Antarctica: Most recent evidence strongest?

Can the history of the mapping of Antarctica help us to understand whether the most recent evidence is inevitably the strongest ?

Above is a map of the southern hemisphere made by Covens and Mortier in Amsterdam in 1741, and you can see that Antarctica is missing, where we would expect to find Antarctica on a modern map is just a big empty space on this map - this is because apparently we didn’t find Antarctica until January 1820. In the words of popular culture we didn’t “discover” antarctica until January 1820. We’ll come back to that notion later in this video.

Here’s a map of the world drawn by Turkish Admiral Piri Reis in 1513 many argue that it shows the northern coastline of Antarctica. How does this map, drawn 307 yrs before we discovered Antarctica show the Antarctic coastline ?

Here is a map drawn by Oronteus Finaeus drawn in 1531 that not only shows Antarctica, but it shows it ice free, and also accurately shows the mountains and the rivers of the continent in their correct places. Again, this was drawn 290 yrs before we apparently discovered Antarctica.

There are many other maps drawn 100s of years before Antarctica was apparently discovered that show Antarctica in its correct position, with accurate depictions of its coastline, the position of the southpole, and the position of mountains and rivers. The shortened version of the reason for the existence of these maps is simply that we didn’t discover Antarctica in 1820, we have known about the continent for millenia. However, for a multitude of possible reasons we lost that knowledge.

If you want to know more about why we lost that knowledge, and possibly lots of other knowledge check out the work of Graham Hancock, his Netflix  series Ancient Apocalypse is an excellent starting point.

ToK specific learning relating to maps and 'lost' knowledge.

1. This has direct relevance to ToK Essay 6 May 24 - should we assume the most recent evidence is the strongest ? The examples of these maps clearly shows that the most recent evidence may be incomplete in comparison to earlier evidence. The maps from the early 18th and 19th century did not show Antarctica merely because the cartographers were not aware of it despite earlier cartographers knowing of its existence, and showing it on their maps.

2. It shows that the development of knowledge is not necessarily linear nor cumulative. Meaning that later knowledge does not necessarily build on earlier knowledge, it could ignore that knowledge, that knowledge could be deemed to be wrong when the new knowledge was constructed, or crucially the evidence upon which the older knowledge is based could be judged to be too weak, unreliable or inaccurate to be taken into account when the most recent evidence is constructed.

3. It shows that evidence is both perspective based and highly contextualised. The maps from the 16th and 19th century are different because they are constructed by knowers with different perspectives, operating in different contexts with different intentions, purpose and assumptions.

On a further point, these maps link to ToK Essay 4 May 24 about the challenges of Transferring knowledge from one context to another. Arguably, the context in which the 19th century maps were made was markedly different from the context within which the 16th century maps were made, as such much of the knowledge from 16th century was not transferred to the 19th century. Arguably, in the 19th century it was believed, like today, that their latest scientific navigational & mapping instruments were far superior to anything that had existed during an earlier age, and therefore evidence produced using these instruments was far superior to evidence produced during an earlier period without these scientific instruments. The lack of knowledge transfer from one context to another shows that one of the variables influencing the transfer of knowledge is the values and assumptions underpinning the construction and meaning of knowledge.

Was Antarctica 'discovered', 'found' or constructed ?

Did sailors discover Antarctica in 1820, or did they find Antarctica in 1820 ? It may be a small semantic difference, but that difference could represent significant differences in our values concerning knowledge, or knowledge value system so to speak. The word discover could imply that Antarctica was of little significance before it became known to those particular knowers, whereas the word “find” places the emphasis of not knowing about it on the knowers themselves.

Now, we could throw a third concept in here - that of construction. Did the sailors construct the knowledge of Antarctica back in 1820 is a different way of approaching this question. I’m not suggesting that they imagined the continent in a form of fantasy , nor that the continent did not exist before they had knowledge of it. Construct in this sense means that they formed particular knowledge of Antarctica which gave us one coherent concept of the continent, some things will have been left out of that concept, further, Antarctica has radically changed over the millennia - these changes will not be in the concept. Our knowledge of Antarctica is not Antarctica itself, it is merely a limited concept of Antarctica - yes, we’re in Plato’s cave, it’s a friendly place to be, we could say that it’s platonic !

This swiftly brings me to the final bit of ToK learning from these maps - The early 19th century maps do not show Antarctica because they didn’t have any evidence of Antarctica in the early 19thC, or at least they didn’t have anything that they would deem to be evidence of antarctica. As such there is an absence of Antarctica on the maps because there’s an absence of evidence of antarctica. However, today, all of our latest and best evidence shows that Antarctica does exist, as such  In the early 19th C there was an absence of evidence of antarctica, but this was not evidence that antarctica does not exist. Too often in the sciences and other AoKs we believe that an absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

This is my second blog in 2 weeks on maps, I love maps - there’s so much to learn from maps. I am also reading and learning a lot from Graham Hancock at the moment. Hancock is a historian who has challenged the dominant paradigms of history & archeology and has been ostracised and belittled by Historians and Archeologists for challenging the accepted assumptions of those disciplines. He has slowly & methodically gathered evidence to prove his case, and has grown in status and acceptability as a consequence.

If you want to know more about ToK Essays 4 & 5 May 24, or any of the other ToK Essays May 24 click here.

Daniel, Lisbon, Nov 23

Detailed guidance video for ToK Essay 6 May 24