Maldives Island Quotes

Having a shared common source, or deriving from different but closely similar sources, provides a simple explanation for why the Cantino and Reinal maps are so much alike in almost all respects and also, crucially, why both contain similar mistakes. As I was already aware from Sharif Sakr's first report [...] these mistakes include the absence of the Kathiawar peninsula with its characteristic Gulfs of Kutch and Cambay; a distinct bulge in the north-west corner of India; enlargement of many small island groups, and a south-westerly orientation (with what Sharif describes as 'distinct lips') of the southern tip of India. In his e-mail of 23 February 2001 he then makes the crucial observation that: 'While these deviations are all errors relative to a modern map of India, they in fact match up extremely well with Glenn Milne's map of India 21,300 years ago at LGM. This inundation map shows a large indent at the mouth of the Indus, a bulge obscuring completely the Kathiawar peninsula, enlarged Lakshadweep and Maldives islands, and, most surprisingly, a SW-pointing 'mouth' shape at India's southern tip that is virtually identical to that shown by Reinal.' It seems to me that these correlations, and the others that Sharif reported [...], are obvious, striking and speak for themselves. The only questions that need to be asked about them are: (1) do they result from the workings of coincidence? Or (2) are they there because the source maps for Cantino and Reinal were originally drawn at the end of the Ice Age -- perhaps not as far back as the LGM but certainly before the final inundation of the Gulfs of Kutch and Cambay which created the Kathiawar peninsula around 7700 years ago?

We hit the Maldives for a surfing break. The islands are right on the equator, and the heat was incredible. Bindi didn’t understand traditional Muslim clothing. The women wore black burkas, with just a small panel to look through, and Bindi worried about them in the heat. Somewhere along the line, she had picked up some verbiage that she then blurted out loudly in the street when we encountered a heavily swathed Muslim woman. “Mummy, is that an oppressed woman?” Not wanting to cause an incident, I hustled us both away. I tried to explain about differences in cultures and religions, how sometimes what you wore was an indication of modesty, rather than oppression. But in the back of my mind was the thought, Out of the mouths of babes.