Friday Photo: A Chinese map showing the path to Eden

The Strange Maps blog over at Big Think entitled its latest entry, "East is Eden: Adam and Eve's Chinese Garden". It's an interesting description about the man who made the map that showed where he believed Eden actually was, which was in China. As Frank Jacobs explains:

They are the work of Tse Tsan-tai (1872-1938), a Chinese revolutionary, newspaperman and Christian propagandist. Born in Sydney and baptised James Yee, Tse moved to Hong Kong whence he started agitating for the Qing dynasty on the mainland to be replaced by a democratic republic. The plot failed to come to fruition, and Tse had more success co-founding the South China Morning Post in 1903.

The second map gives an indication of the geopositional shoehorning Tse applied to the geographical indications in Genesis, identifying India with Havilah. The result is the location of Eden in what appears to be a most unlikely place: an area between the Tarim River and the Kuen Lun Mountains better known today as the Taklamakan Desert. The area, now the world’s second-largest sand desert after the Empty Quarter in Arabia, is one of the most inhospitable places on earth.

Yeah: right in the middle of the map is Eden. That location appears to be roughly where the green arrow is:

View Untitled in a larger map

Apparently, all you need to do is head west from Bayingol along G314, and then turn south at Luntai, taking S165. Forty miles after you cross the (most likely) dry river, drive west into the desert.

This is a rather fanciful notion, since it (also) contradicts the biological evidence, but when it comes to the issue of religion, it seems that science takes a back seat. Still, it reminded me of that really-quite-bad-but-fun-to-watch Taiwanese film, The Treasure Hunter.