Who made the oldest map in the 6th century. Who made the ancient maps? Anaximander was ahead of his time

A person is always driven by curiosity. Thousands of years ago, discoverers, going further and further into unknown lands, created the first semblances of geographical maps, trying to put the relief they saw on papyrus sheets or clay tablets.

Probably the oldest found is a map from the Egyptian Museum in Turin, made on papyrus by order of Pharaoh Ramses IV in 1160 BC. e. This map was used by an expedition that, by order of the pharaoh, was looking for a stone for construction. The map familiar to our eyes appeared in ancient Greece half a thousand years before our era. Anaximander of Miletus is considered the first cartographer who created a map of the world known by that time.

The originals of his maps have not survived, but 50 years later they were restored and improved by another scientist from Miletus, Hecateus. Scientists have recreated this map according to the descriptions of Hecateus. It is easy to recognize the Mediterranean and Black Seas and the surrounding lands. But is it possible to determine distances from it? This requires a scale that was not yet available on ancient maps. For the unit of measurement of length, Hecateus used "days of sailing" on the sea and "days of transitions" on dry land, which, of course, did not add accuracy to the maps.

Ancient geographic maps had other significant drawbacks. They distorted the image, because a spherical surface cannot be deployed on a plane without distortion. Try to gently peel off the orange peel and press it against the table surface: you won't be able to do this without tearing. In addition, they did not have a degree grid of parallels and meridians, without which it is impossible to accurately determine the location of the object. Meridians first appeared on the map of Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC. e., however, they were carried through different distances. It is not without reason that Eratosthenes was called the "Father of Geography" as a mathematician among geographers. The scientist not only measured the dimensions of the Earth, but also used a cylindrical projection to display on the map. In this projection, there is less distortion, because the image is transferred from the ball to the cylinder. Modern maps are created in different projections - cylindrical, conical, azimuthal and others.

The most perfect maps of the ancient era are considered to be the geographical maps of Ptolemy, who lived in the 2nd century AD. e. in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Claudius Ptolemy went down in the history of science thanks to two large works: the "Guide to Astronomy" in 13 books and the "Guide to Geography", which consisted of 8 books. 27 maps were added to the "Guide to Geography", among them - a detailed map of the world. No one created the best, either before Ptolemy, or 12 centuries after him! This map already had a degree grid. To create it, Ptolemy determined the geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude) of almost four hundred objects. The scientist determined the latitude (distance from the equator in degrees) by the height of the Sun at noon with the help of a gnomon, longitude (degree distance from the initial meridian) - by the difference in the time of observations of the lunar eclipse from different points.

In medieval Europe, the works of ancient scholars were forgotten, but they survived in the Arab world. There, Ptolemy's maps were published in the 15th century and republished almost 50 more times! Perhaps it was these cards that helped Columbus on his famous voyage. Ptolemy's authority grew so much that even collections of maps for a long time were called "Ptolemies". Only in the 16th century after the publication of the "Atlas of the World" by Gerardus Mercator, on the cover of which Atlas was drawn holding the Earth, the collections of maps were called "atlases".

In ancient China, geographical maps were also created. Interestingly, the first written mention of a geographic map is not related to geography. In the III century BC. e. the Chinese throne was occupied by the Qin dynasty. The rival in the struggle for power, Crown Prince Dan sent a hired assassin to the ruler of the dynasty with a map of his lands drawn on silk fabric. The mercenary hid a dagger in a bundle of silk. The story tells that the assassination attempt failed.

In the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, images of America and Australia, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans appeared on the maps of the world. Errors on charts were often a tragedy for navigators. Having explored the shores of Alaska, Vitus Bering's large Kamchatka expedition in the 18th century did not have time to return to Kamchatka by the beginning of the autumn storms. Dreamer Bering spent three weeks of precious time in search of the map-marked, but non-existent Land of Gama. His sailing ship "Saint Peter", broken, with sailors dying from scurvy, moored to the deserted island, where the famous Commander rested forever. "My blood boils every time," wrote one of Bering's assistants, "when I remember the shameless deception caused by a mistake on the map."

Today cartography is fully digitalized. To create the most detailed maps, not only ground geodetic instruments are used - theodolite, level, but also air laser scanning, satellite navigation, digital aerial photography.

Illustration: depositphotos.com | Kuzmafoto

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Ancient mysteries always attract modern man. The maps of our world ... which we have never known, help us to look, as if through a window, into the secrets of civilizations hidden by time.

Not inferior to modern

To create accurate geographic maps, you need a vessel capable of long-distance navigation to explore the terrain, a chronometer to determine coordinates, as well as mathematics and cartographers to process the information received.

Meanwhile, there are ancient maps compiled before our era, which are not inferior in accuracy to modern ones, while there was no question of research ships (according to official history), and the same chronometer was invented by the English watchmaker John Harrison only in 1761. What did the ancient cartographers use? Surely they had reliable ships and no less accurate instruments at their disposal, given the fact that sometimes their maps even surpassed modern counterparts in reliability.

Unfortunately, such ancient originals have not come down to us unchanged. They were redrawn many times, transferred from one material to another. Mankind strove to preserve the knowledge about the world, once acquired, possibly transmitted by an unknown powerful civilization.

Piri Reis Map

The margins of the Piri Reis map read: “No one currently has a map like this. In compiling it, I used twenty nautical charts and eight "mappa mundis", that is, maps called by the Arabs "jaferians" and drawn up in the time of Alexander the Great, which depict the entire inhabited world. "

This map was compiled in 1513 by the Turkish admiral Piri Reis, it was included in his atlas "Kitab-i-bakhriye" ("Book of the Seas"). Almost 200 years later, the surviving sheets of the atlas were published in Europe, but did not generate any interest. Only in 1956, when the map came to the American military cartographers, began its systematic study, which gave us several sensations.

Number one sensation

The map shows both Americas. Not surprising at first glance, because the map was completed after the voyage of Columbus. However, Columbus did not carry out such a thorough cartographic description of the area, and his expedition did not go deep into the continent, so he could not display the deltas of American rivers, and even less the Andes!

Let's see what Piri Reis himself writes about Columbus: “An unfaithful named Colombo, a Genoese, discovered these lands. In the hands of the named Colombo came one book in which he read that on the edge of the Western Sea, far in the West, there are shores and islands. All kinds of metals and precious stones were found there. The aforementioned Colombo studied this book for a long time ... Colombo also learned about the passion of the natives for glass jewelry from this book and took them with him to exchange for gold. "

It turns out that Columbus had a certain book, as well as a map, which guided him in his voyage. It can be assumed that Christopher Columbus, married to the daughter of a master of the former Knights Templar, received from him a certain ancient book, as well as a map of America, which became landmarks in his journey. Knowing where you are sailing is the key to success in the era of great geographical discoveries!

Here the conclusion is more important to us - the maps of Columbus and the maps of Piri Reis have the same ancient source! And the next sensation will tell us how ancient it is.

Sensation number two

The Piri Reis map shows the coastline of Antarctica, and it is drawn with high accuracy! The conclusions of modern scientists say that Antarctica is shown on this map even before the complete glaciation (that is, about 6000 years ago!).

Here is a report by American cartographers: “The claim that the lower part of the map shows the Princess Martha Coast, parts of the Antarctic Queen Maud Land, and the Palmer Peninsula is well founded. We found this explanation to be the most logical and, possibly, correct. The geographic details at the bottom of the map are in excellent agreement with seismic data taken through the ice cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition in 1949. This means that the coastline was mapped before it was covered in ice. The ice in this area is approximately 1.5 km thick. We have no idea how this data could have been obtained with the assumed level of geographical knowledge in 1513 ”.

Now let's compare: the glaciation of Antarctica took place at a time when the glaciers of America and Europe were melting. Those. we see before us a picture of the ancient antediluvian world! (This refers to the flood of 9612 BC, associated, according to some scientists, with the deviation of the earth's axis.)

But if we are dealing with such a perfect ancient source, the question remains: by whom and when was it created? Maybe other ancient maps can help us figure it out?

Mercator Map

Gerard van Kremer (known as Mercator), a Flemish cartographer and scientist, completed his atlas, which included several of his own maps, in 1569. Again, we are interested in the map of Antarctica, where the Amundsen Sea, Cape Gerlacher and Cape Dart on Mary Byrd Land, Thurston Island, Alexander I Island, Weddell Sea, Padda Island, Regula Ridge and other geographical objects marked on modern maps were perfectly visible.

We are, of course, interested in glaciation. It is located in a small circumpolar zone, the rest of the territory is carefully traced: rivers, valleys, mountain ranges ...
But this card is not the last in our chain ...

Philippe Bouache Card

The map was published in 1737 - almost a hundred years before the Antarctic expedition of Bellingshausen and Lazarev. The fact that the map was created even before the initial glaciation of the mainland is simply amazing! On it, East and West Antarctica are separated by a strait passing along the line of the Transantarctic mountains, which could only be found in the complete absence of glaciers!

Hypotheses: where do we get these artifacts from?

The Americans made a great contribution to the study of ancient maps. Historian, geographer, professor Charles Hapgut compared the coastline of Antarctica on all available ancient artifacts. In his book "Maps of the Sea Kings" he wrote: "This is the first convincing proof that some extremely intelligent people preceded all peoples known to history ... Ancient travelers roamed the seas from pole to pole. Surprising as it may be, there is overwhelming evidence that ancient people once explored the shores of Antarctica when they were still free of ice. It is also indisputable that they possessed such navigational tools that surpassed all those that were available to people in the Ancient World, in the Middle Ages and up to the second half of the 18th century. "

The Mercator map shows the rivers and valleys hidden under the Antarctic ice. After World War II, American scientists made a map with the center of the projection in Cairo (where the US military base was located), compared it with the ancient map of Piri Reis and found almost complete similarities. Therefore, it is logical to assume that the center of the projection of the source of the Piri Reis map was also near Cairo. It turns out that the ancient cartographers were Egyptians or their ancestors?
But how could the ancient Egyptians know the basics of spherical trigonometry and determine the exact length of the equator almost without error? (Erastofen, who measured the circumference of the Earth in antiquity, did so with a large error, unacceptable when creating such accurate maps!)

Hapgut claims that the center of the projection of the ancient Piri Reis map passes through Alexandria, where its original source may have been preserved in a famous library. As for who, in fact, composed it, there is another conjecture.

Referring to some studies, it can be assumed that the ancient cartographers were the kings of the Garamantes who ruled in Egypt at this time. Plato calls them the kings of Atlantis! Let us remember what incomprehensible knowledge, according to the legends, the Atlanteans possessed. And it is possible that they used this knowledge to create maps.

Just imagine this mighty civilization with telepathy, flying vehicles and able to create an artificial satellite of the Earth! They could very carefully study our planet from space, and then process the information received in ways that were still inaccessible to mankind. It is not clear then only what these supermen paid for? Be that as it may, I want to believe that it was they who left us an ancient heritage, which means that humanity still has a chance to reach their heights in the field of science and progress. The main thing is not to repeat their mistakes ...

The first geographical maps appeared on Earth almost simultaneously with the emergence of a person's drawing skills. True, these were not really maps, but their distant prototypes, but one thing is clear: as soon as a person began to move long distances, he began to try to comprehend his movement and, having a natural spatial sense, tried to display this in drawings. Maps in a more or less familiar form for us appeared much later, but also incredibly long ago - before our era.

The prototype of the ancient map

Initially, the “ancestors” of the cards looked like schematic drawings on the walls of caves, dwellings, ancient dishes (for example, plates), stone slabs.

For example, this "star" mural, found by archaeologists, was created in ancient Jordan and is, according to scientists, a cosmological map. In the center is the "known world", "first ocean", "second world" and "second ocean". From eight points, which, most likely, symbolized the islands, were the "beyond world" and "heavenly ocean". According to historians, the rectangle located at the bottom right is irrelevant - it is a drawing of a building (possibly a temple).

The oldest map of the world

One of the first surviving maps known to scientists is an ancient relic found in Iraq. This map, which gained great fame and influenced people's ideas about the world, was created in Babylon.

The world on it is depicted flat, round, and its center is, as you might guess, Babylon itself. The image found on a piece of clay slab is dated to the 7th century BC.

Anaximander was ahead of his time

A real breakthrough in the field of geography and cartography occurred when the map compiled by Anaximander of Miletus (610 - 540 BC) appeared. He imagined the earth in the form of an oval, which is stretched from east to west.

Anaximander, whom Aristotle himself respected and considered a great sage, was not only a geographer, but also an astronomer. He tried to compare the Earth with other space objects, and also pondered a lot about the origin of the Universe, having come to the conclusion that it is born, reaches the peak of its development, dies, and then revives again.

Neither the map of the world, drawn by Anaximander, nor its copies have survived to this day, but Herodotus wrote that the ancient scientist depicted the world on it in the form of a drum around which the ocean is located.

Information about the map of Hecateus of Miletus, who lived at about the same period, but a little later, has reached our days. According to her, the world consists of three parts - Europe, Asia and Libya. All three "continents" are located around the Mediterranean Sea. His map was made based on data from Anaximander.

The encyclopedic priest Isidore of Seville in his work "Etymology" (VII century) portrayed such an idea of \u200b\u200bthe world very similarly. The T-shape represents the sea, and the O represents the ocean. And there is already Africa here.

The father of geography (in fact, he was the first to introduce this term) is considered Eratosthenes, who in the II century BC. wrote a three-volume work, which was called “Geography”. It indicated that the earth has the shape of a ball, and the scientist confirmed this statement with his mathematical calculations. Alas, in its original form, this work has not reached modern scientists - it is known about it from the paraphrases of Roman authors. Also, the map of Eratosthenes has not survived, but it had an invaluable influence on the studies of geographers of the Middle Ages.

By the way, it was Eratosthenes who was the first to mark the meridians on the maps - however, these designations were not yet so accurate. And it was he who divided the world into five climatic zones.

The most interesting ancient maps

But such a map was created in 400 BC by the historian Herodotus:

The map of Pomponius Mela, the earliest Roman geographer who wrote the scientific work "Descriptive Geography", divides the Earth into five zones, three of which are uninhabited. Mela believed that the southern lands of our planet were inaccessible to the northerners, since they were separated from the temperate latitudes by an arid territory of unbearable heat.

Like many predecessors, he considered the Caspian Sea to be the gulf of the Northern Ocean. And this is not surprising, because in 43, when Pomponius Mela created his work, most of our planet was not studied.

Another interesting find is a mosaic map discovered in Madaba (Jordan) during archaeological excavations of the early Christian temple of St. George, represents ancient Jerusalem. The panel was made around the 6th century. It depicts churches and other structures. They are shown so realistically that modern scientists were even able to identify them - for example, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher located in the center is clearly visible. According to scientists, this is the oldest map of the Holy Land.

Ptolemy's map as a guide for posterity

Great work was done by the great scientist from Alexandria Claudius Ptolemy. In about AD 150, he drew up a map of the world, to which about 30 more separate, more detailed maps were attached. The entire treatise was called The Guide to Geography.

Ptolemy marked the location of even very remote zones - from Egypt to the Scandinavian lands and from the Atlantic to Indochina. This relic was discovered many centuries later and for a long time, up to the era of geographical discoveries, it was the main cartographic document for travelers and scientists. Subsequently, it was improved.

Continents such as Asia, Europe and Africa became more formalized on the revised map, and Jerusalem was indicated as the center of the world instead of Babylon.

Ptolemy's map is divided into equal parts by parallels and meridians. The Mediterranean zone and the Middle East are depicted more or less correctly, but as the distance to the south, Ptolemy's knowledge about other lands becomes more vague. For example, he designates the Indian Ocean as an inland sea, and the unexplored part of the African continent in the south expands and surrounds it, connecting with Asia. There is no idea about Antarctica yet - it is "uncharted land". Well, Asia, in his opinion, was so huge that it even occupied the territory on which, as it turned out many years later, the Pacific Ocean is located.

The University of Chicago recently digitized all ancient maps and published a six-volume work on the history of geography and cartography with explanations. This large-scale project on ancient cartography began in the 1980s and, possibly, it will still be supplemented by new archaeological and historical finds.

Who made the ancient maps?

Old maps keep images of a changing world. If we look at the maps of recent decades, it is easy to see how the administrative boundaries and names of states are changing, how some of them are falling apart, like ramshackle pieces of paper. Over the centuries, we will notice changes in channels and coastlines. Over the millennia, whole civilizations with cities and arable lands have been born and died. For tens of thousands of years, the climate changes noticeably, erasing the Ancient World, with its geography, flora and fauna. However, it is believed that it is impossible to see prehistoric realities on ancient maps, since people took up cartography only during the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and China, less than 4 thousand years ago. But sometimes in old atlases one can still find traces of incomprehensibly ancient eras ...

The same ancient map

Wet Sahara

The astronomer Claudius Ptolemy is considered the father of cartography, who in the II century AD, in his "Guide to the Making of Geographical Maps", generalized and put on a rigorous mathematical basis the results of the works of his predecessors. For one and a half thousand years, his work has been the basis for mapping. Numerous cartographers, from medieval monks to university professors, obediently painted how the greatest Sahara desert was crossed up and down by deep rivers flowing into non-existent lakes. After all, Ptolemy wrote with authority: "There are very large rivers flowing inside the country [of Inner Libya]".

Even modern geographers pretend that there is nothing strange in this, commenting on Ptolemy, for example, as follows: “At the beginning of our era, the western part of the Sahara had more favorable natural conditions. There were many significant rivers here. The Niger River received several tributaries from the north. " However, Ptolemy described the rivers Kinips and Gir, as well as the Chelonid swamps in ... Central and Eastern Sahara!

Six centuries before Ptolemy, Herodotus wrote about the places south of the Sirtes coast of Libya, where Ptolemy placed the trans-Saharan river Kinips: "The land is sandy, waterless and completely deserted ... The whole country lying inside [Sirte] has become completely waterless." True, he mentions the small, coastal river Kinip, which flowed into the Sirte and was only 200 stadia long (37 kilometers). But it was clearly not about the grandiose Ptolemy river system with sources in the Tibesti highlands, at a latitude of 21 degrees, 1000 kilometers south of its delta in Sirte!

The mystery is solved if you look at the map of the dry beds of the ancient rivers of the Libyan basin. There are clearly visible rivers flowing from the Tibesti mountains, merging into one river, which flowed into the Great Sirte (now Sidra) Bay of the Mediterranean Sea. Satellite imagery clearly shows a section of a giant channel 27 kilometers across, located just above the ancient delta. Note that the maximum diameter of the Nile Valley is somewhat more modest - 23 kilometers in the Fayum oasis area ...

When did the water flow there? Geologists believe that "this river disappeared under the sands of the Sahara about 12 thousand years ago, and with it the civilization, probably connected with the Nile, also perished." It turns out that the Sahara was not always a desert. For the last half a million years, it has experienced 5 times long periods of rains, when rivers flowed in the Sahara for thousands of years, large lakes splashed, and primitive hunters hunted hippos unseen in the desert now. These transformations of the desert into savannah took place with a period of about 100 thousand years.

When Homo sapiens appeared in Africa about 140 thousand years ago, the Sahara was a green plain around the giant Paleochadskoye Lake-Sea and Lake Fezzan comparable to it, from which now there is only a dry bed 400 kilometers south of Tripoli. In 2007, scientists penetrated the sands with orbital radar and discovered the shores and dry bed of another mega-lake in the Sudanese province of North Darfur. This lake splashed just in the area of \u200b\u200bPtolemy's Chelonid swamps! Apparently, the memory of the prehistoric Lake Fezzan has been preserved. So Pliny the Elder (1st century AD) mentioned the Triton swamp, which "many place between the two Sirtes", where Lake Fezzan was located. But the last lacustrine deposits of Fezzan date back to prehistoric times - more than 6 thousand years ...

Another relic of the humid Sahara is the "Nubian" tributary of the Nile - a comparable river that flowed from the Sahara and emptied into the Nile in the Aswan region, just above the Elephantine Island. This island was personally visited by Herodotus and made sure that "not a single river flows into the Nile, not a single stream that would replenish its waters." Even Ptolemy himself did not know this tributary, but European cartographers persistently painted it, starting with Mercator (1569) and up to the 18th century. When the Aswan Dam was built, Lake Nasser was formed and partially filled the ancient channel of the tributary in the form of a narrow bay that cuts into the Sahara for 35 kilometers. And in the images taken from space, the Nubian tributary can be traced 470 kilometers from the Nile as a dark strip of a dry bed, as a chain of salt lakes, and finally, as "honeycombs" of fields around wells feeding them with water from an aquifer under the scorched surface of the Sahara.

Lake and rivers of the Arabian Desert

The Arabian Desert is located near the Sahara. It has also experienced rainy eras on several occasions during interglacial warming. The last such "climatic optimum" took place 5-10 thousand years ago.

Surprisingly, on the maps built according to Ptolemy's data, we see the Arabian Peninsula, cut by rivers and with a large lake at its southern end, north of the city of Shabwa. But exactly where in the Ulm edition of Ptolemy's geography (1482) there is a lake and the inscription "aqua" (water), there is now a dry depression 200-300 kilometers across, covered with sand. On its southwestern "coast" is one of the oldest cities in Asia - Marib, which arose around 1900 BC. 50 kilometers north of Marib, a wide (about 30 kilometers) dry river valley flows into the bed of an ancient lake from the west. There is a similar river on the maps of Ptolemy. That river and lake can be seen even on maps of the 17th century, for example, at De Vit (1680).

Where the cities of Mecca and Jeddah are now located, Ptolemy placed a large river 700 kilometers long. Survey from space confirms that there, in the direction indicated by Ptolemy, stretched an ancient river valley up to 12 kilometers wide and one and a half hundred kilometers long. Even the southern tributary, merging with the main channel at Mecca, is well discernible. And where Ptolemy placed the sources of the river, now among the sands fields are green, irrigated with water from wells.

Another large Ptolemaic river that crossed Arabia and flowed into the Persian Gulf on the western coast of the United Arab Emirates is now hidden under the sand dunes. Relics of its delta can be narrow, river-like bays of the sea and salt marshes between the settlements of Al Hamra and Silah.

The strange mountains of Ptolemy

Instead of the "East European Plain" of modern geography, maps of the 15th - 16th centuries depict a vast mountain system. For centuries, geographers have persistently drawn the Hyperborean mountains, stretching along the parallels 60 ° - 62 from the Rybinsk reservoir to the Urals. Now there are only hills with a height of about 150 meters and traces of the edges of ancient glaciers that covered the northern territories in the Paleolithic. More than 20 years ago, a Lithuanian scientist specializing in paleogeography, A.A. Seybutis, identified the Hyperborean mountains with the edge of the Valdai glacier 10 - 75 thousand years ago. After all, the edges of modern glaciers in the form of ice cliffs also resemble mountains. In this regard, let us pay attention to the fact that the maps of Nikola Herman (1513) depict the Hyperborean mountains in the form of a cliff with lakes adjoining its foot, which surprisingly resemble periglacial reservoirs of melt water. However, the version of the old maps may be even more scandalous.

From the Hyperborean mountains to the southwest depart the Ripean Ptolemy mountains, which stretch in the direction of the Crimea and, passing into the Amadoc mountains, descend to latitude 50o in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Borisfen valley (Dnieper). The second spur of the Hyperborean mountains called Hippiti (or Hippici) montes stretches south to 52o latitude between the Don and the Volga, along the "Oksko-Don plain" of modern maps. Both directions of the pseudo-mountains do not correspond to the border of the Valdai glaciation, but formally coincide with the two tongues of the Dnieper glacier, which has advanced as far south as 48o - 50o latitude precisely along the Dnieper valley and along the Oka-Don plain. But it was about 250 thousand years ago ...

An independent confirmation of the glacial realities of the old maps is the name of the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov, drawn by Ptolemy in the 16th-17th centuries: Palus Meotides (Silvan 1511), Paludes Meotides (Herman 1513), Maeotis Palus (Ortelius 1638). The Latin words palus and paludis mean "swamp" and "swamp", respectively. With a maximum depth of only 15 meters, the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov drained when the ocean level dropped by about 100 meters during the glacial epoch, that is, more than 10 thousand years ago.

To the source of knowledge

Claudius Ptolemy was not a traveler, but he worked in the famous Alexandrian library of Egypt and was familiar with the works of his predecessors that have not come down to us. But what predecessors could describe the geographic realities of prehistoric eras, long before the invention of writing?

It is known that nomads and hunters (Indians, Polynesians, Eskimos) made plans and even maps, but always of small areas. From such Paleolithic cartographers, only controversial schemes and drawings of small areas have come down to us. The first known map of the universe from Babylon (500 BC) is only a rough outline depicting the Babylonian kingdom. Cartography of vast areas requires measurements and writing of the geographic coordinates of many points. This kind of activity in primitive societies is not known.

If someone in prehistoric times was engaged in something similar, then the fruits of his work could give rise to already historical legends about ancient wisdom. It is interesting that it was in Egypt that the legend about the genius of geography of prehistoric times was preserved. It was Thoth, "the god who measured this earth." Historical metrology specialist A.V. Klimenko gave interesting arguments in favor of the fact that ancient scientists, and after them the medieval authors, knew the result of Thoth's measurements.

For example, the Khorezm encyclopedist al-Biruni (beginning of the 11th century) in his work "Geodesy" wrote that the ancient Egyptian sage Hermes (the Greek version of the name Thoth) measured the circumference of the Earth in "9000 farsakhs, while the farces are 12000 cubits" A.V. Klimenko came to an interesting conclusion: all the dimensions of the earth's circumference mentioned by Aristotle, Archimedes, al-Idrisi, al-Biruni, apparently, are only attempts to convert 9000 farsahs of Thoth into other units of length. In addition, al-Biruni wrote: "In accordance with the words of Hermes, one degree [on the surface of the Earth] will be equal to 25 farces, which is 75 miles ..." The value of the Roman mile is well known and is equal to 1481 meters. It follows from this that the circumference of the Earth, according to Thoth, is 39987 kilometers, which is only 0.05% (!) Shorter than the true value if the Earth is measured along the meridian. Note that in geodesy such accuracy was achieved only at the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries with the help of optical instruments and various tricks.

He was considered the god of wisdom, counting and writing. Clement of Alexandria (II-III centuries AD) wrote about 42 sacred books of Hermes-Thoth, which were kept in the temples of Egypt. Perhaps some of his legacy ended up in the Library of Alexandria, and from there to Ptolemy. All sources reflecting the opinion of the ancient Egyptians themselves (the Turin papyrus, Manetho, Herodotus, Diodorus of Sicily) testify that Egypt has carefully kept records of the history of the country for many thousands of years. If there was such a tradition, then oral and then written information from the times of the humid Sahara, where the ancestors of the Egyptians domesticated cattle, blinded the first ceramics and created the first mummies, could have survived.

But could Egypt get information about glaciers in northern Europe? There was obviously some kind of connection between Ancient Egypt and the northern territories. It is known that Baltic amber was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. And in the first half of the 3rd century BC, in the festive procession of the king of Egypt Ptolemy II Philadelphus among exotic animals paraded "one huge polar bear".

On the fresco of another ancient Egyptian procession ... dwarf mammoth... The population of such animals really existed and became extinct already under the pharaohs - about 4 thousand years ago, but ... on the distant Wrangel Island in the Chukchi Sea.

Yet the sophisticated surveyor Thoth looks like a stranger among prehistoric tribes. He was called the "lord of foreigners". And he was also considered a god ... of the Moon, from which our planet is visible in all its details, like a school globe. Is it from the book of Thoth in the Library of Alexandria the young traveler Plutarch (about 45 - about 127) learned about the "easy" life on the moonand the fact that "the Egyptians, I remember, claim that the Moon is the seventy-second part of the Earth" (more precisely, 1/81 by mass)?