Awful Archaeology Ep. 2: The Orontius Finaeus Map

debunking historical misconceptiopns while educating, not trusting the US gov. and insulting the French, i like this guy

I love how these conspiracy theories constantly shift between "People in ye olden days were stupid and could never do such a thing" to "People in ye olden days were super smart and their records are more accurate than modern scientific literature"

“And just like that, I’ve alienated all three of my French viewers.” 😂 “‘How did they manage to mess up where Zanzibar is?’ Because the person who made it was French.” 🤣

Literally, the second I saw the map, I thought “Oh, it’s Australia, but the map maker wasn’t terribly accurate.”

Honestly, this map would be great for a D&D game, or a fantasy novel.

With how good humanity is at naming things "Bone Desert" "Wet Ocean" and "Foot" aren't really that far off

An important factor to remember when explaining this map is the historical "terra australis theory". This was the idea that the planet's land mass ought to be balanced between north and south, so the continents in the northern hemisphere (mainly the enormous landmass of Eurasia) just be balanced out by a huge southern continent. They saw there was land south of Indonesia and south of Argentina, so they assumed they were the edges of the southern continent. This continent was called 'Terra Australis', and Australia kept the name.

As a French I am so pretentious that I am always proud to see anyone use our national clichés and silly accent.

I love how these pseudo-archeologists call something from the 1500s "ancient".

Oversimplified: French guy with no credibility makes an inaccurate map, 500 years later conspiracy theorist used it to make inaccurate theories.

I love how it never crosses a conspiracy theorist's mind that cartography was extremely difficult back in the day and some people just straight up sucked at it.

I remember in kindergarten, learning basic geography and how the Americas were "discovered" (from the West's POV), and thinking "what if there is another continent out there we still haven't found?!" and then quickly remembered (before asking my teacher and embarrassing myself thankfully) we have boats, planes, and satellites, so obviously not. All this to say, a kindergartener had the ability to see through this conspiracy, and not a particularly smart one either.

Most debunkers: Look, we all know this is ridiculous, but in the name of science and education, let's just politely go through each point and explain how and why that's not the case. MiniMinuteMan: Each and every one of them has an easily identifiable band of wool pulled over their eyes, and their heads shoved firmly up their a-

What is more accurate: A. A couple of lines drawn on a piece of paper from the somewhat accurate guesswork of professional sailors. B. Ultra high-resolution photographs, of the entire fucking planet, from space. If you answered A, please stay away from small objects, they're a choking hazard.

The photo popping up when you said “in the hands of a ravenous toddler” made my entire day.

Fun Fact: if you remove the ice on Antarctica, it becomes clear that it isn't land covered in ice, its an archipelago covered in ice!

As someone who's job it is to create maps in modern software, people who bring up these old maps of proof of anything beyond "we were still filling in the Earth and this was the best guess by this person" physically pains me.

"I was a fucking weird kid...and now I'm a weird adult. Funny how that happens." yeah i felt that

"When his pregnant wife died in a car accident in '86, Quist had the 6 and-a-half month old fetus placed in his wife's arms *IN AN OPEN CASKET*" What in the actual fuckity fuck was that subtext?

I never understood how people will look at a single drawing from the past and use them as proof for some conspiracy. If that’s the case then people in the future are going to believe that we lived with big breasted cat girls from Japan from all the art we made 😂😂😂