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Introduction
In 1929, a group of historians found an amazing map drawn on a
gazelle skin.
Research showed that it was a genuine document
drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet in
the sixteenth century.
His passion was cartography. His
high rank within the Turkish navy allowed him to have a privileged
access to the Imperial Library of Constantinople.
The Turkish
admiral admits in a series of notes on the map that he compiled and
copied the data from a large number of source maps, some of which
dated back to the fourth century BC or earlier.
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The Controversy
The Piri Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the
eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of
Antarctica. The northern coastline of Antarctica is perfectly
detailed. The most puzzling however is not so much how Piri
Reis managed to draw such an accurate map of the Antarctic
region 300 years before it was discovered, but that the map
shows the coastline under the ice. Geological evidence
confirms that the latest date Queen Maud Land could have been
charted in an ice-free state is 4000
BC. |
On 6th July 1960 the U. S. Air Force responded to Prof. Charles
H. Hapgood of Keene College, specifically to his request for an
evaluation of the ancient Piri Reis Map:
6, July, 1960
Subject: Admiral Piri Reis Map
TO:
Prof. Charles H. Hapgood
Keene College
Keene, New
Hampshire
Dear Professor Hapgood,
Your request of
evaluation of certain unusual features of the Piri Reis map of 1513
by this organization has been reviewed.
The claim that the lower
part of the map portrays the Princess Martha Coast of Queen Maud
Land, Antarctic, and the Palmer Peninsular, is reasonable. We find
that this is the most logical and in all probability the correct
interpretation of the map.
The geographical detail shown in the
lower part of the map agrees very remarkably with the results of the
seismic profile made across the top of the ice-cap by the
Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of 1949.
This indicates the
coastline had been mapped before it was covered by the
ice-cap.
The ice-cap in this region is now about a mile
thick.
We have no idea how the data on this map can be reconciled
with the supposed state of geographical knowledge in
1513.
Harold Z. Ohlmeyer Lt. Colonel, USAF Commander
The official science has been saying all along that the ice-cap
which covers the Antarctic is million years old.
The Piri Reis
map shows that the northern part of that continent has been mapped
before the ice did cover it. That should make think it has been
mapped million years ago, but that's impossible since mankind did
not exist at that time.
Further and more accurate studies
have proven that the last period of ice-free condition in the
Antarctic ended about 6000 years ago. There are still doubts about
the beginning of this ice-free period, which has been put by
different researchers everything between year 13000 and 9000
BC.
The question is: Who mapped the Queen Maud Land of Antarctic
6000 years ago? Which unknown civilization had the technology or the
need to do that?
It is well-known that the first
civilization, according to the traditional history, developed in the
mid-east around year 3000 BC, soon to be followed within a millenium
by the Indus valley and the Chinese ones. So, accordingly, none of
the known civilizations could have done such a job. Who was here
4000 years BC, being able to do things that NOW are possible with
the modern technologies?
All through the Middle Ages were circulating a number of sailing
charts called "portolani", which were accurate maps of the most
common sailing routes, showing coastlines, harbours, straits, bays,
etc. Most of those portolani focussed on the Mediterranean and the
Aegean seas, and other known routes, just as the sailing book which
Piri Reis himself had written.
But a few reported of still
unknown lands, and were circulating among few sailors who seemingly
kept their knowledge about those special maps as hidden as they
could. Columbus is supposed to have been one of those who knew these
special sailing charts.
To draw his map, Piri Reis used
several different sources, collected here and there along his
journeys. He himself has written notes on the map that give us a
picture of the work he had been doing on the map. He says he had
been not responsible for the original surveying and cartography. His
role was merely that of a compiler who used a large number of
source-maps. He says then that some of the source-maps had been
drawn by contemporary sailors, while others were instead charts of
great antiquity, dating back up to the 4th century BC or
earlier.
Dr. Charles Hapgood, in his book Maps
of the Ancient Sea Kings (Turnstone books, London 1979,
preface), said that:
It appears that accurate information has been passed down
from people to people. It appears that the charts must have
originated with a people unknown and they were passed on, perhaps by
the Minoans and the Phoenicians, who were, for a thousand years and
more, the greatest sailors of the ancient world. We have evidence
that they were collected and studied in the great library of
Alexandria (Egypt) and the compilations of them were made by the
geographers who worked there.
Piri Reis had probably come into possession of charts once
located in the Library of Alexandria, the well-known most important
library of the ancient times.
According to Hapgood's
reconstruction, copies of these documents and some of the original
source charts were transferred to other centers of learning, and
among them to Constantinople. Then in 1204, year of the fourth
crusade, when the Venetians entered Constantinople, those maps begun
to circulate among the European sailors.
Most of these maps - Hapgood goes on - were of the
Mediterranean and the Black sea. But maps of other areas survived.
These included maps of the Americas and maps of the Arctic and
Antarctic Oceans. It becomes clear that the ancient voyagers
travelled from pole to pole. Unbelievable as it may appear, the
evidence nevertheless indicates that some ancient people explored
Antarctic when its coasts were free of ice. It is clear too, that
they had an instrument of navigation for accurately determining the
longitudes that was far superior to anything possessed by the
peoples of ancient, medieval or modern times until the second half
of the 18th century. [...]
This evidence of a lost technology will support and give
credence to many of the other hypothesis that have been brought
forward of a lost civilization in remote times. Scholars have been
able to dismiss most of those evidences as mere myth, but here we
have evidence that cannot be dismissed. The evidence requires that
all the other evidences that have been brought forward in the past
should be re-examined with an open mind." (Ibid.)
In 1953, a Turkish naval officer sent the Piri Reis map to the
U.S. Navy Hydrographic Bureau. To evaluate it, M.I. Walters, the
Chief Engineer of the Bureau, called for help Arlington H. Mallery,
an authority on ancient maps, who had previously worked with
him.
After a long study, Mallery discovered the projection method
used. To check out the accuracy of the map, he made a grid and
transferred the Piri Reis map onto a globe: the map was totally
accurate. He stated that the only way to draw map of such accuracy
was the aerial surveying: but who, 6000 years ago, could have used
airplanes to map the earth??
The Hydrographic Office couldn't
believe what they saw: they were even able to correct some errors in
the present days maps!!
The precision on determining the
longitudinal coordinates, on the other hand, shows that to draw the
map it was necessary to use the spheroid trigonometry, a process
supposedly not know until the middle of 18th century.
Hapggod had
sent his collection of ancient maps (we will see the Piri reis map
was not the only one...) to Richard Strachan, at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Hapggod wanted to know exactly the
mathematical level needed in order to draw the original source maps.
Strachan answered in 1965, saying that the level had to be very
high.
In fact Strachan said that in order to draw such maps, the
authors had to know about the spheroid trigonometry, the curvature
of the earth, methods of projection; knowledge that is of a very
high level.
View Piri Reis map with projected latitudes and
longitudes diagram.
The way the Piri Reis map shows the Queen Maud land,
its coastlines, its rivers, mountain ranges, plateaus, deserts,
bays, has been confirmed by a British-Swedish expedition to
Antarctic ( as said by Olhmeyer in his letter to Hapggod); the
researchers, using sonar and seismic soundings, indicated that those
bays and rivers etc, were underneath the ice-cap, which was about
one mile thick.
Charles Hapggod, in 1953, wrote a book called
"Earth's shifting crust: a key to some basic problems of earth
science", where he made up a theory to explain how Antarctic had
been ice-free until year 4000 BC.
The theory summing up is as
follows:
The reason Antarctic was ice-free, and therefor much
warmer, it is to be found in the fact that, at one time, its
location wasn't the south pole. It was located approximately 2000
miles further north. Hapgood says this "would have put it outside
the Antarctic Circle in a temperate or cold temperate climate".
Read more information about Pole
Shifting.
The reason why the continent moved down to its present
location has to be found in a mechanism called
"earth-crust-displacement". This mechanism, not to be confused with
the plate-tectonics or the continental drift, is one whereby the
lithosphere, the whole outer crust of the earth "may be displaced at
times, moving over the soft inner body, much as the skin of an
orange, if it were loose, might shift over the inner part of the
orange all in one piece". (Charles Hapgood, "Maps of the ancient
sea-kings", cited).
This theory was sent to Albert Einstein,
which answered to Hapgood in very enthusiastic terms. Though
geologists did not seem to accept Hapgood's theory, Einstein seemed
to be as much open as Hapgood saying:
"In a polar region there is
a continual deposition of ice, which is not symmetrically
distributed about the pole. The earth's rotation acts on these
unsymmetrically deposited masses, and produces a centrifugal
momentum that is transmitted to the rigid crust of the earth. The
constantly increasing centrifugal momentum produced in this way
will, when it has reached a certain point, produce a movement of the
earth's crust over the rest of the earth's body...." (Einstein's
foreword to "Earth's shifting crust" p.1)
Anyway, whether
Hapgood's theory is correct, the mystery still thrills.
The Piri
Reis map is something which is not supposed to exist. I mean that by
no means there was supposed to be anyone that far back in time able
to draw a map of such precision; in fact the relative longitudinal
coordinates are totally accurate, as stated by Official studies on
the map that we saw above.
And this is a demonstration of
impossible technology: the first instrument to calculate the
longitude in a approximately correct way has been invented in 1761
by the english John Harrison.
Before there was no way to
calculate the longitude in an acceptable way: there could be errors
of hundreds kilometers....
And the Piri Reis map is just one of
several which show supposedly unknown lands, impossible knowledge,
precision which still today would surprise........
In fact
Piri Reis himself admitted he based his map on way older charts; and
those older charts had been used as sources by others who have drawn
different maps still of great precision.
Impressive is the
"Dulcert's Portolano", year 1339, where the latitude of Europe and
North Africa is perfect, and the longitudinal coordinates of the
mediterranean and of the Black sea are approximated of half
degree.
An even more amazing chart is the "Zeno's chart", year
1380. It shows a big area in the north, going up till the Greenland;
Its precision is flabbergasting. "It's impossible" says Hapgood
"that someone in the fourteenth century could have found the exact
latitudes of these places, not to mention the precision of the
longitudes..."
Another amazing chart is the one drawn by the
Turkish Hadji Ahmed, year 1559, in which he shows a land stripe,
about 1600 Km. wide, that joins Alaska and Siberia. Such a natural
bridge has been then covered by the water due to the end of the
glacial period, which rose up the sea level.
Oronteus Fineus
was another one who drew a map of incredible precision. He too
represented the Antarctic with no ice-cap, year 1532.
There are
maps showing Greenland as two separated islands, as it was confirmed
by a polar French expedition which found out that there is an ice
cap quite thick joining what it is actually two islands.
As
we saw, many charts in the ancient times pictured, we might say, all
the earth geography. They seem to be pieces of a very ancient world
wide map, drawn by unknown people who were able to use technology
that we consider to be a conquer of the very modern times.
When
human beings were supposed to live in a primitive manner, someone
"put on paper" the whole geography of the earth. And this common
knowledge somehow fell into pieces, then gathered here and there by
several people, who had lost though the knowledge, and just copied
what they could find in libraries, bazaars, markets and about all
kind of places.
Hapggod made a disclosure which amazingly
lead further on this road: he found out a cartographic document
copied by an older source carved on a rock column, China, year 1137.
It showed the same high level of technology of the other western
charts, the same grid method, the same use of spheroid trigonometry.
It has so many common points with the western ones that it makes
think more than reasonably, that there had to be a common source:
could it be a lost civilization, maybe the same one which has been
chased by thousands years so far?
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