Ancient Maps Out of Place and Time

In my book, Our Unknown Ancient Past, I included the world map of Herodotus, a map based on the descriptions of the ancient Greek historian, in reference to Atlantis. There, one can see the Atlas Mountain-range in the north-western edge of Africa. I would now like to discuss this map further, as it contains more interesting information.

First of all, you can see the Indus River on the far right. This is important, as ancient Greeks were not supposed to know about the Indus River at the time of Herodotus. Alexander the Great reached India, but that was long after the time of Herodotus. This is further proof that the old stories of Dionysus and Hercules campaigning up to India are more than just stories, just like I argue in my book. In fact India was known to the Greeks al least since the time of Homer, as the great poet tells of the Ethiopians of the far east, opposite to the ones of Africa, taking it clear he was talking about the people of India.

Secondly, you can not help but notice that the Nile River starts from the Atlas Mountain-range. A river going through the Sahara, especially the Nile, does not make sense, based on the topology we are familiar with. However, science has recently revealed that there used to be an enormous paleoriver, Tamanrasset, that used to flow across the Sahara even up until 3.000 BC from sources in the southern Atlas mountains and Hoggar highlands. Obviously the Nile River of Herodotus is not Tamanrasset, but it's an amazing coincidence that there was actually a major river flowing from the Atlas Mountains. It is reasonable to assume that Herodotus learned there was once a big river flowing from Atlas Mountains and figured that this river was the Nile, since there was no other big river in Sahara during his time.

Interestingly enough, there is a Ptolemaic world map of the Roman era showing the ecumene (Greek word for the world) you can find in the same Wikipedia page as the map of Herodotus. This map shows rivers that no longer exist, running all over northern Africa. This cannot be the modern Senegal River of west Africa, as the map shows several unconnected rivers (not just one), some of which flow into the Mediterranean. The longest of those rivers goes far east, reaching very close to the Nile.

A few years back the information on both maps would be dismissed as fictional. Yet, ever since 2015 when we learned of the paleorivers of Sahara, things have changed. We now have additional reasons to believe that ancient people knew much more about the world than we thought. Charles Hapgood showed that the ancients knew about Antarctica. Now it seems that they also know about the paleorivers of Sahara, something even we did not know 8 years ago. How did they know all this and, most importantly, what else in the ancient texts was true all along that is currently believed to be simple myth?