and Spain.
This imaginary line was drawn 370 leagues west of the most western island of the Cape Verde Archipelago, as demanded by King John II of Portugal. The Treaty of Tordesillas was signed on July 2nd, 1494. The City of Tordesillas is located in Spain between Valladolid and Salamanca.
The Catholic Spanish Monarchs, King Don Fernando and Queen Isabella, wanted the Line of Tordesillas to be drawn only one hundred leagues in accordance with Pope Alexander VI, who was of Spanish origin, but King John II of Portugal imposed that the line had to be at 370 leagues and he won!
On the Cantino’s map we can see that Newfoundland and Brazil are included in the oriental hemisphere that belonged to Portugal. Today we know that King John II fooled the Spaniards because they did not know of the existence of Newfoundland, nor of the land that became the huge Brazil.
Now let us analyze the Cantino’s Planisphere on the space for the American Lands:
Fig. No. 1
(1) Represents Greenland with a Portuguese flag with Five Quinas
(2) Land of the King of Portugal, stands for Newfoundland with the Canadian pine trees.
(3) The vertical Line of Tordesillas dividing the world between Portugal and Spain.
(4) Azores
(5) Continental Portugal
(6) Africa
(7) Cape Verde Archipelago
Fig. 2
On this section of the Cantino map we see:
(8) The Island of Hispañola, today Haiti and S. Domingos
(9) Cuba
(10) Florida Peninsula. Please note that this Portuguese map dated 1502 already shows Florida. Why in U. S. A. , they still teach that Ponce de Leon discovered Florida ELEVEN years LATER in 1513, when he was looking for the Fountain of Youth?!
(11) LAS ANTILHAS of the Spanish King. Please note that the name ANTILHAS is 100% Portuguese, with H, not in Spanish: Antillas.
Fig. No. 3
(12) South America
(13) Brazil with three parrots
Where is the biggest lie on the Cantino map?
The biggest lie of the Cantino map is the name ANTILHAS -- situated above the number (11).
These islands in the Caribbean Sea are not the True Antilles. They are the False Antilles. They are the Indies Islands as Christopher Colon called them!
The True Antilles are the Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward island, in Canada, about two thousand miles to the North!
The cartographer who made the Cantino’s Planisphere in 1502, by baptizing these islands in the Caribbean Sea – ANTILHAS -- he MISLEAD and FOOLED all humanity for more than five centuries.
The True Antilhas are drawn on The Nautical Chart of 1424. This document was analyzed in minute detail by Professor Armando Cortesão and he published a book in English entitled “The Nautical Chart of 1424”, edited by the University of Coimbra in 1954. Of one thousand copies that were printed, I have copy No. 232, in my Library Museum, in Cavião, Vale de Cambra, Portugal.
Here is a section of “The Nautical Chart of 1424” showing the four islands: two in blue and two in red. Their names are Saya; Satanazes; Antilia and Ymana.
Fig. No. 5
(1) Data 1424, Agosto 22.
(2) Saya
(3) Satanazes
(4) Antilha
(5) Ymana
(6) Continental Portugal
The original of this map is in the Library of the University of Minnesota, in the collection of James Ford Bell. Zuanne Pizzigano, a cartographer from Venice, made this chart on August 22nd, 1424.
If you wan to know in detail my total analyses of “The Nautical Chart of 1424”, please, go to my website and see these two articles:
(1) The True Antilles: Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward
(2) The Resume of the True Antilles
On this drawing we can see more clearly the names of the four islands and also the names inside of the lakes of the islands of Satanazes and Antilia.
Fig. No. 6 -
We should note that Armando Cortesão was considered the greatest world specialist in Cartography. On his conclusions of the book “The Nautical Chart of 1424”, he was not able to make the correct diagnosis that those four islands represented the True Antilles on the Canadian Maritime Coast.
Here is Armando Cortesão’s confession on his book “The Nautical Chart of 1424”:
“The Documentary proof that such a voyage or voyages (by the Portuguese), either willing or unwilling, took place is provided by the representation of the Antilia group of four islands in the 1424 Chart. Several islands of the Antilles were no doubt seen during one or more of these voyages. The newly acquired knowledge confirmed what was already presumed from ancient tradition and more or less recent and more or less positive information, and the first cartographer who got hold of that information, though rather vague, represented it as well as he could in his map. We do not know whether the 1424 Chart is the first one in which Antilia was figured; we only know that it is the earliest extant in which it appears.” “ It would not be easy to say which of the Antilles islands are depicted by the Antilia group, or if the American Continent itself is represented there. Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, Porto Rico, some of the Bahamas, Trinidad or some of the Lesser Antilles, Florida or even Greenland? There is no sure guide for any such tentative identification. The only certainty is that several of these lands were seen, but the identification of their cartographical representation is as uncertain as the meaning of the seven mysterious names which, following the legend of the Island of the Seven Cities, were written on Antilia and probably influenced the idea of writing the no less mysterious five names on the Satanazes”.
The key that Cortesão missed!
The essential key that Armando Cortesão missed in 1954 was the discovery of the lines of latitudes on The Nautical Chart of 1424. He was very close to it, but had no luck. Too bad, because he really deserved it.
He was a Man that spent all his life studying and analyzing old maps. His greatest contribution was certainly his major participation in the creation of the Monumenta Cartographica Henriquina. I have a copy of the entire collection, seven large volumes, in my Library Museum, in Portugal.
I spoke with Professor Armando Cortesão several times in the Institute of Cartography in the University of Coimbra, Portugal, during the period I was a student in the Faculty of Medicine between 1952 and 1958. At that time, because I had to concentrate all my attention in the anatomies and pathologies… to obtain excellent grades, I did not have the tranquility to discovery the lines of latitude on the Nautical Chart of 14234, as I did on the quietness of my home, in Bristol Rhode Island, U. S. A., on November 7th, 1986, at two minutes to mid-night.
I am sorry Dr. Cortesão is not alive today to learn of my original discovery of the lines of latitude on the Nautical Chart of 1424, because he spent four years studying and trying to decipher it.
It is sad to see that after Armando Cortesão passed away, “the smallest man” among all the professors of the University of Coimbra, Damião Peres, and his colleague in the teaching of history, Luiz de Albuquerque, one hundred percent communist-Leninist both criticized negatively the book written by Armando Cortesão “ The Nautical Chart of 1424”. But they did NOT present any new interpretation. They looked at this map as jackasses looking at a palace!
I do not know who is responsible for the Department of Cartography at the University of Coimbra, or if it is functioning at all, after Armando Cortesão’s death, because he was the one who found it.
Unfortunally even today many historians and cartographers throughout the world do not want to accept the truth of the Nautical chart of 1424, because they do not know and even do not want to draw the lines of latitude on the same map! But this disease continues to be contagious among university and high school in Portugal! What a pity!!!
What satisfies me the most and gives me peace of mind are the facts that I have written and have registered copyrights in the Library of the Congress: monographs, articles in magazines and books in English and Portuguese and I have spread world wide by via Internet my original discovery of the latitudes on the Nautical Chart of 1424, so that future generations can really appreciate the true value of my simple and singular discovery.
I am really having a deep satisfaction with the new techniques of communication. The so called “professors” CAN NOT BLOCK any more my writings by using the “conspiracy of silence”. Now they even run away from me! They are fools loaded with hot air. Because of their behavior they are not going to leave any positive mark in History. They will get what they really deserve: Zero.