Among many breathtaking and meticulously engraved details, the map features a group of mermaids holding what appears to be a disk in the form of a UFO near Patagonia, a legendary land that was rumored to be the home of giants.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the lands of the Western Hemisphere were a complete and utter mystery.
After Christopher Columbus set foot in the New World—oh and he wasn’t the first European to do so—curious Europeans began to tell fantastic sagas about sea monsters, exotic wildlife, and strange civilizations.
In 1562, the Spanish cartographer Diego Gutiérrez and the Dutch engraver Hieronymous Cock made an attempt to create a detailed map of the Americas. It turned out to be a huge six-panel print.
Americae Sive Quartae Orbis Partis Nova Et Exactissima Descriptio. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
It was published in Antwerp under the name ‘Americae sive quarte orbis partis nova et exactissima, Latin for The Americas, or A New and Precise Description of the Fourth Part of the World’.
While the minutely engraved map shows precise geographical features in many cases (the east coast of the Americas and the western coasts of Europe and Africa), it is also plagued by what mainstream scholars consider folklore.
You can find many of the legends and rumors about the New World that circulated at that time: sirens, hungry sea serpents, cannibals, erupting volcanoes in Mexico and a land of giants.
I wonder if all of them were just a myth?
Since most of the sixteenth-century European population was not able to read, maps were not just a navigation tool, but a popular medium for telling stories about specific places and ancient civilizations. They were practically considered something like a storytelling book.
Interestingly, the west coast of South America depicted on this ancient map seems particularly dangerous and mysterious.
We see a threatening whale that squeezes a defenseless ship, a dragon, a huge snake and a group of mermaids holding what appears to be a disk in the form of a UFO near Patagonia, a legendary land that was rumored to be the home of giants.
A small section of the map showing what appear to be giants, and a mermaid holding what appears to be a flying saucer. Not that it is one, is it? Image credit Wikimedia Commons
The region that is now part of Argentina and Chile was described by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan after encountering the indigenous Tehuelche tribe in 1520.
According to his accounts, the Tehuelches were very tall and must have seemed gigantic to Spaniards who were particularly ‘small’.
In order to prove that he really did encounter Giant beings in the new word, Magellan captured two Tehuelches and tried to bring them to Spain.
However, they did not survive the trip to Europe, and Magellan had nothing left but stories and myths of a land of giants.
The map is a mixture of reality and myth
Despite the fact that we see what is considered as fictitious material on the map, Gutiérrez and Cock also name settlements, rivers, mountains, and capes that really do exist.
It shows engravings of the Amazon River, Lake Titicaca, Mexico City, and the rivers in South America and Florida.
You can see numerous correct coastal features of South, Central, North and Caribbean America, which makes me wonder, why create such a weird blend?
Is there a chance that European explorers really encountered all of what was depicted on the map?
The suspect, who has been previously arrested for barricading himself from LEOs with a “weapon of mass destruction,” tried to stab himself with a pen after hearing the guilty verdict
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While many are unaware of this, there is a Pyramid (now in ruins) in Greece referred to as the ‘Pyramid of Hellinikon ‘ which according to studies is older than the oldest Pyramid of ancient Egypt by at least 100 years (Djoser – 2620 B.C.) and predates by at least 170 years, the Great Pyramid Giza (Khufu – 2550 B.C.).
Whenever we hear the word ‘Pyramid’ we always jump in our minds to ancient Egypt, and their supermassive, majestic Pyramids.
However, despite the fact that Egypt is well-known for its three main pyramids at the Giza plateau, the truth is that there are thousands of pyramids scattered across the globe.
There are pyramids nearly on every continent on Earth. There are pyramids in America, in Europe, in Asia, and even in India.
And curiously, one of the European pyramids is located in Greece and is known as the pyramid of Hellenikon in Argos, Greece.
The Pyramid of Greece (now in ruins) was well described in ancient times and Pausanias—a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the time of Roman emperors Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius—documented the structure in his Description of Greece, referring to it as the Pyramid of Hellinikon close to Argos.
“On the way from Argos to Epidauria there is on the right a building made very like a pyramid, and on it in relief are wrought shields of the Argive shape.
Here took place a fight for the throne between Proetus and Acrisius; the contest, they say, ended in a draw, and a reconciliation resulted afterwards, as neither could gain a decisive victory.
The story is that they and their hosts were armed with shields, which were first used in this battle. For those that fell on either side was built here a common tomb, as they were fellow citizens and kinsmen.”—Pausanias: 2.25.
The Pyramid is extremely interesting for a number of reasons, but mainly because of its supposed age.
If reports are accurate, the Greek Pyramid could be older than the oldest Pyramid of ancient Egypt by at least 100 years (Djoser – 2620 B.C.) and predates by 170 years the Great Pyramid of Cheops (Khufu – 2550 B.C.).
In 1938, archaeologists from the US placed the construction of the monument between 300 and 400 BCE.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
In 1991, a different scientific team, led by Dr. I. Lyritzis of the Academy of Athens, concluded that the Pyramid of Hellinikon was built around 3000 BCE.
However, later research by the Academy of Athens and the University of Edinburgh placed the monument to around 2720 BCE.
Dating measurements were performed by the Laboratory of Archaeometry at Dimokritos Research Institute in Athens and by the Nuclear Dating Laboratory of the Department of Physics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
The number speak for themselves. If the dates of the construction of the Pyramid are correct, it would mean that his Greek Pyramid is OLDER than the Pyramid of Djoser in Egypt—considered the oldest of all Egyptian pyramids.
While incomparable in size to its Egyptian counterparts, the pyramid of Hellinikon has the shape of a tour with its external sides sloping and surrounding a rectangular building of total dimensions 7,03 by 9,07 m.
The ancient Pyramid was built from gray limestone of the area together with large blocks in a trapezoidal and partially polygonal system.
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In an article published in Communications Physics, researchers from the Université libre de Bruxelles and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in Vienna present a new framework for describing physics relative to quantum reference frames, unveiling the importance of previously unrecognized “extra particles.”
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