[SunkenCiv]

Thanks martin.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[Fred Nerks]

If proved to be authentic it will lend weight to the theory that Spanish or Portuguese navigators ‘discovered’ Australia’s eastern seaboard centuries before Capt Cook...

no it won't, it will only prove someone dropped a coin...

Here's my favourite prior claim to Australia:

Facsimile of chart from Nicholas Vallard's manuscript sea atlas (1547), now held in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. The facsimile was given the title "The first Map of Australia from Nicholas Vallard's Atlas, 1547" by the publisher, in 1856. The original chart was produced in Dieppe, France in the 16th century, and was thought to represent Portuguese charting of the northeastern coast of Australia.

Don't ask me about the camels, the horses and the large feline...not to mention the very Balinese-looking buildings and the elaborate clothing of the 'inhabitants' - Australian aboriginals went naked and the umbrella would have terrified them!

[Fred Nerks]

Another nail in Cook’s coffin as map suggests he was pipped by Portugal

A set of maps unearthed in Australia appear to show that Captain Cook was predated by a little known Portuguese explorer, Cristovao Mendonca, who charted parts of the coastline 250 years earlier. Drawn in the early 16th century, the charts bear a close resemblance to Australia's coastline, and this coastline is marked with locations given names in Portuguese...

[SunkenCiv]