Originally at: http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=4/8/2007&Cat=2&Num=021

TEHRAN (Press TV) — A professor of geographic cartography has said, “The Persian Gulf has always been named as an important waterway on world maps since the 15th century.”

“This gulf from that time was known as the Persian Gulf and the existing maps with their precise points have been drawn with this name,” Jorge Manuel Flores, a Portuguese scientist, said at an international forum on the Persian Gulf historical atlas in Paris.

Researchers and experts from France, Portugal, Germany and Iran participated in the forum, where maps of the Persian Gulf from the 16th and 18th centuries as well as the present were discussed. Elio Brancaforte, a German professor, also addressed the forum saying “Germans have tried to know the Persian Gulf more and more since the 15th century because of its commercial importance.”

He said that maps drawn by German cartographers since the 15th century underline the historical importance of the Persian Gulf and that its name has constantly been mentioned in the maps as the “Persian Gulf”.

The Paris forum was sponsored jointly by the Paris Strategic Studies Center, Tehran University and Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

Several international scientific conferences have been held in recent years to discuss the historical roots of the Persian Gulf. Researchers from the most reputable academic centers worldwide are almost unanimous in their agreement that the body of water has been referred to throughout history as the Persian Gulf.

Some regional countries and Western publications, however, continue to distort historical facts by omitting “Persian” from the full name, in an apparent orchestrated effort to eliminate the Iranian identity of the Persian Gulf.