For more than  five and half  centuries the world has believed the Antilles, also called the West Indies, to be in the Caribbean Sea in Central America. But now, (1987),   Dr. Manuel Luciano da Silva, a Bristol, R. I. physician, U. S. A, has demonstrated that this is a 500-year old, a 2,000-mile mistake!

 At least 68 years before Columbus landed in what we know as the Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, Portuguese navigators used a map showing the Antilles, a word derived from the Portuguese. However what the Portuguese navigators were referring to was not Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Santo Domingo and the many islands all the way down to Trinidad, but instead Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward in Canada.

 Dr. da Silva demonstrated his finding by superimposing a photo negative of the famous Nautical Chart of 1424, on a modern map of the Atlantic—fusing the costs of Africa and Europe of both maps -- and found that the Antilles, drawn on the old map, more closely coincide with Newfoundland and Nova Scotia than they do with islands in the Caribbean Sea, more than 2,000 miles off to the south.

 Today Newfoundland and Nova Scotia are between 50 and 43 degrees North. The four islands on the Nautical Chart of 1424 are between 47 and 35 degrees North. And the Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, between Cuba and Trinidad, are 23 and 10 degrees above the equator! Therefore there is a difference of 25 degrees or 2,000-mile mistake! 

Dr. da Silva also noted that the shapes, sizes and positions of the islands on the 1424 map, correspond exactly with Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. On the Nautical Chart of 1424 the Antilles are located northwest of the Azores, while the present-day Caribbean Islands are located southwest of the Azores.

 As more evidence, Dr. da Silva points to the bays and inlets detailed on the 1424 map which correspond closely with the rugged and indented coastline found by the Portuguese when they first discovered Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

 Further, all the islands on the 1424 map are tilted north-east toward Europe, as are Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. In contrast, the Caribbean Islands, or West Indies, are inclined in the opposite direction, away from  Europe.

 Presently, the original parchment map of the Nautical Chart of 1424 is in the James Ford Bell Collection at the University of Minnesota which paid a large undisclosed sum of money for it to Sir Thomas Phillipps Collection of London, England.

 Dr. da Silva’s fresh revelation is already causing ripples of excited controversy, forcing a reexamination and ultimately a correction in the geographic history of the Americas.

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