# In 1485 Columbus sailed the ocean blue? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 8, 2001, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-1485-columbus-sailed-the-ocean-blue/64717 "2001-05-08T03:30:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2001, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-1485-columbus-sailed-the-ocean-blue/64717/1 "2001-05-08T03:30:35Z")
That couldn’t be true because it doesn’t rhyme. Tuesday’s _Times_ (London) has a story about the claim that Columbus secretly sailed to America in 1485, and his 1492 voyage was actually his second trip here. See [the story](http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-126037,00.html) (I’m not sure if registration is required, but I don’t think so). Supposedly the 1513 Piri Reis Map from the Ottoman Empire has an inscription saying America was discovered by an infidel from Genoa in 1485 or 1486 A.D. According to a historian named Ruggero Marino, Columbus was sent on his first voyage by Pope Innocent VIII and his Medici relatives. Innocent died in 1492 and, according to Marino, his Spanish successor gave the New World to Spain. I have a hard time buying it. If the whole thing was so secret, how did the mapmaker (Ottoman Admiral Piri Reis) find out about it? Isn’t it simpler to assume the admiral just got the year wrong? And this map is not without controversy. It has been used as “proof” by various crackpot authors for their various crackpot theories (Atlantis, Bermuda triangle, space aliens, etc.) See [this site](http://www.bermuda-triangle.org/Theories/Electromagnetism/Worlds_Below__/Legend_of_the_Lost/Piri_Reis_Map/piri_reis_map.html) . The map was lost for centuries and rediscovered in 1929. That sort of thing always makes me suspicious. Even if the map is authentically old, the annotation about the discovery of America could have been added at any time before 1929. A similar thing happened with the Vinland map, which is probably an authentically old map of the known world, but with Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland added much later. But what’s really odd is that the map has been studied by scholars for 72 years and nobody noticed until now that there’s an inscription that says an infidel from Genoa discovered America in 1485. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2001, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-1485-columbus-sailed-the-ocean-blue/64717/2 "2001-05-08T04:18:56Z")
Depends on your definition of “America” anyway. Columbus himself never reached a continental land mass, AFAIK - his landings were in the Bahamas and the Caribbean. I’m confused - wasn’t the Vinland map the one that was concluded to be a modern forgery, not the Piri Reis map? ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2001, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-1485-columbus-sailed-the-ocean-blue/64717/3 "2001-05-08T04:49:03Z")
I didn’t mean to say I thought the Piri Reis map was a forgery, just that it seems a little suspicious. The Vinland map is another thing completely. For a long while most serious experts thought it was a complete hoax, but now it appears that it may be an authentic old map of the Old World to which some modern hoaxer has added Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland. I’m not sure if that theory is right, but it does make me wonder what sorts of things might have been added to the Piri Reis map before it was rediscovered. For more about the Vinland map, see [http://www.vikinganswerlady.org/vkhoaxes.htm](http://www.vikinganswerlady.org/vkhoaxes.htm) I think Columbus did reach the mainland of South America and Central America, but not until his third and fourth voyages (or is it fourth and fifth?). ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2001, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-1485-columbus-sailed-the-ocean-blue/64717/4 "2001-05-08T05:11:56Z")
Well, we know his wife died around 1485 and that he arrived in the court of Their Catholic Majesties looking for funding in January, 1486. There are several events in late 1485 and early 1486 that note Columbus showing up one place or another with his 5- or 6-year-old son. To sneak off across the Atlantic in that period (then keeping absolutely quiet about where he had been while eking out a living for nearly seven years begging for funds to try it again, and apparently slitting the throats of his entire crew so that they, too, would not speak of it), seems just a bit farfetched. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2001, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-1485-columbus-sailed-the-ocean-blue/64717/5 "2001-05-08T14:48:37Z")
Well, I can’t debunk the map, but I sure can address the “proof” of the papal inscription, thanks to Google. Golly, I love the Internet. From Biblio’s link: [http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-126037,00.html](http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-126037,00.html) > [@](#): > > Ruggero Marino, a writer and historian, said the 1492 journey was a return visit. He said this emerged from study of an early 16th-century Ottoman map, which showed that Columbus found America in 1485, during the reign of Pope Innocent VIII. > > Signor Marino said there was corroborative proof in an inscription on the tomb of Innocent VIII, in St Peter’s Basilica, which reads “Novi orbis suo aevo inventi gloria”, meaning that during his pontificate “the glory of the discovery of the New World” took place. Innocent VIII died at the end of July 1492, before Columbus set sail and three months before he landed at the Bahamas. “The inscription either anticipates Columbus’s success or else refers to an earlier journey,” Signor Marino said. Um. Point #1: [http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient\_rome/E/Gazetteer/](http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Gazetteer/) Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/.Texts/Lanciani/LANPAC/5\*.html#sec27 [I put a space in between Gazetteer and Places so it wouldn’t disable the word wrap in the thread] > [@](#): > > THE TOMB OF INNOCENT VIII. This noble work, by Antonio Pollaiuolo, is set against the second pilaster of the nave of S. Peter’s on the left side, opposite the “Porta dei Musici.” > > The inscription on the tomb of Innocent VIII. mentions, among the glories of his pontificate, the discovery of a new world. Thirty years before his election Constantinople had been taken by the infidels; but the conquests made in the West brought a compensation for the losses sustained on the shores of the Bosphorus. Innocent lived to hear of the capture of Granada and of the conquest of Ferdinand of Aragon, in the Moorish provinces of southern Spain; and just at that time the Hispano-Portuguese branch of the great Latin family seems to have burst forth with renewed vitality and religious enthusiasm, destined to give Rome new victories and new worlds. Bartolomeo Diaz had already doubled the Cape of Good Hope; the sea route to India was opened. The Pope could once again consider himself the master of the world, and was able to present John II. of Portugal with “the lands of Africa, whether known or unknown.” The “New World” could refer to Africa and India, not America. Point #2: Back then, with a Pope, it wasn’t like where the guy dies and you bury him and the grave marker is like a time capsule. “Well, we know when he was buried because it says 1492 on the gravestone.” The tomb itself took years to construct, and wasn’t completed until 1495 or 1498, depending on whom you ask. The inscription could indeed be referring to America, but it could easily have been added at any time between 1492 and 1498. [http://www.xrefer.com/entry/252896](http://www.xrefer.com/entry/252896) > [@](#): > > His [Antonio Pollaiuolo’s] most important sculptures were carried out with Piero in St Peter’s in the 1490s. They are the bronze tombs of Sixtus IV (1493) and of Innocent VIII (c. 1495). [http://www.xrefer.com/entry/439785](http://www.xrefer.com/entry/439785) > [@](#): > > The two most important commissions (for which Antonio was workshop head) are both documented and dated, the Tomb of Sixtus IV (signed by Antonio and dated 1493) in the Vatican Museums and the Tomb of Innocent VIII (1492-8) in St. Peter’s. [http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~acd/List.html](http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~acd/List.html) > [@](#): > > Antonio Pollaiuolo, tomb of Pope Innocent VIII, St. Peter’s, Rome, 1492-98. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2001, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-1485-columbus-sailed-the-ocean-blue/64717/6 "2001-05-08T17:29:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Duck Duck Goose \* > \*\*The tomb itself took years to construct, and wasn’t completed until 1495 or 1498, depending on whom you ask. The inscription could indeed be referring to America, but it could easily have been added at any time between 1492 and 1498. > \*\* This was my first thought, but, on reflection, one can see an obvious problem. By 1498 everyone may have known about Columbus’s ‘discovery’, but how many had realised that this was a ‘new world’? Cecil seems inclined to agree with the theory that it was Amerigo Vespucci who first realised that it was and that his theory did not become widely publicised until the 1500s. [http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4\_021.html](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_021.html) This does not mean that the new theory is in any way convincing. If the news was sufficiently public that it could be alluded to on a tomb in Rome and an Ottoman map, it can hardly have been a big secret and yet everyone else seems to have overlooked it. Whoever had backed him in 1485 would later have made sure that as many people as possible knew about it. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2001, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-1485-columbus-sailed-the-ocean-blue/64717/7 "2001-05-15T11:35:22Z")
Today’s [London] _Times_ carries a letter from a Mr. Bryan Tofts of Caerphilly in response to the original article which points out what may be the crucial problem with the evidence from the Piri Reis map. [http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,59-201748,00.html](http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,59-201748,00.html) In case that link doesn’t work, I can quote Mr. Tofts’ letter in full. > [@](#): > > \*\*Sir, I was interested to read about Columbus’s “earlier” discovery of America (report, May 8). Charles H. Hapgood, in his book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, includes a detailed description of the Piri Reis map, including a translation of the annotations to be found in the margins. > The annotation quoted in your report as being “the key to the mystery” because it refers to “the year 890 of the Arab era”, is given in Hapgood’s book, inter alia, as: > > These coasts are named the shores of Antilia. They were discovered in the year 896 of the Arab calendar. But it is reported thus, that a Genoese infidel, his name was Columbo, he it was who discovered these places. > > The translation is accredited to Professor Dr Afet Inan, Ankara, 1954. > > It would appear that someone is misreading a zero for a six. > \*\*