SUBJECT: Admiral Piri Reis World Map
To: Professor Charles H. Hapgood,
Keene College,
Keene, New Hampshire.
Dear Professor Hapgood,
Your request for evaluation of certain unusual features of the Piri Reis World 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 Antarctica, and the Palmer Peninsula, is reasonable. We find 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
Despite the deadpan language, Ohlmeyer’s letter1 is a bombshell. If
Queen Maud Land was mapped before it was covered by ice, the original
cartography must have been done an extraordinarily long time ago.
How long ago exactly?
Conventional wisdom has it that the Antarctic ice-cap, in its present
extent and form, is millions of years old. On closer examination, this
notion turns out to be seriously flawed—so seriously that we need not
assume the map drawn by Admiral Piri Reis depicts Queen Maud Land as
it looked millions of years in the past. The best recent evidence suggests
that Queen Maud Land, and the neighbouring regions shown on the map,
passed through a long ice-free period which may not have come
completely to an end until about six thousand years ago. This evidence,
which we shall touch upon again in the next chapter, liberates us from
the burdensome task of explaining who (or what) had the technology to
undertake an accurate geographical survey of Antarctica in, say, two
million BC, long before our own species came into existence. By the same
token, since map-making is a complex and civilized activity, it compels us
to explain how such a task could have been accomplished even six
thousand years ago, well before the development of the first true
civilizations recognized by historians.
Ancient sources
In attempting that explanation it is worth reminding ourselves of the
basic historical and geological facts:
1 The Piri Reis Map, which is a genuine document, not a hoax of any
kind, was made at Constantinople in AD 1513.3
2 It focuses on the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South
America and the northern coast of Antarctica.
3 Piri Reis could not have acquired his information on this latter region
from contemporary explorers because Antarctica remained
undiscovered until AD 1818,4 more than 300 years after he drew the
map.
4 The ice-free coast of Queen Maud Land shown in the map is a colossal
puzzle because the geological evidence confirms that the latest date it
could have been surveyed and charted in an ice-free condition is 4000
BC.
5 It is not possible to pinpoint the earliest date that such a task could
have been accomplished, but it seems that the Queen Maud Land
littoral may have remained in a stable, unglaciated condition for at
least 9000 years before the spreading ice-cap swallowed it entirely.
6 There is no civilization known to history that had the capacity or need
to survey that coastline in the relevant period: between 13,000 BC and
4000 BC.7
In other words, the true enigma of this 1513 map is not so much its
inclusion of a continent not discovered until 1818 but its portrayal of part
of the coastline of that continent under ice-free conditions which came to
an end 6000 years ago and have not since recurred.
How can this be explained? Piri Reis obligingly gives us the answer in a
series of notes written in his own hand on the map itself. He tells us that
he was not responsible for the original surveying and cartography. On the
contrary, he admits that his role was merely that of compiler and copyist
and that the map was derived from a large number of source maps.8
Some of these had been drawn by contemporary or near-contemporary
explorers (including Christopher Columbus), who had by then reached
South America and the Caribbean, but others were documents dating
back to the fourth century BC or earlier.9
Piri Reis did not venture any suggestion as to the identity of the
cartographers who had produced the earlier maps. In 1963, however,
Professor Hapgood proposed a novel and thought-provoking solution to
the problem. He argued that some of the source maps the admiral had
made use of, in particular those said to date back to the fourth century
BC, had themselves been based on even older sources, which in turn had
been based on sources originating in the furthest antiquity. There was, he
asserted, irrefutable evidence that the earth had been comprehensively
mapped before 4000 BC by a hitherto unknown and undiscovered
civilization which had achieved a high level of technological
advancement:
From Alexandria, according to Hapgood’s reconstruction, copies of these
compilations and of some of the original source maps were transferred to
other centres of learning—notably Constantinople. Finally, when
Constantinople was seized by the Venetians during the Fourth Crusade in
1204, the maps began to find their way into the hands of European
sailors and adventurers:
Fingerprints Of The Gods
GRAHAM HANCOCK
No comments:
Post a Comment