Timothy Jay Schwab who is The God Culture is a fantastic mental gymnast. He knows how to flip and tumble and shake off the words of a text which are incompatible with his thesis.
Recently he has been fixated on Pinto's mention of "five large islands" to the west of the Ryukyu (that is Lequios) Islands. Here is the full quote from Pinto's journal.
This Ryukyu island is situated at twenty-nine degrees latitude. It is two hundred leagues in circumference, sixty in length, and thirty in width. The land in itself is more or less on the order of Japan, a little mountainous in some parts, but it becomes more level in the interior, where many of its lush, fertile fields are irrigated by freshwater streams which produce an endless number of fresh crops, especially wheat and rice. There are mountain ranges where they mine a great quantity of copper which, because it is so plentiful, is so cheap among these people that they load junks full of it to sell in every port of China, Lamau,* Sumbor,’ Chabaqué, Tosa,” Miyako," and Japan, with all the other islands to the south, Sestras, Goto,” Fucanxi, and Pollem. In addition, all this land of the Ryukyus has great quantities of iron, steel, lead, tin, alum, saltpeter, sulphur, honey, beeswax, sugar, and large amounts of ginger which is of a much better quality and far superior to the ginger produced in India. They also have large forests of angely wood,"" jatemar,"' poytao,’ pisu, pine, chestnut, cork oak, oak, and cedar, from which thousands of ships can be made.
To the west, there are five very large islands which have many silver mines, pearls, amber, incense, silk, rosewood, brazilwood, wild eaglewood, and large quantities of pitch," though the silk is somewhat inferior to that of China. The inhabitants of all these islands are like the Chinese, and they dress in clothes made of linen, cotton, and silk, along with some damasks that they import from Nanking. They are overly fond of food, given to the pleasures of the flesh, and have little inclination for bearing arms, which are in short supply, from which it appears that it will be very easy to conquer them. So much so that in the year 1556 there arrived in Malacca a Portuguese in the service of the grand master of Santiago" by the name of Pero Gomes de Almeida,' bringing a magnificent gift and letters from the nautoguim, prince of the island of Tanegashima, for King John III, may his soul rest in peace, which in essence amounted to an appeal for five hundred men to help him and his men conquer this Ryukyu island, in return for which he offered to pay an annual tribute of five thousand quintals of copper and one thousand of brass. Nothing ever came of this embassy because the message was sent to Portugal on board the galleon on which Manuel de Sousa de Sepulveda was shipwrecked.
Pinto, pg. 300, Rebecca Catz, translator
As of this writing Tim has published four articles about these five islands. In the first article Tim concluded the five islands are the Philippines proper.
The Smoking Quill writes again. Pinto’s “five very large islands” were not Ryukyu. They were Philippine islands west of Batanes—the true Lequios where Pinto was shipwrecked, the Isles of Gold, the gateway to Ophir. Every resource fits the Philippines and Ryukyu fails.
https://thegodculturephilippines.com/pinto-s-resource-test-the-five-great-islands-were-never-ryukyu/
Never mind that the Philippine Islands are SOUTH of Batanes.
In the second article Tim analyzed a map from 1799 that mentions five islands in the Philippines that do not actually exist. He says they are "clearly a symbolic preservation of Pinto’s “Five Very Large Islands” and his shipwreck near Lequios."
In a 1799 map engraved and published in Venice by Antonio Zatta, we find yet another historical witness to the true location of the Lequios Isles: the Philippines. Zatta plots five islands west of Batanes where none exist today, labeling the region "Il Banco d’Argento" (The Silver Bank), adjacent to the Isole di Bashee and Babuyanes—clearly a symbolic preservation of Pinto’s “Five Very Large Islands” and his shipwreck near Lequios.
https://thegodculturephilippines.com/venetian-map-confirms-pinto-s-lequios-were-the-philippines/
Why would Antonio Zatta symbolically preserve "Pinto’s “Five Very Large Islands” and his shipwreck near Lequios?" What sense does that make and what is Tim's evidence proving that is the case? It is a bizarre ad-hoc speculative assertion that Tim has literally made up whole cloth.
Tim then proceeds to restate his thesis that the Philippines proper are the five islands mentioned by Pinto.
Yes — ALL FIVE major Philippine islands you've proposed (excluding Masbate) are geographically west of Batanes, affirming Pinto's directional accuracy if we interpret his account as referring to directional progression, not mapped coordinates.
Note that this analysis says one could consider all five major Philippines Islands to be west of Batanes only if you interpret west in a certain way.
In the third article Tim brings up an irrelevant French map from 1752.
A full 47 years before Zatta’s Venetian chart and over a century after Pinto’s famous voyage, this 1752 French map silently affirms a truth colonial revisionists tried to erase: the Lequios Isles were the Philippines.
Just west of the Bashee Isles (Batanes), the map boldly labels:
“Les 5 Isles” — The Five Islands
They are plotted where no separate islands exist today, because they were never meant as literal, isolated rocks. Instead, they memorialize Pinto’s “Five Very Large Islands” — Luzon, Palawan, Mindoro, Panay, and Mindanao — recounted in sequence after his shipwreck and trial in Batanes.
https://thegodculturephilippines.com/the-french-knew-too-les-5-isles-west-of-bashee-pinto-s-lequios/
It's kind of strange that Tim is trying to prove the major islands of the Philippines proper are the five islands mentioned by Pinto by bringing up maps which post-date Pinto and show five tiny islands that Tim admits do not exist.
In the fourth article Tim makes a clumsy reference to Finding Nemo which is not very clever, funny, or relevant. Maybe it's a reference to the sequel Finding Dory.
Finding Pinto — The Five Isles That Never Moved
Maps featured:
John Speed, A New Map of East India, 1676
Nicolaes Visscher I / Peter Schenk, Indiae Orientalis Nova Descriptio, ca. 1700
Willem Janszoon Blaeu, India quae Orientalis…, 1640
"There were five very large islands, near to where I shipwrecked..." — so recounted Fernão Mendes Pinto in his famed 16th-century travels. Colonial academia later twisted this into an implausible link to Ryukyu, far to the northeast, where no such “five large isles” exist. But the maps never lied.
Across three of the most authoritative early modern European cartographers—Speed, Visscher-Schenk, and Blaeu—we find those Five Islands unmistakably preserved, plotted west and slightly south of Bashee and Batanes, hovering in clear reference to Pinto’s original drift account.
🧭 The Verdict
Over 150 years after Pinto's voyage, these maps still plot the same five-island formation, right where the shipwreck occurred—near Batanes, adjacent to Ilocos. There was no confusion among cartographers. Only later, as colonial narrative control tightened, did Lequios begin drifting north.
https://thegodculturephilippines.com/finding-pinto----the-five-isles-that-never-moved/
In the movie Finding Nemo, a clownfish named Nemo gets lost and his father has to find him. After a series of adventures they are reunited. This does not apply to Fernando Pinto. He knew exactly where he was. It was not the Philippines. In fact, he had previously been to the Lequios Islands.
We proceeded on our voyage in the battered condition we were in, and three days later we were struck by a storm that blew over the land with such fierce gusts of wind that that same night we were driven out of sight of the shore. And since by then we were unable to approach it again, we were forced to make with full sail for the island of the Ryukyus where this pirate was well known to both the king and the other people there. With this in view we sailed ahead through the islands of this archipelago, but since at this time we were without a pilot, ours having been killed in the recent battle, and the northeast winds were blowing head on, and the currents were running strong against us, we went tacking with great effort from one board to the other for twenty-three days until finally, at the end of that time, our Lord brought us within sight of land. Coming in closer to see if it showed any sign of an inlet or harbor with good anchorage, we noticed a huge fire burning over to the south, almost at a level with the horizon. This led us to believe that it was probably inhabited and that there might be people there who would sell us water, which we were running short of.
As we were anchoring opposite the island in seventy fathoms of water, two small canoes with six men on board came rowing out from shore. They came alongside, and after an exchange of greetings and courtesies in their fashion, they asked us whence the junk had come. Our answer was that we had come from China, bringing merchandise to trade with them, if they would give us leave to do so. One of them replied that as long as we paid the duties that were customarily charged in Japan, which was the name of that big land mass outlined ahead of us, the nautoquim, lord of that island of would readily grant us permission. He followed this up by Tanegashima, telling us everything else that we needed to know and showed us the port where we were supposed to anchor.
pg. 274
Pinto could see Japan from the Lequios Islands. Japan cannot be seen from Batanes. Nobody has lost these islands or is searching for them. Nobody is confused as to their location. Nobody except for Tim.
In the first paragraph cited above Pinto says the Ryukyu Islands (that is the Lequios Islands) are located at 29°N. Tim's claim that coordinate is ambiguous and means an area between 9° and 20° does not pass muster and is fallacious ad hoc reasoning. It especially does not make sense that he claims this coordinate is ambiguous yet treats the five islands mentioned in the next paragraph as gospel truth pointing to the Philippine Archipelago. For Tim 29 is an ambiguous range between 9 and 20 while 5 is literally 5.
Tim has decided to focus on a "resource test" to prove that the five islands must be the Philippines proper.
The Philippines matches every resource Pinto named, in the right number of large islands, with historical and archaeological backing.
https://thegodculturephilippines.com/pinto-s-resource-test-the-five-great-islands-were-never-ryukyu/
That is to ignore the rest of the paragraph which says the following:
The inhabitants of all these islands are like the Chinese, and they dress in clothes made of linen, cotton, and silk, along with some damasks that they import from Nanking. They are overly fond of food, given to the pleasures of the flesh, and have little inclination for bearing arms, which are in short supply, from which it appears that it will be very easy to conquer them. So much so that in the year 1556 there arrived in Malacca a Portuguese in the service of the grand master of Santiago" by the name of Pero Gomes de Almeida,' bringing a magnificent gift and letters from the nautoguim, prince of the island of Tanegashima, for King John III, may his soul rest in peace, which in essence amounted to an appeal for five hundred men to help him and his men conquer this Ryukyu island
Pinto says the inhabitants of the Lequios Islands, which includes the five islands he mentions, "are like the Chinese." He also says they do not bear arms thus making them easy to conquer. He also says the prince of Tanegashima asked for help from the Portuguese to conquer the Lequios Islands! Tanegashima is a real Japanese island. When did a Japanese prince ever ask the Portuguese for help to conquer the Philippines? Never!
In a previous article I examined every reference to the Philippines in Pinto's journal. He makes a distinction between the Lequios and Luzon peoples. Luzon is the Philippines. In every instance where Luzons are mentioned they are described as hired mercenaries. Here is one example.
However, that same night, their spies captured five fishermen who confessed under torture that this was the same armada that the Achinese king had sent two months before to Tenasserim in his war with the Sornau, king of Siam, in which five thousand Luzons and Borneans, all hand-picked men, were said to be returning, under the command of a Turk by the name of Hamed Khan, nephew of the pasha of Cairo.
Pinto says the Lequios people "have little inclination for bearing arms, which are in short supply." They weren't warriors. That means they were not Luzons. That means Lequios is not the Philippines.
It's astounding that Tim refuses to deal directly with Pinto's journal in toto. He picks what suits him and casts doubt on everything that contradicts him. He has posted a number of articles on the topic of the Lequios Islands referencing post-dated maps, resource tests, fake Filipino etymologies, drift currents, and anything else EXCEPT for the words of Pinto. Timothy Jay Schwab has to dance around the words of Pinto because they do not support his claim that the Lequios Islands are the Philippines.
While Tim purports to cite Pinto, he actually makes up quotes.
"There were five very large islands, near to where I shipwrecked..." — so recounted Fernão Mendes Pinto in his famed 16th-century travels.
That is not what Pinto wrote. Here is what he wrote.
To the west, there are five very large islands
See how easy that was to use Pinto's own words? See how Tim has subtly altered the meaning of this sentence by transforming "to the west" into "near to where I shipwrecked?" How hard is it for Tim to cite Pinto accurately?
Tim's position on where Pinto was shipwrecked continues to change. At the very beginning, before Tim published his first book, he was clear that Luzon was the main Lequios Island where Pinto shipwrecked.
6:15 Pinto even goes as far as to give the exact location latitude of the main Lequios Island as modern-day Luzon Philippines in fact if you follow his directions exactly and we'll do that later you will end up in Northwest Luzon or Ilocos specifically
But now Tim says Pinto shipwrecked in Batanes while Luzon has been relegated to one of the five islands west of Lequios Island.
However, he failed to even read our position as Pinto described where he was shipwrecked and that was Batanes which is extremely fertile as well.
https://thegodculturephilippines.com/testing-pinto-s-accuracy-a-further-geographic-reassessment-of-lequios-lucones-and-latitude-drift/
Tim will likely plead that his evolving position is evidence of his transparency and academic honesty. That is hogwash!
Tim's evolving position is indicative of uncertainty and deflection not transparency and honesty. In his book The Search For King Solomon's Treasure Tim only dealt with Pinto's alleged coordinate of 9N20, which he cited not from Pinto but from J.G. Cheock. He did not engage with Pinto's journal at all. There are no quotes from Pinto in his book. Tim claims otherwise.
As we have repeatedly done, we continue to deepen our research, cite primary sources, and allow truth to speak for itself.
https://thegodculturephilippines.com/ilha-de-fuego-was-not-in-ryukyu-etymology-geography-pinto-s-real-island-of-fire/
1. Claim: "You Never Cited Pinto’s Journal"
False. We have referenced both the original Portuguese text and the Rebecca Catz translation of Pinto's Peregrinação throughout our Sourcebook, blog series, and video documentation. The Sourcebook includes full citation and quotation from both Catz and Portuguese excerpts, including the segment containing the "nine and twenty" reference, geographic features, and descriptions of the island Pinto encountered.
https://thegodculturephilippines.com/testing-pinto-s-accuracy-a-further-geographic-reassessment-of-lequios-lucones-and-latitude-drift/
Neither of those claims is truthful. Here is Tim's Sourcebook citation of Pinto.
Notice the conspicuous absence of any citation from Fernando Pinto. Instead Tim cites J.G. Cheock who cites Pinto albeit erroneously substituting 9N20 for 29°N.
Tim is on record denying the necessity of primary sources.
17:18 However a Pharisee looks at that and scoffs. "Heh! Well you could have used a better source. Why is your font so small on that screen? That one quote doesn't say that!" Though it always does say exactly what we represent by the way because it always vets, every single challenge has. "That map that shows those islands southeast of China's not really showing southeast of China. That's, well, India." Huh? No it's southeast of China. That's what the maps shows, duh. "And that map, and that map, and those directions, and those directions, and aww that font should be larger and yaw you should have quoted that differently, and..."
I mean that's the kind of stuff that you get for going out, stepping out on a limb, and doing the research and telling people what is truth. And we prove it. Those same people don't even bother to actually review the whole case. No. No, no. They'll watch one brief video or a few brief videos and then go and just ramble on and on and on. And they are absolutely ignorant. They don't even know what we prove, what we don't prove but all along they'll say "Ah see you didn't prove that." Well how will you know what we prove? You didn't even review the case. But it doesn't matter because it's not their point. They throw it all out in ignorance, haven't even reviewed the case yet they know because they know what we're going to prove because they have what basis? Absolutely none.
"You used a font too small! Throw it out!" Really? "You quoted a secondary source citing the original" oh which happens to be true and in representation actually match the original? Duh! I mean could you be more ridiculous? Yet we get all of this.
It is only when I brought up Pinto mentioning five large islands being to the West of the Lequios Islands that Tim bothered to discuss them. It is only when I brought up that Pinto could see Japan from his position in the Lequios Islands that Tim bothered to discuss it. Tim's position has evolved because I posted significant excerpts from Pinto's journal of which he was unaware and which contradict him, not because of long-time, consistent research on his part. Tim should have utilized the entire account in Pinto's journal from the beginning. Primary sources are very important. Why wasn't he talking about Pinto's five islands being the Philippines years ago? Why only now is he concocting fake Filipino etymologies for place names in Pinto's account? Why only now is he conducting a resource test to prove the Lequios Islands are the Philippines? Why has he ignored what Pinto wrote until now? Did he read the text and think those details weren't important? Why are they important now? The simple reason is that Tim was never familiar with Pinto's journal. His lack of citations from and engagement with the journal is proof of that. The alternative, that he was familiar with Pinto's journal but did not think it worth discussing, is even more confounding.
Rather than engage with Pinto he relied on a fabricated nonsense coordinate of 9N20 falsely attributed to Pinto by J.G. Cheock. It is I am who picking up the slack for this man who is unwilling to thoroughly examine Pinto's full account. Tim's focus remains on irrelevant maps, modern day resource tests, and fake Filipino etymology. Here is another fake Filipino etymology that is a real laugh riot.
🪶 Smoking Quill Footnote: “Where Is Sipautor?” He Asked…
A blogger recently mocked the reference to “Sipautor, Batanes” as if it were an invented or laughable name. He fails to address there is no Sipautor, Ryukyu.
But had he paused to ask—or read with understanding—he might have discovered:
Put them together, and “Sipautor” is likely a local place-name describing an area in Batanes where children played Sipa in cleared (burnt) farmland—a culturally accurate, even beautiful, etymology.
https://thegodculturephilippines.com/testing-pinto-s-accuracy-a-further-geographic-reassessment-of-lequios-lucones-and-latitude-drift/
According to Tim, Sipautor is a burned field where children played games. But according to Pinto Sipautor was a town of 500 households with a pagoda!
Close to sundown we reached a good-sized village of over five hundred house-holds called Sipautor, where we were immediately placed in one of the temples of their worship, a pagoda that was surrounded by a very high wall, and put under guard of over a hundred men, who could be heard shouting and beating the drums throughout the night, during which each one of us got as much rest as the time and circumstances permitted.
pg. 289
Where are the ancient pagodas in the Batanes or the rest of the Philippines? Did Tim bother to read this section or is my article mentioning Sipautor his primary source? Look at how the words of Pinto crush Timothy Jay Schwab who is The God Culture.
