Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings

It is a very strange book. Written apparently for the cartography expert in mind it is a lengthy treatise on the analysis of a set of maps from late antiquity and early modernity which show some interesting features and anomalies. He seems to have uncovered that some ancient maps had been based on maps that had been originally laid out with an “oblate” spherical trigonometry. This spherical geometry is preserved in the errors of longitude and latitude that were created by the later map makers when copying them to a different projection. It suggests that in deep antiquity the maps had reached a point of sophistication not seen until the 17th century of the modern era, and then had declined to the state we understand it to be in during the Classical era of Alexandrian and Greek cartography. And then furthermore, there are geographic anomalies in some of these old maps that suggest they had been made using copies of maps that were first charted from ~4,000-7,000 BCE as source material.

I think there is a lot of intriguing ideas and evidence in this book, but it is extremely difficult to read. I eventually gave up trying to understand all of what he was saying and would skip to passages where he summarizes his findings. However, half of the book is also an extensive appendix of notes, which contain a great deal of interesting reference information. This is certainly a book worth owning and skimming through. Not sure I can recommend reading the whole thing though!