The God Culture: 100 Lies About the Philippines: #11 The Philippines is Cattigara

Welcome back to 100 lies The God Culture teaches about the Philippines. Today's lie concerns Timothy Jay Schwab's assertion that the Philippines is Cattigara which is a place located on Ptolemy's map of the world. This lie is a direct result of Tim's unfamiliarity with all of the primary sources regarding Magellan's voyage around the world except for Pigafetta's journal. 

Tim's main and only argument for this erroneous assertion is that Antonio Pigafetta recorded that they set a course for that place and landed at Samar in the Philippines. Thus all other claims are bogus.

Cattigara, Philippines. Finding the Land of Gold. Solomon's Gold Series 15C. 

18:31 So, as you see on the map here Magellan is headed not just to the Philippines but very specifically to between the 12th and 13th degree north which is known as Samar on the map. Just look at it. There it is. Okay you know like Samaria? Yeah Columbus was going where? To meet up with the lost tribes of Israel. Who would name Samaria? Don't know. So hard to figure that out of course. Pigafetta just told us that is where Cattigara is. Done. Settled. This is fact and it's not up for debate.

Actually that is not what Pigafetta says. He says they set course for Cattigara but he never claimed that Samar is Cattigara. In fact the place is never mentioned again in the whole of his journal. Samar is also not in between the 12th and 13th degree.

Let's not forget that Tim claims Pigafetta is the only eyewitness account to Magellan's voyage.

2:00 The problem is well, they ignore history, real history, about as valid as you get such as Pigafetta's journal, the only eyewitness account of Magellan's arrival in the Philippines.

That is wrong on so many levels and reveals the total ignorance of Timothy Jay Schwab and his alleged research team. The fact is while Pigafetta's journal is an important source of information about the first voyage around the world there are other eyewitness accounts. Back in Spain the surviving crew were subject to interrogation. That testimony and a complete description of the voyage can be read at this link but it's all in Spanish. Maximilianus Transylvanus, a courtier of Emperor Charles V, actually interviewed the surviving crew members and wrote a summary of the voyage. 

Now, the book of the aforesaid Peter having disappeared, Fortune has not allowed the memory of so marvellous an enterprise to be entirely lost, inasmuch as a certain noble gentleman of Vicenza called Messer Antonio Pigafetta (who, having gone on the voyage and returned in the ship Vittoria, was made a Knight of Rhodes), wrote a very exact and full account of it in a book, one copy of which he presented to His Majesty the Emperor, and another he sent to the most Serene Mother of the most Christian King, the Lady Regent.

As this voyage may be considered marvellous, and not only unaccomplished, but even unattempted either in our age or in any previous one, I have resolved to write as truly as possible to your Reverence the course (of the expedition) and the sequence of the whole matter. I have taken care to have everything related to me most exactly by the captain and by the individual sailors who have returned with him. They have also related each separate event to Cæsar and to others with such good faith and sincerity, that they seemed not only to tell nothing fabulous themselves, but by their relation to disprove and refute all the fabulous stories which had been told by old authors. 

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_First_Voyage_Round_the_World/Letter_of_Maximilian,_the_Transylvan

In his introduction Maximilianus recognizes the importance and worth of Pigafetta's published journal and tells us that what is to follow was related to him by the surviving crew members. That is crucial for what he writes about concerning Cattigara.

When our men had set sail from Thedori, one of the ships, and that the larger one, having sprung a leak, began to make water, so that it became necessary to put back to Thedori. When the Spaniards saw that this mischief could not be remedied without great labour and much time, they agreed that the other ship should sail to the Cape of Cattigara, and afterwards through the deep as far as possible from the coast of India, lest it should be seen by the Portuguese, and until they saw the Promontory of Africa, which projects beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, and to which the Portuguese have given the name of Good Hope; and from that point the passage to Spain would be easy. But as soon as the other ship was refitted, it should direct its course through the archipelago, and that vast ocean towards the shores of the continent which we mentioned before, till it found that coast which was in the neighbourhood of Darien, and where the southern sea was separated from the western, in which are the Spanish Islands, by a very narrow space of land. So the ship sailed again from Thedori, and, having gone twelve degrees on the other side of the equinoctial line, they did not find the Cape of Cattigara, which Ptolemy supposed to extend even beyond the equinoctial line; but when they had traversed an immense space of sea, they came to the Cape of Good Hope and afterwards to the Islands of the Hesperides.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_First_Voyage_Round_the_World/Letter_of_Maximilian,_the_Transylvan

At this point in the voyage it is December 1521 and the crew are on the island of Tidore which is in the Moluccas. One of the ships springs a leak but it cannot be fixed. The other ship is told to press ahead to the Cape of Cattigara but they are never able to find it. 

There you go. Simple as that. Neither Pigafetta nor the surviving crew members claim Samar is the Cape of Cattigara or that they ever found its actual location. There is more to this story as those who listened to the testimony of these men decided that Gilolo island in the Moluccas was Cattigara.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=miun.afk2830.0001.001&view=1up&seq=219&skin=2021

Item: it can not be denied that the island of Gilolo, lying near the Maluco Islands, is the cape of Catigara, inasmuch as the companions of Magallanes journeyed westward upon leaving the strait discovered in fifty-four degrees of south latitude, sailing such a distance west and northeast that they arrived in twelve degrees of north latitude where were found certain islands, and one entrance to them. Then running southward four hundred leagues, they passed the Maluco islands and the coast of the island of Gilolo, without finding any cape on it. Then they took their course toward the Cabo Buena Esperanza [Good Hope] for Spain. Therefore then the cape of Catigara can only be the said island of Gilolo and the Malucos.

Are these men, who were well acquainted with the testimony of the entire crew dunderheads and ninny's who ignored actual history? Of course not. 

Tim ends this video by maligning Scottish Physician and writer John Caverhill.

37:10 John Caverhill deduced in 1767, before this map was created, that's why we want to cover this, that Cattigara was the Mekong Delta. Okay, so, we're talking about essentially Vietnam, okay. So he deduced? Is that an accurate word? Not even remotely. Is that what you call a ridiculous guess founded on nothing but ignorance? You mean he ignores Magellan? You know the actual explorer who found and corrected the course to Cattigara in writing and then he tries to figure it out? But well he's an idiot who ignores history then claims to be an historian. Ta-dah. Enough of this stupidity

Then in a faux retard voice he says:

I be academic so I forget the explorer who landed on Cattigara who left actual coordinates. Uh, no. I'm gonna throw that out and just make up my own location because, well, that's academic.

I agree. Enough of this stupidity. Neither Pigafetta nor the rest of Magellan's crew claim they ever landed on or found Cattigarra. The Philippines is not Cattigara.