The better I get to know people, the more I love them. Mysterious maps of Piri Reis

1929 In Istanbul Topkapi Palace (“Topkapi Sarayi”) a fragment of a certain nautical map, executed on parchment made from gazelle skin, was discovered. It is carefully studied and attributed to the outstanding Turkish admiral Haji Muhiddin Piri ibn Haji Mehmed (Piri Reis), dating back to 1513.

Tourists crossing the Dardanelles in the Canakkale area are usually so engrossed in stories about the armies of Xerxes and Alexander the Great who crossed the Dardanelles many centuries ago that they completely ignore the modest bust erected on the European side of the strait next to the crossing. Few people know that the modest signature “Piri Reis” under the bust connects this place with one of the most intriguing mysteries of history.

A surviving fragment of the Piri Reis map. 1513

The map might not have aroused much interest if it were not for the image of the Americas (one of the earliest in history) and the signature of the Turkish admiral Piri Reis. Then, in the 20s, on the wave of national upsurge, it was especially important for the Turks to emphasize the role of the Turkish cartographer in the creation of one of the most early cards America. They began to study the map closely, as well as the history of its creation. And this is what became known.

In 1513, the admiral of the Turkish fleet, Piri Reis, completed work on a large map of the world for his geographical atlas, Bahriye. He himself did not travel that much, but when compiling the map, he used about 20 cartographic sources. Of these, eight maps dated back to the time of Ptolemy, some belonged to Alexander the Great, and one, as Piri Reis writes in his book “The Seven Seas,” was “recently compiled by an infidel named Colombo.” And then the admiral says: “An infidel named Colombo, a Genoese, discovered these lands. A book fell into the hands of the said Colombo, in which he read that on the edge of the Western Sea, far in the West, there are shores and islands. All kinds of metals and precious stones were found there. The above-mentioned Colombo studied this book for a long time... Colombo also learned about the natives’ passion for glass jewelry from this book and took them with him to exchange them for gold.”

Let's leave Columbus and his mysterious book aside for now, although the direct indication that he knew where he was sailing is already amazing. Unfortunately, neither this book nor Columbus’s map has reached us. But several sheets of maps from the Bahriye atlas miraculously survived and were published in Europe in 1811. But then they were not given much importance. It was not until 1956, when a Turkish naval officer presented the maps as a gift to the American Naval Hydrographic Office, that American military cartographers conducted research to confirm or disprove the seemingly impossible: the map depicted the coastline of Antarctica - 300 years before its discovery!

So the Piri Reis map began to reveal its secrets. Here are just a few of them.

Turkish Naval Museum. In the Memorial Hall there are plaques with the names of those killed at sea (the oldest date is 1319). Here you can also see a rare collection of ancient navigation maps, and copies of them can be bought in the souvenir shop. The most famous of them is the plan of Admiral Piri Reis (1517)

The map shows the exact coastline of Antarctica

Antarctica as a continent was discovered in 1818, but many cartographers, including Gerardus Mercator, even before that time believed in the existence of a continent in the far south and plotted its supposed outlines on their maps. The Piri Reis map, as already mentioned, accurately depicts the coastline of Antarctica - 300 years before its discovery!

But this is not the biggest mystery, especially since several ancient maps are known, including Mercator’s map, which, as it turns out, depict, very accurately, Antarctica. Previously, they simply did not pay attention to this, because “ appearance» the continent on the map can be greatly distorted depending on the map projections used: it is not so easy to project the surface onto a plane globe. The fact that many ancient maps reproduce with high accuracy not only Antarctica, but also other continents, became known after calculations made in the middle of the last century, taking into account various projections used by old cartographers.

The only explanation for this fact accepted by modern scientists is the theory of the periodic change of the Earth's poles, according to which the last such change could have occurred approximately 6,000 years ago, and it was then that Antarctica began to be covered with ice again. That is, we are talking about sailors who lived 6,000 years ago and drew up maps that (like the Piri Reis map) were used to refine modern ones? Incredible...

On July 6, 1960, the US Air Force responded to Professor Charles Hapgood of Keene College in response to his request for an assessment of the ancient Piri Reis map:

Topic: Admiral Piri Reis Map

To: Professor Charles Hapgood

Kiin College

Keene, New Hampshire

Dear Professor Hapgood,

Your request to evaluate the unusual features of the Piri Reis map from 1513 has been reviewed by this organization. The assertion that the lower part of the map shows Princess Martha Coast [parts of] Dronning Maud Land in Antarctica, as well as the Palmer Peninsula, has some basis. We found this explanation to be the most logical and possibly correct. The geographic details at the bottom of the map are consistent with the seismological profile of the top of the ice cap taken by the 1949 Swedish-British expedition. This means that the coastline was mapped before it was covered with ice. The ice in this area is approximately 1.5 kilometers thick. We have no idea how these data could have been obtained given the assumed level of geographical knowledge in 1513.

Harold Ohlmeyer, Lieutenant Colonel, Captain, US Air Force.

Official science has been saying all this time that the ice cap of Antarctica is a million years old. The map shows the northern part of this continent without ice cover. Then the map must be at least a million years old, which is impossible, because... humanity did not yet exist then.

Further, more careful research revealed the date of the end of the last ice-free period: 6,000 years ago. There is disagreement about the start date of this period: from 13,000 to 9,000 years ago. The main question: Who mapped Queen Maud Land 6,000 years ago? What unknown civilization had such technology?

According to traditional ideas, the first civilization was formed 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia, and was soon followed by Indian and Chinese. Accordingly, none of these civilizations could do this. But who lived 6,000 years ago and had technologies only available today?

In the Middle Ages, special nautical charts (“portolani”) appeared, on which all sea routes, shores, bays, straits, etc. Most of them described the Mediterranean and Aegean seas, as well as some others. One of these maps was drawn by Piri Reis. But on some of them unknown lands were visible, which the sailors kept in the strictest confidence. It is believed that Columbus was among these chosen sailors.

To draw the map, Reis used several sources collected during his travels. He wrote notes on the map, from which we can understand what kind of work he did. He writes that he is not responsible for intelligence and cartography data, but only for combining all sources. He claims that one of the source maps was drawn by sailors contemporary to Reis, while the others were drawn in the 4th century BC. or even earlier.

Dr. Charles Hapgood, in the preface to his book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings (Turnstone books, London, 1979), writes:

It seems that information was transferred between people very carefully. The origin of the cards is unknown; perhaps they were made by the Minoans or Phoenicians, who for thousands of years were the best sailors of antiquity. We have evidence that they collected and studied the great Library of Alexandria in Egypt, and their knowledge was useful to the geographers of that time.

Perhaps Piri Reis received some maps from the Library of Alexandria, a famous and important source of knowledge from ancient times. In accordance with Hapgood's reconstruction, copies of these documents and some other sources were moved to other cultural centers, including. and to Constantinople. Then, in 1204 (year 4 crusade), when the Venetians entered the city, these maps began to circulate among European sailors.

Hapgood continues:

Most of these charts were for the Mediterranean and Black Seas. But maps of other regions have also been preserved: both Americas, the Arctic and Antarctic. It became clear that the ancients could swim from pole to pole. It may seem incredible, but evidence confirms that some ancient explorers explored Antarctica when it was not yet covered by ice, and that they had an accurate navigational tool for determining longitude, more advanced than what ancient, medieval and modern explorers had until the second half of the 18th century. […]

This evidence of ancient technology will support and complement many other hypotheses about lost civilizations. Scientists have so far been able to refute most of these hypotheses, calling them myths, but this evidence cannot be refuted. It also requires a reconsideration of all previous statements with a broader view.”

The map is linked to Cairo

Interestingly, the Piri Reis map also gives the answer to the question of where these ancient sailors lived. (Or not navigators, if they used other means of transportation?) The fact is that a professional cartographer, by studying an ancient map and comparing it with modern ones, can determine what type of projection the map creator used. And when the Piri Reis map was compared with the modern one, compiled in a polar equal-area projection, they discovered almost complete similarities. In particular, the map of the 16th century Turkish admiral literally repeats the map compiled by the US Air Force during the Great Patriotic War.

But a map drawn in polar equal area projection must have a center. In the case of the American map, it was Cairo, where an American military base was located during the war. And from this, as shown by the Chicago scientist Charles Hapgood, who thoroughly studied the Piri Reis map, it directly follows that the center of the ancient map, which became the prototype of the admiral’s map, was located there, in Cairo, or its environs. That is, the ancient cartographers were Egyptians who lived in Memphis, or their more ancient ancestors, who made this place their starting point.

Mathematical apparatus of cartographers

In the 15th–16th centuries, such maps were much more advanced than land maps, but, as one of the leading scientists in this field, A.E. Nordenskiöld, noted, they did not develop. That is, the maps of the 15th century were of the same quality as the maps of the 14th century. This, from his point of view, indicates that the skill of cartographers was not acquired, but borrowed, that is, simply put, they simply redrew older maps, which in itself is natural.

But what I can’t get my head around is the accuracy of the constructions and the mathematical apparatus, without which these constructions are simply impossible to carry out. I will give just a few facts.

It is known that to construct geographical map, that is, the mapping of a sphere on a plane, it is necessary to know the dimensions of this sphere, that is, the Earth. Eratosthenes was able to measure the circumference of the globe back in ancient times, but did so with a large error. Until the 15th century, no one clarified these data. However, a thorough study of the coordinates of objects on the Peary map indicates that the dimensions of the Earth were taken into account without error, that is, the compilers of the map had more accurate information about our planet at their disposal (not to mention the fact that they represented it as a ball).

Researchers of the Turkish map also convincingly showed that the compilers of the mysterious ancient source knew trigonometry (the Reis map was drawn using planar geometry, where latitudes and longitudes are at right angles. But it was copied from a map with spherical trigonometry! Ancient cartographers not only knew that the Earth there is a ball, but they also calculated the length of the equator with an accuracy of about 100 km!) and cartographic projections that were not known to either Eratosthenes or even Ptolemy, but they theoretically could have used ancient maps stored in the Library of Alexandria. That is, the original source of the map is definitely more ancient.

In 1953, a Turkish naval officer sent the Piri Reis chart to the US Navy Hydrographic Office for inspection by Chief Engineer M. Walters, who called in Arlington Mallary, an authoritative scholar of ancient maps with whom he had previously worked. After much study, Mallary found a type of map projection. To check the accuracy of the map, he put a grid on the map and then transferred it to the globe: the map was absolutely accurate. Mallary argues that such accuracy requires aerial photography. But who had airplanes 6,000 years ago?

The hydrographic bureau couldn’t believe their eyes: the map turned out to be more accurate than modern data, so they even had to be corrected! The accuracy of determining the longitudinal coordinates indicated that spheroid trigonometry was used here, which was officially unknown until the mid-18th century.

Hapgood proved that the Reis map was drawn using planar geometry, with latitudes and longitudes at right angles. But it was copied from a map with spherical trigonometry! Ancient cartographers not only knew that the Earth is a sphere, but also calculated the length of the equator with an accuracy of about 100 km!

Hapgood sent his collection of ancient maps (and Race's map was not the only one) to Richard Strachan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hapgood wanted to know exactly the level of mathematical knowledge needed to construct such maps. In 1965, Strachan responded that the level should be very high: using spheroid geometry, data on the curvature of the Earth and projection methods.

Look at the Piri Reis map with designed parallels and meridians:

The accuracy of the mapping of Dronning Maud Land, coastline, plateaus, deserts, bays was confirmed by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of 1949 (as Ohlmeyer said in a letter to Hapgood). The researchers used sonar and seismic sounding to determine the terrain beneath the ice, which is about 1.5 km thick.

In 1953, Hapgood wrote the book The Shifting Crust of the Earth: A Key to Some Basic Problems in Earth Science, where he proposed a theory to explain how Antarctica could have been ice-free before 4000 BC. (see Bibliography). The essence of the theory is as follows:

Antarctica was ice-free (and therefore significantly warmer) due to the fact that it was once not near the south pole, but some 3,000 km further north, which Hapgood argued “would have placed it outside the Arctic Circle.” , and in warmer climates."

The shift of the continent further south to its current position could be caused by the so-called displacement of the earth's crust (not to be confused with continental drift and plate tectonics). This mechanism explains how "the entire lithosphere of a planet can sometimes shift over the surface of the softer inner layers, just as the entire peel of an orange moves over the surface of the pulp when it loses firm contact with it." (Quoted from Hapgood’s Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, more details in the Bibliography).

This theory was sent to Albert Einstein, who responded very positively to it. And although geologists did not accept the idea, Einstein was much more open to Hapgood's statements like this: " In the polar regions there is a monolithic deposit of ice that is asymmetrically located relative to the pole. The rotation of the Earth affects these masses, forming a centrifugal moment that is transmitted to the rigid earth's crust. The moment constantly increasing in this way will shift the crust over the entire surface of the Earth when it reaches a certain force."(Einstein's Preface to the book "The Earth's Shifting Crust...", part one.)

In any case, even if Hapgood's theory is correct, the mystery still remains. The Piri Reis map should not exist. It cannot be that someone could have drawn such an accurate map so long ago. The first tool for calculating longitude with the necessary accuracy was invented in 1761 by John Harrison. Before this, there was no way to calculate longitude so accurately: the errors were hundreds of kilometers. And Reis's map is one of several that demonstrate supposedly unknown lands, impossible knowledge and a magnificent accuracy that surprises even today.

Reis indicated that he was based on ancient maps, which, in turn, were also copied from even older and even more accurate records. For example, Dulcert's Portolano map, drawn by him in 1339, shows the exact longitudes of Europe and the North. Africa, and the coordinates of the Mediterranean and Black Seas are plotted with an accuracy of half a degree. An even more amazing drawing is the Zeno map from 1380. It covers an area as far as Greenland, and its accuracy is amazing. Hapgood writes: "It is impossible that anyone in the 14th century knew the exact coordinates of these places." Another striking map belongs to the Turk Hadji Ahmed (1559), which shows a strip of c. 1600 km long, connecting Alaska and Siberia. This isthmus is now covered with water due to ice age, which raised the water level in the ocean.

Oronteus Fineus is another person who drew a map with incredible accuracy in 1532. His Antarctica was also devoid of ice. There are maps of Greenland as two separate islands, which was confirmed by a French expedition that discovered that the ice cap covered two separate islands.

As we see, many ancient maps covered almost the entire surface of the Earth. They seem to be parts of an older map of the world, made by unknown people using technologies only rediscovered today. While early humans supposedly lived in a primitive way, someone “put down on paper” the entire geography of the Earth. And this general knowledge somehow fell apart into parts, now collected by several people who lost this knowledge and simply copied what they found in libraries, bazaars and other various places.

Hapgood took it one step further by opening a cartographic document that copied an older Chinese map, dated 1137, engraved on a stone pillar. It demonstrated the same high level of technology, the same method of applying a grid and the same techniques of spheroid geometry. It has so many similarities with Western maps that it can be assumed that they had a common source. Could this be a lost civilization that existed thousands of years before?

The map shows both Americas

The Piri Reis map is one of the first to show the Americas. It was compiled 21 years after Columbus’s voyage and the “official” discovery of America. And it shows not only the exact coastline, but also rivers and even the Andes. And this despite the fact that Columbus himself did not map America, sailing only to the Caribbean islands!

The mouths of some rivers, in particular the Orinoco, are shown with an “error” on the Piri Reis map: river deltas are not indicated. However, this does not indicate an error, but rather an expansion of deltas that occurred over time, as happened with the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia in the last 3,500 years.

Columbus knew where he was going

There are many facts that indirectly confirm that Columbus owned one of the maps that served as the source for the Piri Reis map. For example, Columbus did not stop his ships at night, as was customary for fear of hitting reefs in unknown waters, but sailed under full sail, as if knowing for sure that there would be no obstacles. When a riot began on the ships because the promised land still did not appear, he managed to convince the sailors to endure another 1000 miles and was not mistaken - exactly 1000 miles later the long-awaited shore appeared. Columbus carried with him a supply of glass jewelry, hoping to exchange it for gold with the Indians, as recommended in his book. Finally, each ship carried a sealed package with instructions on what to do if the ships lost sight of each other during a storm. In a word, the discoverer of America knew well that he was not the first.

The Piri Reis map is not the only one

And the map of the Turkish admiral, the source for which was also the maps of Columbus, is not the only one of its kind. If you set out, as Charles Hapgood did, to compare images of Antarctica on several maps compiled before its “official” discovery, then there will be no doubt about the existence of their common source. Hapgood meticulously compared the maps of Peary, Arantheus Finaus, Hadji Ahmed and Mercator, created in different times and independently of each other, and determined that they all used the same unknown source, which made it possible to depict the polar continent with the greatest reliability long before its discovery.

Most likely, we will no longer know for sure who created this primary source and when. But its existence, convincingly proven by researchers of the Turkish admiral’s map, indicates the existence of a certain ancient civilization with level scientific knowledge, comparable to modern ones, at least in the field of geography (Piry’s map, as already mentioned, made it possible to clarify some modern maps). And this casts doubt on the hypothesis of the gradual linear progress of humanity in general and science in particular. One gets the feeling that the greatest knowledge about nature, as if obeying an unknown law, at a certain stage becomes available to humanity, only to then be lost and... reborn again when the time comes. And who knows how many discoveries the next discovery will contain?

The Piri Reis map often serves as evidence that there once was an advanced civilization that we are now just beginning to learn about. The earliest known civilization, the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, appeared seemingly out of nowhere 6,000 years ago and had no experience of seafaring or navigation. However, they spoke respectfully of their "Nephilim" ancestors, whom they considered gods.

Here are the main mysteries of the map:

The Earth's equator is measured with an accuracy of about 100 km, without which the construction of a map would be impossible.

The Antarctic coastline matches what it was like at least 6,000 years ago, before it was covered by the ice of the last Ice Age.

The map is one of the first to show the Americas. Early research confirms that the map already had the exact coordinates of the Americas just 21 years after the voyages of Columbus, who sailed not to the continents themselves, but only to the Caribbean islands. The inscriptions on Reis's map indicate that he used older maps, incl. and those that Columbus himself painted. Reis believes that ancient maps were available to Columbus and became the impetus for his expeditions.

The projection center of the source map was located in the place now occupied by the ancient Egyptian city of Alexandria cultural center, where the greatest library of antiquity was located (before it was destroyed by Christian conquerors).

Reis writes in his comments that some of his sources date back to the time of Alexander the Great (332 BC).

Riddles of the map.

In 1929, a map dated 1513 was discovered in one of the ancient palaces of Constantinople.
The map is a compilation work, in the production of which about 20 cartographic sources were used, including very ancient ones. Piri Reis directly indicates that the oldest maps of the populated world he used date back to the era of Alexander the Great; perhaps the author used some materials from the lost Library of Alexandria. On the other hand, in the descriptions relating to the recently discovered South American lands, there are references to the evidence of Portuguese navigators - contemporaries of Piri Reis. There are also references to the use of a certain "Columbus Map"; Apparently, this does not mean a map made by Columbus himself or his associates, but an older map that Columbus used. Unfortunately, neither the book nor the map of Columbus has reached us. But several sheets of maps from the Bahriye atlas miraculously survived and were published in Europe in 1811. But then they were not given much importance.

Currently, the Piri Reis map is in the library of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul (Turkey), but, as a rule, it is not included in the exhibition for the public.

What is the mystery of the Piri Reis map? Here are just some versions as an answer to this question.

Version one, mysterious. The map accurately shows the coastline of Antarctica.
In 1953, an unidentified Turkish naval officer sent a copy of Piri Reis's map to the US Navy Hydrographic Office. There the map fell into the hands of a cartographer named M. I. Walters, who was required to establish the historical or practical value of the discovered artifact. To evaluate the map, Walters, as the bureau's chief engineer, sought the help of retired Captain Arlington Humphrey Mallery, an expert on ancient maps who had previously worked with Walters. Mallery, after spending a lot of time, discovered what method of cartographic projection was used on the map. To check the accuracy of the map, he made a grid and superimposed the Piri Reis map on the world map: the map was absolutely accurate. After his work, he stated that the only way to create a map of such accuracy was aerial photography. Also, to construct a Piri Reis map, you must have knowledge of spherical trigonometry, which was developed and described only in the 18th century.

The authenticity of the Piri Reis map was not in doubt. A graphological examination of the notes in the margins confirmed that they were written in the admiral’s hand. The most mysterious thing is that the coast depicted on the map, according to Professor Charles Hapgood, exactly corresponds to the coast of the subglacial part of the continent, the shape of which became known only in the 1950s, after large-scale seismographic studies (a joint British-Swedish research expedition carried out intensive seismic exploration of the southernmost continent through the thickness of the ice cover). This judgment is supported by the conclusions of the American military, who explored the subglacial terrain of Antarctica in the late 1950s, who, when asked by Professor Hapgood regarding the correspondence of the image on the Piri Reis map and the real coast of the continent, gave the following answer:
July 6, 1960
Topic: Admiral Piri Reis Map
To: Professor Charles H. Hapgood
Keene Community College, Keene, New Hampshire
Dear Professor Hapgood,
Your request to evaluate some unusual features on the 1513 Piri Reis map has been reviewed. The claim that the bottom of the map shows the coast of Princess Martha, Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, and the Palmer Peninsula is reasonable. We believe that this conclusion is the most logical and, in all likelihood, correct interpretation of the map.
At the bottom of the map, geographic elements show very marked similarities to seismic scanning data from the 1959 Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of the real world. geological relief under the glacier there. This indicates that the coast was mapped before it was covered with ice. The glacier in this region today is about a mile thick.
We have no idea how the data on this map might correlate with the supposed level of geographic knowledge in 1513.
— Harold Z. Ohlmeyer, lieutenant colonel, commander, 8th Reconnaissance Squadron, United States Air Force.

The greatest amount of controversy is caused by the presence in the lower part of the Piri Reis map of land, which the aforementioned Mallery and Hapgood identified with the coast of Antarctica, officially discovered only in 1820. However, there is no information about any detailed exploration of Antarctica and South America in the XIV-XV centuries, the results of which could form the basis of the map. At the same time, the hypothetical coast of Antarctica on the map is connected to the coast of South America, that is, there is no Drake Passage (which in reality is almost a thousand kilometers wide).

The version is described in detail.
At present, all the arguments both in favor of the opinion about the depiction of Antarctica on the map of Piri Reis, and against it, are equally insufficiently convincing, primarily due to the great antiquity of this work and the lack of documentary evidence in sufficient quantity. All arguments and disputes are based only on common sense and assumptions.

The idea that the map shows Antarctica may be wrong. This is confirmed by many inconsistencies with the modern geography of the area, which can be mistaken for inaccuracies of the map, in particular in the part where South America is depicted: duplication of rivers, the absence of the Drake Passage between the southern tip of South America and “non-freezing” (according to the image) Antarctica.
The “compliance” itself raises additional questions.
Firstly, the glacier constantly descends into the ocean and, with its movement, inevitably changes the topography of the continent, leveling it and carrying debris into the ocean. Therefore, the modern subglacial relief should already be very different from the real ancient relief of the continent before its glaciation.
Secondly, it is known that the mass of the ice sheet creates an additional load on the “light” continental crust, which is why it “sinks” deeper into the mantle material than it should have in the absence of this load. By modern estimates, the continental plate of Antarctica is “sunk” down to depths of up to half a kilometer. Therefore, during the period when there was no ice in Antarctica, the coastline was located elsewhere, and part of the modern shelf was land. It is extremely doubtful that the coastline would correspond to the modern subglacial topography.

An interesting fact is that the Chicago scientist Charles Hapgood, who thoroughly studied the Piri Reis map, is convinced that the center of the ancient map, which became the prototype of the admiral’s map, was located in Cairo or its environs. That is, the ancient cartographers were Egyptians who lived in Memphis, or their more ancient ancestors, who made this place their starting point.
Hapgood offers several possible explanations for the connection between the coasts of Antarctica and South America on the Piri Reis map:
- In the southern part of the South American continent, the Piri Reis map shows signs of duplication of the same area. Perhaps, when creating the map by Piri Reis himself, or perhaps the author of one of the source maps, fragments of ancient maps depicting the same area were misunderstood as neighboring, as a result, a section of the South American coast up to 1500-2000 km long was duplicated. Thus, South America was “stretched” to the south just the width of the Drake Passage, or even more.
- The coasts could indeed be united by a glacier, if the source from which this part of the map was copied falls during a cold period, while the coast of Antarctica is depicted on a map of a warm period.

Version two. The map shows the eastern coast of South America.

The Piri Reis map is one of the first to supposedly show the Americas.
It was compiled 21 years after Columbus’s voyage and the “official” discovery of America. And it shows not only the exact coastline, but also rivers and even the Andes. And this despite the fact that Columbus himself did not map America, sailing only to the Caribbean islands!
The map of Piri Reis depicts, and, according to a number of researchers, quite accurately, geographical objects that actually exist, but were unknown at the time of its creation. In particular, in the depths of the South American continent the Andes are depicted, the discovery of which was several decades away; the islands shown off the coast of South America are clearly identified with the Falklands, also discovered only in the second half of the 16th century. The mouths of some rivers, in particular the Orinoco, are shown with an “error” on the Piri Reis map: river deltas are not indicated. Perhaps this does not indicate an error, but rather the expansion of deltas that occurred over time, as happened with the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia in the last 3,500 years.

The results of a close study of the depicted coastline speak in favor of an alternative theory, according to which the “additional” land is just part of the South American coast, probably studied by Portuguese navigators, but in the image is highly distorted (curved to the right).

There are various comparative analysis matching the coastline of South America!

Piri Reis claimed that Columbus knew well where he was sailing, thanks to the book that fell into his hands. The fact that Columbus’s wife was the daughter of the Grand Master of the Templar Order, which had already changed its name by that time, and which had significant archives of ancient books and maps, indicates a possible way to acquire the mysterious book. There are many facts that indirectly confirm that Columbus owned one of the maps that served as the source for the Piri Reis map. For example, Columbus did not stop the ships at night, as was customary for fear of hitting reefs in unknown waters, but sailed under full sail, as if knowing for sure that there would be no obstacles. When a riot began on the ships due to the fact that the promised land still did not appear, he managed to convince the sailors to endure another 1000 miles and was not mistaken - exactly after 1000 miles the long-awaited shore appeared. Columbus carried with him a supply of glass jewelry, hoping to exchange it for gold with the Indians, as recommended in his book. Finally, each ship carried a sealed package with instructions on what to do if the ships lost sight of each other during a storm. In a word, the discoverer of America knew well that he was not the first.
Version sources: https:// ru. wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_Piri Reis. http:// www. wikiwand.com/ru/Map_Piri Reis

Version three. The coastline of Central America is shown on the map.
If we take a particularly close look at the lands discovered by Columbus on his travels, we will see that the first three voyages brought only the discovery of islands. And only the fourth revealed to Columbus the coastline, along which he followed for about 2000 kilometers.

Travel routes of Christopher Columbus

The fourth voyage, even, according to Columbus himself, was the most difficult of all he had seen. Constant storms and currents tormented the flotilla, the people were exhausted and angry at fate. However, despite all these difficulties, mapping of the coastline was still carried out, and the data was entered into personal diary Columbus, of whom no trace remains except a copy of the ship's log, edited by Bartolomeo las Casas. However, not everything was recorded in the ship's log.
Let's take a closer look at the coastline traced by Columbus on his last voyage.

Let's turn our attention to the east coast of Central America, including Panama, Honduras and Yucatan. Upon closer examination, it turns out that this coast is the very unknown part of H. Columbus’s map, which Piri Reis used when drawing up his own map. In this case, gaps in the last journey of Columbus himself are also revealed. It turns out that the Genoese explored part of the coast of Yucatan, then, as is known from official chronicles, he went around Honduras and, following along Panama, turned to Jamaica, where he stranded the remaining ships that had become unusable. Here he wrote several letters. One of them was intended for Nicholas de Ovando, the governor of Fr. Hispaniola asking for help. The rest carried information about open lands and were intended for the monarchs of Spain. The letters were sent with two trusted representatives, who, with the help of the Indians, having overcome about two hundred kilometers of water on pirogues, two weeks later, successfully reached the shores of Hispaniola. And only a year later, Ovando, under public pressure, deigned to agree to organize a rescue mission. Further fate We know Columba. However, it is not clear how the map drawn up by the Genoese fell into the hands of Reis? There are many options here. It could have been conveyed by Columbus himself, angry at the treachery of the Spanish monarch. The map, along with a cargo of valuable documents and jewelry heading to Rome on two papal galleys in 1505, could have been captured by the militants of Kemal Reis or the corsairs of Barbarossa. But, one way or another, it ended up in the hands of no less a skilled navigator and cartographer than Columbus himself.

Reis himself wrote in his notes that he scaled all the pieces of maps used, bringing them to a single size. However, one small but very important discrepancy remains. On the Piri Reis map, the coast of Central America represented by Columbus is located at the longitude of modern South America! And the size of the coast is comparable only to a larger continent than Panama, Honduras and Yucatan combined! Perhaps Piri Reis used data on South America, superimposing a map of Central America from Columbus on its location, using distorted evidence (fortunately, it is not surprising to confuse these outlines, given their comparability at that time).
Only one Columbus, until the “last”, considered the lands he discovered to be India, depicting the fauna corresponding to the place on his map. But Piri Reis, suspecting nothing, took and exactly copied all the features of the Genoese map when drawing up his own???

Version four. India.
Eratosthenes was the first of the ancient scientists, using a gnomon and using the similarity of triangles, to calculate the circumference of our planet and its radius. There is also a world map belonging to his hand. Eratosthenes in his “Geography” determined the circumference of the spherical Earth to be 252 thousand stadia, i.e. 39,590 km, which differs from the true circumference of the globe at the equator by only 410 km. It is difficult to determine how close these estimates are to reality, since it is not known exactly what stage Eratosthenes used...
Map of Eratosthenes. Eratosthenes partially drew data for drawing up the map from the already known voyage of Nearchus along the coast of Southeast Asia, as well as the voyages of Pytheas and Hanno.

Ideas about the world from Eratosthenes

It is on the map of Eratosthenes that India is depicted turned counterclockwise so that the Great Ganges flows straight into Pacific Ocean! At this point, it can be assumed that Piri Reis painted India and China in the western part, using information from the Library of Alexandria from Eratosthenes and without thinking about any New World! And indeed, when combining and superimposing the contours of the continent taken from the western part of the Turkish admiral’s map onto the map of modern Southeast Asia, an interesting coincidence of the outlines of the coastal contour is obtained. But naturally, with the same inevitable loss of individual islands and with the distortion of a significant part of the mainland itself, which is fully explained by the inaccuracy of mapping and incomplete knowledge about the lands in the Middle Ages. The issue with the island on the Piri Reis map also becomes clear. According to the maps of P. Toscanelli and his follower M. Behaim, it is very likely that this island is nothing more than Sipangu - Japan. The concept of Sipangu came to us from descriptions of the travels of Marco Polo, who explored Central Asia in the 13th century, while for a long time in the service of Kublai Khan. It was Sipangu, the island of fabulous wealth, that Columbus looked for when discovering new lands, since he was completely sure that it was located near the areas of Asia described by Mark Polo.

Combination of the coastline of the Piri Reis map with the area of the modern coast of Indochina (by Varyag)

Well, finally, the mystery of the Piri Reis map that has tormented everyone for so long has been resolved!? However, it’s too early to draw conclusions!

Still have a question about the coordinate reference?
Looking at the Piri Reis map, it is striking that there are no parallels indicated on it latitudes and longitude. We see rumbas!

We will consider this issue in the next part. To be continued...

Piri Reis Map

Surviving fragment of the first world map of Piri Reis (1513)

Piri Reis Map is the first known authentic map of the entire world, created in the 16th century in Constantinople (Ottoman Empire) by the Turkish admiral and great cartography enthusiast Piri Reis ( full name- Haji Muhaddin Piri ibn Haji Mehmed). The map shows parts of the western coast of Europe and North Africa with reasonable accuracy, and the coast of Brazil and the eastern tip of South America are also easily recognizable on the map. The map contains various islands Atlantic Ocean, including the Azores and Canary Islands (like the mythical island of Antilia). Many believe that the map contains elements of the southern continent, which is considered proof that ancient cartographers were aware of the existence of Antarctica.

History of the map

Topkapi Palace

The map was discovered in 1929, during the work on the creation of a museum in the Sultan's Topkapi Palace by Dr. Ethem.

The map immediately attracted attention, since it was one of the first maps of America and the only map of the 16th century where the South American continent is located correctly relative to the African one. In 1953, a Turkish naval officer sent a copy of the Piri Reis chart to the US Navy Hydrographic Office. A certain I. Walters became interested in the map. To evaluate the map, Walters, as the bureau's chief engineer, turned to Arlington H. Mallery for help. Arlington H. Mallery), an expert on ancient maps who had previously worked with Walters. Mallery, after spending a lot of time, discovered what method of cartographic projection was used on the map. To check the accuracy of the map, he made a grid and superimposed the Piri Reis map on the world map: the map was absolutely accurate. After his work, he stated that the only way to create a map of such accuracy was through aerial photography. Also, to construct a Piri Reis map, you must have knowledge of spherical trigonometry, which was developed and described only in the 18th century.

The map is currently in the library of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, however, it is generally not on display to the public.

Creating a map

If we take as a basis the version that the map shows Antarctica, then, apparently, Piri Reis redrew the map from more ancient sources, possibly using some materials from the lost Library of Alexandria. This version is based on several facts:

Piri Reis himself is from a country that long journeys I wasn't interested.
In his notes, Piri Reis indicated “Alexandrian” sources for the map, and, apparently, he used several sources to compile the map. The remains of ancient knowledge were indeed more accessible Ottoman Empire at that moment, since the territory of Egypt at the time the map was drawn up was part of the Ottoman Empire.
There is no information about any detailed exploration of Antarctica and South America in the 14th-15th centuries.

The card is made from pieces of gazelle leather measuring 90 × 63 cm, 86 × 60 cm, 90 × 65 cm, 85 × 60 cm, 87 × 63 cm and 86 × 62 cm.

Antarctica image on the map

Comparison between the modern image and the version of the image on the Piri Reis map

The idea that the map shows Antarctica may be wrong. This is confirmed by many inconsistencies with the modern geography of the area, which can be mistaken for inaccuracies in the map depicting South America: duplication of rivers, merging at the southern tip with ice-free Antarctica. A closer look at the coast supports the alternative theory that the "extra" landmass is simply part of the South American coast, probably explored by Portuguese navigators and curved to the right. There are some features on the maps that resemble basins at the mouth of the Strait of Magellan and the Falkland Islands; Also, there is an annotation on the map that states that this region is warm and large snakes live there, which contradicts the polar climate and rare fauna that exist today and existed there in the 16th century. Also, the map states that "spring comes early" on the islands off the coast, which is true for the Falkland Islands, not any islands near the Antarctic mainland.

On the other hand, if we take as a basis the fact that Piri Reis used Alexandrian sources to compile his map, then the rule for constructing maps of these sources and the cartographic projection may be different from the one that is accepted today by modern geographers in most publications and was familiar to Piri Reis in XVI century. For example, if you apply an azimuthal projection, then the Piri Reis map no longer looks so inaccurate. If this is so, then Mallery's conclusions were correct, and Antarctica is indeed depicted on the map.

The contours from the Piri Reis map (left picture) and the azimuthal projection of the real globe (right picture) indicate very similar distortions. Today we know nothing about the principles of cartographic projection of ancient sources. But we often come across fundamentally different systems, for example, in the Mayan Calendar, which, in turn, is definitely of great antiquity. If such projections really fell into the hands of Piri Reis (as he himself stated in his notes), then Piri Reis most likely could not understand the system of cartographic projection of these maps and redrew them as is onto his map, which is why inexplicable distortions arose. It should be noted that, if this theory is correct, the sources depicted South America and Antarctica with a continuous coastline. An explanation for this fact could be:

The presence of a glacier connecting the coastlines of South America and Antarctica at the time of compilation of the ancient source (the last strong climate warming took place about 5-6 thousand years ago). In this case, contradictory notes on the map about the climate of some places could have been taken from other sources used by Piri Reis.
An inaccuracy in the work of Piri Reis himself, which could have arisen for many reasons.

Professor Hapgood, who studied the Piri Reis map for a long time, also worked with the US Army, which studied the Antarctic coast after the war. The results of the US military's analysis of the map at that time are reflected in the following letter:

July 6, 1960
Subject: Admiral Piri Reis Card
To whom: Professor Charles H. Hapgood Charles H. Hapgood)
Keene Community College, Keene, New Hampshire

Dear Professor Hapgood,

Your request to evaluate some unusual features on the 1513 Piri Reis map has been reviewed. The claim that the bottom of the map shows the coast of Princess Martha of Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, as well as the Palmer Peninsula is reasonable. We believe that this conclusion is the most logical and, in all likelihood, correct interpretation of the map.

At the bottom of the map, the geographic elements show a very marked resemblance to seismic scanning data from the 1949 Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of the actual geological terrain beneath the glacier there. This indicates that the coast was mapped before it was covered with ice. The glacier in this region today is about a mile thick.

We have no idea how the data on this map might correlate with the supposed level of geographic knowledge in 1513.

Harold Z. Ohlmeer Harold Z. Ohlmeyer), Lieutenant Colonel, Commander, United States Air Force

Notes

Literature

Afetinan, A. & Yolaç, Leman (trans.) (1954), The Oldest Map of America, Drawn by Piri Reis, Ankara : Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, pp. 6–15.
Afetinan, A. (1987), Life and Works of Piri Reis: The Oldest Map of America(2nd ed. ed.), Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, OCLC.
Hapgood, Charles H. (1966), Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age, New York: Chilton Books, ISBN 0801950899.
Deissmann, Adolf (1933), Forschungen und Funde im Serai: Mit einem Verzeichnis der nichtislamischen Handscriften im Topkapu Serai in Istanbul, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Kahle, Paul E. (October 1933), "A Lost Map of Columbus", Geographic Review 23 (4): 621–638, DOI 10.2307/209247.
Kahle, Paul E. (April 1956), "Piri Re"is: The Turkish Sailor and Cartographer", Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 4 : 101–111 .
McIntosh, Gregory C. (2000), The Piri Reis Map of 1513, Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, ISBN 0-8203-2157-5.
Mollat du Jourdin, Michel; La Roncière, Monique & le R. Dethan, L. (trans.) (1984), Sea Charts of the Early Explorers, Thirteenth to Seventeenth Century, New York: Thames & Hudson, ISBN 0500013373.
Nebenzahl, Kenneth (1990), Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries, Chicago: Rand McNally, ISBN 052883407X.
Portinaro, Pierluigi & Knirsch, Franco (1987), The Cartography of North America, 1500–1800, New York: Facts on File, ISBN 0816015864.
Smithsonian Institution (1966), Art Treasures of Turkey, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, OCLC.
Stiebing, William H., Jr. (1984), Ancient Astronauts, Cosmic Collisions and Other Popular Theories about Man's Past, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-285-8.
Tekeli, Sevim (1985), "The Map of America by Piri Reis", Erdem 1 (3): 673–683 .
Van de Waal, E. H. (1969), "Manuscript Maps in the Topkapǐ Saray Library, Istanbul", Imago Mundi 23 : 81–95, DOI 10.1080/03085696908592335 .
Yerci, M. (1989), "The Accuracy of the First World Map Drawn by Piri Reis", Cartographic Journal 26 (2): 154–155 .

Famous maps and globes
Ancient world	Turin papyrus map \| Babylonian world map \| Ptolemy's Map \| Peitinger table \| Madaba map \| Christian topography
Middle Ages (mappa mundi, portolans)	T&O Map \| Merovingian map\| Beat's map \| Roger's Map \| Hereford map \| Ebstorf map \| Catalan atlas \| Large map Ming Dynasty \|

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1. From a personal matter.
Piri Reis (Haji Muhiddin Piri ibn Haji Mehmed) was a well-known historical figure, he was born between 1465 and 1470 in Gallipoli (Gelibolu), in northwestern Turkey. Nephew of the legendary commander of the Turkish fleet Kemal Reis Egriboz, admiral of the military fleet of the Ottoman Empire, participant in many battles of the 16th century. He was a major specialist in maritime affairs, the author of the navigation manual “Kutab-i-Bariye” (Map of the Seas), which contained a detailed description of the coasts, shoals, bays, mooring places, bays and straits of the Aegean and Mediterranean seas. Despite holding the admiral's post, Piri Reis fell out of favor and was beheaded in Cairo in 1555. What a head that has flown off your shoulders!
For the admiral was not only a skilled naval commander and a famous pirate, but also a passionate cartographer, who took to his grave a hitherto unsolved mystery.

2. Maps from the "Book of the Seas".

The maps included not only islands, underwater reefs and shoals, bays and channels, shelters during storms, gusts and wind directions, orientation information based on the stars, map and compass, information about the world's seas, lands and continents, but also city monuments and architectural structures.

3. The Admiral's Mysterious Card.
In 1929, they decided to create a museum from the main sultan’s palace, Topkapi, in the historical center of Istanbul, and ancient maps were discovered there by Dr. Ethem. The dates on the two cards correspond to 1513 and 1528.

The name of the Sultan's palace, Topkapi, means "cannon gate" in Turkish.

The 1513 map was made from six pieces of gazelle skin, each measuring about 90 x 65 cm and was only a fragment of a larger map, apparently of the entire world. The first thing that caught my eye when studying it in detail was the accuracy of the position of the African and American continents relative to each other and the correct distance between them, despite the fact that only 21 years had passed since the discovery of the American continent and Columbus’s voyages.
The second map of Piri Reis was compiled in 1528, its surviving fragment depicts the Atlantic from Greenland in the north to Cuba in the south, with descriptions of the North-Eastern part of Florida and Canada, Greenland and the coast of Central America. Unlike the first map, it has corrected data on the Bahamas, Antilles, the islands of Haiti and Cuba, as well as a description of the Yucatan and Honduras peninsulas discovered in 1517 and 1519.
The remaining fragments of the "Map of the World" have not survived.

4. Playing cards.

The notes in the fields of the map indicate that the source was 20 maps, some of which were obtained by Piri Reis from Spanish ships captured in the waters of the Red Sea, four were Portuguese, one Arab, as well as the map used by Christopher Columbus when sailing to America, the original of which has been lost.

This map is a compilation of many other maps: European, Arab, Chinese and Indian, as mentioned by Piri Reis himself, which were combined with images of maps that were more ancient, how ancient is unknown. This is probably why part of the map is very accurate, and part contains unforgivable errors. For example, the coast of South America looks as if it was copied twice (a section of the South American coast up to 1500-2000 km long), while the image is greatly deformed with a shift to the right, and the Drake Passage is completely absent.
The unusual nature of the image - the lines drawn across the Atlantic were possible navigational routes and not typical for cartography of the time - were probably copied from older maps that served as the primary source.

5. Accuracy.
To make a map with what degree of accuracy you need to have a chronometer.
The point is this: if you carefully examine any map made before the mid-18th century and compare it with a modern one, you can see its characteristic feature: any object located on it has exact coordinates in latitude, but not in longitude. Because the latitude of a place was determined with an accuracy of up to a degree of arc and higher from the stars, even with a primitive goniometric instrument, and to measure longitude, precise knowledge of time is necessary, that is, the presence of a chronometer, hence the spread in longitude of hundreds of kilometers. But on the Piri Reis map, after the transformations, the accuracy of longitudes turned out to be at the same level as latitudes. After discovering the method of cartographic projection used on the map and not similar to any known one, a grid was made and the admiral’s map was combined with modern cartography data - it turned out to be absolutely accurate. To achieve such accuracy, it is necessary to know the diameter of the Earth within 100 kilometers and have knowledge of spherical trigonometry, which was developed only in the 18th century. However, there is another way to achieve the same quality of cartography - aerial photography.
It's like finding a transistor radio in the tomb of Ivan the Terrible.

6. This cannot be.
These are not all mysteries - the map contains something that at that time none of the European, and especially Turkish, cartographers could have known about. On the South American continent, the Andes are depicted, discovered only a few decades later, the islands off the coast of South America - the Falklands, were generally discovered and mapped only in the second half of the 16th century. Another oddity is that some of the islands in the Gulf of Mexico coincide with underwater elevations - the islands have long disappeared.

Comparison between the modern depiction of South America and the version of the depiction on the Piri Reis map.

6. Antarctica.
But this is not the most interesting thing about the map.
Just think, the accuracy of the projection, latitude - longitude, distances between Africa - America, mountains are drawn.
A map from 1513 shows part of the coast of Antarctica.

And the most interesting thing is how it is depicted. On all modern maps we have the edge of coastal ice covering the southern continent, discovered in 1820, and on the map of the Turkish admiral we have very precise outlines of the coastline, the design of which became known to mankind only in 1959.

7. Mail, sir!

Topic: Admiral Piri Reis Map
To: Professor Charles H. Hapgood
Keene Community College, Keene, New Hampshire

Dear Professor Hapgood,
Your request to evaluate some unusual features on the 1513 Piri Reis map has been reviewed. The claim that the bottom of the map shows the coast of Princess Martha, Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, and the Palmer Peninsula is reasonable. We believe that this conclusion is the most logical and, in all likelihood, correct interpretation of the map.
At the bottom of the map, the geographic elements show a very marked resemblance to seismic scanning data from the 1959 Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of the actual geological terrain beneath the glacier there. This indicates that the coast was mapped before it was covered with ice. The glacier in this region today is about a mile thick.
We have no idea how the data on this map might correlate with the supposed level of geographic knowledge in 1513.

Harold Z. Ohlmeyer, Lieutenant Colonel, Commander, US Air Force

8. After what has been said.
Modern science believes that the Antarctic ice sheet was formed several million years ago, while the age of human civilization does not exceed several thousand years.

9. Banknote.

The Piri Reis map has material value 10 liras - it is depicted on modern Turkish banknotes.

Sources: http://sea-wave.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=475
Illustrations:

Mysterious cards Piri Reis, Mercator and Columbus

An unsolved puzzle that cartographers are struggling with is the presence of ancient maps that show that the equator and poles were not always where they are today. The accuracy of these maps, detailing land masses and their locations as they are essentially known today, cannot be denied.

These are not fantasy maps, for they were drawn with markings relating to the positions of the stars and compass readings that guided sailors to destinations far from land. There is no ready-made explanation, since the detail and consistency of ancient maps does not cause confusion, and the main issue in creating maps - the location of the equator and poles - is unlikely to be confused. The obvious answer is in the face of these cartographers, but the reason they fail in this matter is the anxiety it causes. Pole shifts happen frequently, they have happened in the past and they can happen again!

In 1929, a map dated 1513 was discovered in one of the ancient palaces of Constantinople. The map might not have aroused much interest if it were not for the image of the Americas (one of the earliest in history) and the signature of the Turkish admiral Piri Reis. Then, in the 20s, on the wave of national upsurge, it was especially important for the Turks to emphasize the role of the Turkish cartographer in creating one of the earliest maps of America. They began to study the map closely, as well as the history of its creation.

Admiral Piri Reis

famous map Piri Reisa, 1513

The Piri Reis Map, which is a genuine document and not a forgery of any kind, was made in Constantinople in 1513 AD. e. She focuses on the west coast of Africa, the east coast of South America and the north coast of Antarctica. Piri Reis could not have acquired his information about this later region from contemporary explorers, since Antarctica remained undiscovered until 1818, more than 300 years after he drew his map. The ice-free coast of Dronning Maud Land depicted on the map poses a colossal puzzle, as geological evidence confirms that most last date the date in which it could have been visible and mapped in ice-free conditions is 4000 BC. e. Although it is impossible to indicate exactly the most early date when a similar task could have been accomplished, but it seems that the coast of Dronning Maud Land may have remained in a stable and unglaciated state for at least 9,000 years before the spreading ice sheet engulfed it completely. And there is no civilization known history, who would have had the ability or need to explore that coast during the relevant period, that is, between 13,000 and 4000 BC. e.

But this is not the biggest mystery, especially since several ancient maps are known, including Mercator’s map, which, as it turns out, depict, very accurately, Antarctica. Previously, this was simply not paid attention to, because the “appearance” of a continent on a map can be greatly distorted depending on the map projections used: it is not so easy to project the surface of the globe onto a plane. The fact that many ancient maps reproduce with high accuracy not only Antarctica, but also other continents, became known after calculations made in the middle of the last century, taking into account various projections used by old cartographers.

Map of Oronteus Phineus, 1532

But the fact that the Piri Reis map shows the coast of Antarctica, not yet covered with ice, is difficult to comprehend! After all, the modern appearance of the coastline of the southern continent is determined by a thick ice cover that extends far beyond the boundaries of the real land. It turns out that Piri Reis used sources compiled by people who saw Antarctica before the glaciation? But this cannot be, since these people would have lived millions of years ago! The only explanation for this fact accepted by modern scientists is the theory of the periodic change of the Earth's poles, according to which the last such change could have occurred approximately 6,000 years ago, and it was then that Antarctica began to be covered with ice again. That is, we are talking about sailors who lived 6,000 years ago and drew up maps that (like the Piri Reis map) were used to refine modern ones? Incredible...

The above consequence one way or another suggests that the South Pole of the Earth was NOT in Antarctica, which is why the coast was not icy! All this means is that Pole Shifts are actually happening, and that at that time the poles were in a completely different place. Moreover, at that time it was even a little hot in Queen Maud Land. This once again confirms the sharp periodic climate changes on our planet.

But whoever they were, they were skilled at their craft. As soon as researchers began to study the fragments of the Turkish admiral’s map that have come down to us, they were faced with the question of the authorship of its original source. The Piri Reis map is a so-called portolan, a nautical chart that allows you to build “lines between ports,” that is, navigate between port cities. IN XV-XVI centuries such maps were much more advanced than land maps, but, as one of the leading scientists in this field, A.E. Nordenskiöld, noted, they did not develop. That is, the maps of the 15th century were of the same quality as the maps of the 14th century. This, from his point of view, indicates that the skill of cartographers was not acquired, but borrowed, that is, simply put, they simply redrew older maps, which in itself is natural.

Map of Philippe Boicher, 1739

It is known that in order to construct a geographical map, that is, display a sphere on a plane, it is necessary to know the dimensions of this sphere, that is, the Earth. Eratosthenes was able to measure the circumference of the globe back in ancient times, but did so with a large error. Until the 15th century, no one clarified these data. However, a thorough study of the coordinates of objects on the Peary map indicates that the dimensions of the Earth were taken into account without error, that is, the compilers of the map had more accurate information about our planet at their disposal (not to mention the fact that they represented it as a ball). Researchers of the Turkish map also convincingly showed that the compilers of the mysterious ancient source knew trigonometry (the Reis map was drawn using planar geometry, where latitudes and longitudes are at right angles. But it was copied from a map with spherical trigonometry! Ancient cartographers not only knew that the Earth there is a ball, but they also calculated the length of the equator with an accuracy of about 100 km!) and cartographic projections that were not known to either Eratosthenes or even Ptolemy, but they theoretically could have used ancient maps stored in the Library of Alexandria. That is, the original source of the map is definitely more ancient.

There are many facts that indirectly confirm that Columbus owned one of the maps that served as the source for the Piri Reis map. For example, Columbus did not stop his ships at night, as was customary for fear of hitting reefs in unknown waters, but sailed under full sail, as if knowing for sure that there would be no obstacles. When a riot began on the ships due to the fact that the promised land still did not appear, he managed to convince the sailors to endure another 1000 miles and was not mistaken - exactly after 1000 miles the long-awaited shore appeared. Columbus carried with him a supply of glass jewelry, hoping to exchange it for gold with the Indians, as recommended in his book. Finally, each ship carried a sealed package with instructions on what to do if the ships lost sight of each other during a storm. In a word, the discoverer of America knew well that he was not the first.

Mercator's map, 1595

By the way, there are other accurate maps of Antarctica, drawn long before its official discovery in 1818, which, in fact, only adds fuel to the fire and makes the existence of the Piri Reis map even more reliable. The very fact of their existence is amazing, and for some reason is not commented on by official historical science, and in general, practically unknown to anyone except meticulous researchers. And of course, such things are unlikely to be shown on TV.

If you set a goal and compare images of Antarctica on several maps compiled before its “official” discovery, then there will be no doubt about the existence of their common source. Hapgood meticulously compared the maps of Peary, Arantheus Finaus, Hadji Ahmed and Mercator, created at different times and independently of each other, and determined that they all used the same unknown source, which made it possible to depict the polar continent with the greatest reliability long before its discovery.

Most likely, we will no longer know for sure who created this primary source and when. But its existence, convincingly proven by researchers of the Turkish admiral’s map, indicates the existence of some ancient civilization with a level of scientific knowledge comparable to modern ones, at least in the field of geography (Piri’s map, as already mentioned, made it possible to clarify some modern maps). And this casts doubt on the hypothesis of the gradual linear progress of humanity in general and science in particular. One gets the feeling that the greatest knowledge about nature, as if obeying an unknown law, at a certain stage becomes available to humanity, only to then be lost and... reborn again when the time comes. And who knows how many discoveries the next discovery will contain?