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The Antilles refers to the islands forming the greater part of the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea.
The Antilles are divided into two major groups: the "Greater Antilles" to the north including the larger islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and Puerto Rico; and the smaller"Lesser Antilles" on the southeast — comprising the northerly Leeward Islands, the southeasterly Windward Islands, and the Leeward Antilles just north of Venezuela.

The word Antilles originated in the period before the European conquest of the New World — Antilia being one of those mysterious lands which figured on the medieval charts, sometimes as an archipelago, sometimes as continuous land of greater or lesser extent, its location fluctuating in mid-ocean between the Canary Islands and India.

After the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus's expedition in what was later called the West Indies, the European powers realized that the dispersed lands comprised an extensive archipelago enclosing the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Thereafter, the term Antilles was commonly assigned to the formation, and "Sea of the Antilles" became a common alternate name for the Caribbean Sea in various European languages.

Antillia (or Antilia) is a phantom island said to lie in the Atlantic Ocean far to the west of Portugal and Spain. This mythical island had several other names such as Isle of Seven Cities, Ilha das Sete Cidades (Portuguese), Septe Cidades, Sanbrandan (or St Brendan), etc. Antillia was also identified with islands including the Isles of the Blest and the Fortunate Islands.

The origin of the name is quite uncertain. The oldest suggested etymology (1455) fancifully connects it with the name of the Platonic Atlantis, while later writers have endeavoured to derive it from the Latin anterior (i.e. the island that is reached "before" Cipango), or from the Jezirat al Tennyn, "Dragon's Isle".

The legend of the islands seems to have arisen at the latest in pre-Christian Roman times when Plutarch chronicled (in 74 AD, chapter 8 refers) the life of the Roman military commander and Consul of Spain Quintus Sertorius (died 75 BC). After returning by sea to Spain after a campaign in "Mauretania" (modern northern Morocco), Sertorius "met some sailors who had recently come back from the Atlantic Islands." It was from these men that Sertorius learned facts so beguiling that he made it his life's ambition to find the islands and retire there.

A Portuguese legend tells how the island was settled by the Archbishop of Porto accompanied by six bishops and their parishioners in either 714 or 734 in the face of the Moorish conquest of Iberia. The archbishop and bishops each founded a city, known as Aira, Anhuib, Ansalli, Ansesseli, Ansodi, Ansolli and Con. A similar Spanish tradition claims that these bishops were all Spanish.

Antilia is first marked in the Pizzigano Chart of 1424 together with the island Satanazes (devil's island). It reappears in the maps of the Genoese B. Beccario or Beccaria (1435), and of the Venetian Andrea Bianco (1436), and again in 1455 and 1476. In most of these it is accompanied by the smaller and equally legendary islands of Royllo, St Atanagio, and Tanmar, the whole group being classified as insulae de novo repertae, "newly discovered islands". The Florentine Paul Toscanelli, in his letters to Columbus and the Portuguese court (1474), takes Antilia as the principal landmark for measuring the distance between Lisbon and the island of Cipango or Zipangu (Japan).


Model: NIKON D40
Software: Capture NX 1.0.0 W
Exposure Time: 2/100 sec
F-Stop: f/3.5
ISO Speed Ratings: 400
Focal Length: 18/1 mm
Date Taken: 2008-04-29 23:22
Metering Mode: Pattern
Flash: Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode
File Size: 191 kb