I hasten to share another mysterious oddity from the history of cartography, and maybe the history of our land.
There is such a channel - Volgo-Donskoy. A very handy thing! Connects the Volga and Don. It is located in the place of their closest approach, provides a connection between the Caspian Sea and the World Ocean! I think it is difficult to overestimate the importance of this channel. The Turkish sultan tried to build it already in 1569, together with 22,000 soldiers, who, after a month of work, openly sent their sultan, saying that "even the entire Turkish people cannot do anything here in 100 years." Then Peter the Great in 1697 decided on this feat. The foreign specialist who led this project, realizing the failure of the undertaking, simply fled! Without building anything. It was only in 1952 that the USSR succeeded in something that no one had ever succeeded in doing. The canal was built and opened. 13 locks with a difference in heights of the Don and Volga of 44 meters !!! Appreciated? So I appreciated …
You need to know that the Don River was previously called Tanais. Here it is written about it.
The Latin inscription is Tanais, now Don.
As before, I am looking for traces of Tartary - there, in the upper left corner, there is a mention of her, why I go to this part of the maps. And suddenly I see IT
The first map of Muscovy 1546-1557 by Sigismund Herberstein:
Promotional video:
See? In a rectangle? Is there a dotted line at the smallest distance between rivers? And in general, this is a very "tasty" card. Three names of the Volga river are very interesting - RA, VOLGA and EDEL TARTARICE. An auto-translator turns out something like "The Jewel of Tartary" or Noble Tartary - EDEL-noble, precious … Interesting, right? What are these dots? Marriage card? Fantasies of cartographers? "Ostapa ponesloooo" Another card
Isaac Massa's map of Russia 1609-1640:
It's hard to call this straight line a cartographer's mistake here! The Don and Volga rivers are clearly connected and even have a name! Which I could not translate … Maybe there are connoisseurs of Latin among you? And the city of Tsaritsyn (1589-1925), Stalingrad (1925-1961), Volgograd (since 1961)
Here, in the place of interest to us, there is the letter "T" and the year 1569. "Turks 1569" - just the time when the Turkish soldiers swore their Sultan while digging the canal. But I've already figured out what it means.
Actually, this is all I found with regard to this topic. A couple of dozen more maps were reviewed, with near-zero results.
If we discard conspiracy theories, which I don’t like to do, because I still want to believe in the best, then the time when these marks appeared on the maps coincides with the attempts to build by the Turks. Maybe you've already seen this channel in your dreams? Did you ring the bell to the whole world?
But the paths must be drawn on the maps! What would be the amazement of a merchant of that time, who bought a card for fabulous money, when there is nothing where the channel should be! He would have the one who sold him the card, then he would have forced him to drag goods from the Volga to the Don on his hump!
And in general, how did the Sultan plan to overcome the 44 meters of elevation difference interesting? No, of course Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) designed 6 locks, creating the Milan canal system. But not 44 meters and 13 locks!
In general, it's up to you to judge what this could mean.
