The Amazon River Modeled as a Giant Snake

Abstract

In the sixteenth century, dozens of nautical maps represented the Amazon River as a giant snake with its tail in the Andes Mountains and its head on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. The scientific goal of this paper was to explain the evolution and relationships of these maps. The research method used was a comparative analysis of the shapes on hundreds of sixteenth-century maps followed by mathematical geoinformation modeling of two-dozen. This paper created the following types of models (generalizations) for this shape of the Amazon River: (1) pick one map as being characteristic and then remove all details except for the snake-like representation of the Amazon River, (2) use image processing software to average the individual pixels in the human brain or an image stored in a computer, and (3) make a mathematical model of this snake-shaped river. This paper primarily used this third approach. The following river geometry parameters were used: Number of cycles of the shape, Distance of the river from the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean, Distance from the start to the end of the sinusoidal portion of the river, Average Period of the river, Average Amplitude, and Average Width. The results of this research show that the Giant Snake Model for the shape of the Amazon River was often used on sixteenth-century nautical world maps. It was invented by Antonio Pereira, Sebastian Cabot, and their cartographers in 1544–45 AD. This is a mathematical representation of the Giant Snake Model:Amazon River North - South Position = CeDxSin ((F- Ex) x) - Gx as a function of x, the west to east position. The first exploration of the Amazon River by Europeans occurred in 1541–42. For the next 60 years, few Europeans explored the Amazon, so the geospatial information about it remained static. Then around the turn of the seventeenth century, many explorers and proselytizers (Priests trying to convert the natives to the Roman Catholic religion) traversed South America. Knowledge about the shape of the Amazon River became better. This new knowledge instigated the creation of better models with more realistic shapes for the Amazon River.