Thank you Red-Coat. that Georeferencer tool is fantastic.
It is the fable about the lake Parima or Manoa that mislead the explorers.
Probably the best Georeference is the modern town ELDORADO, It lies roughly between the old gold mine of El Callao and Las Cristinas. Las Cristinas supposedly has a proven gold deposit of about 500 tons. I estimate that the whole gold region that President Trump now claims his own, contains at least 2000 tons of gold. Maybe President Trump will rename the Manoa lake the Donald Lake?
I really enjoyed the post. In the late 90s I spent quite a bit of time in South America working for an exploration drilling company. Never got to Venezuela or Guyana. But traveled the entire length of the Amazon and Rio negro. One thing we should consider with Raleigh's map is that it is highly stylized and, like all maps of the time, highly inaccurate. This alleged lake was probably never a lake at all but a wide river. Like this part of the Amazon and Rio negro. The river is deep and wide enough for a cruise ship to navigate. The villages depicted on the map are in a European-style concept; they were in reality Indian villages constructed of timber. There was a myth that the jungle was empty. This is a myth because modern research showed that, at one time, there were thousands of village settlements that survived to the time of early contact with white men. Unfortunately, smallpox devastated these cultures.
Airborne LiDAR (laser mapping) technology has disproven the old myth that the Amazon was an untouched wilderness, revealing dense networks of pre-Columbian urban centers, garden cities, and monumental earthworks as you can see below.
Using statistical modelling, researchers estimate that more than 10,000 and perhaps as many 24,000 earthworks may still be hidden beneath the Amazon rainforest. The chronicles of Gaspar de Carvajal, the 16th-century Dominican friar who accompanied the expeditionary journeys of the Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana from the Andes to the Amazon in 1541, already described elements of this built environment.
Instead of isolated Indigenous tribes, Carvajal revelled in the teeming settlements spread along riverbanks. These were no mere jungle villages but cities with “throngs of Indians” so numerous and densely packed that “were a pin to drop from the sky, it would land on the head of an ‘Indian’, never falling to the ground”. He also described the Spanish explorers being frightened by such grandiose engineering work.
Even allowing for colonial hype, Carvajal was on to something. But waves of colonial occupiers, bearing guns, pathogens and the Bible, made short work of these ancient Amazonians, whose populations soon collapsed and with them, their towns.
So, looking at the context, the map is a highly inaccurate, stylized version of a region first encountered by Europeans. In that aspect, it is a treasure map in a historical context. The lust for gold drove the Europeans to explore and ultimately destroy those they were seeking.
The 1603 Treason Conviction: Raleigh was originally condemned to death for a false implication in the Main Plot to overthrow King James I. That death sentence was suspended, and he spent 13 years imprisoned in the Tower of London. The 1617 El Dorado Expedition: James I released Raleigh to lead an expedition to Venezuela to find the fabled gold mine of El Dorado. Violation of Royal Orders: Raleigh received strict instructions to avoid any conflict with Spanish territories or interests. The Attack on Spanish Outposts: During the journey, Raleigh's men disobeyed orders and attacked the Spanish outpost of Santo Tomé de Guayana. Appeasing Spain: The raid infuriated Spain, threatening peace negotiations. To satisfy the Spanish ambassador, James I revived the old 1603 treason sentence and had Raleigh beheaded at Palace Yard, Westminster.
Crow
davidgibbins.com
