The Controversy 

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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.

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.)

• Scrutiny of the map shows that the makers knew the accurate circumference of the Earth to within 50 miles.
• The coastline and island that are shown in Antarctica must have been navigated at some period prior to 4,000 B.C. when these areas were free of ice from the last Ice Age.
• The map is thought to be one of the earliest "world maps" to show the Americas. Early scholars suggested that it showed accurate latitudes of the South American and African coastlines - only 21 years after the voyages of Columbus! (And remember, Columbus did NOT discover North America - only the Caribbean!) Writing in Piri Re'is own hand described how he had made the map from a collection of ancient maps, supplemented by charts that were drawn by Columbus himself. This suggests that these ancient maps were available to Columbus and could have been the basis of his expedition.
• As can be seen below, an azimuthal projection ( looking at the globe from a point above the globe), from the point above Cairo, Africa (Egypt) shows that the Piri Reis map corresponds more or less with the lower right quarter of this map if one rotates it some 20 degrees counter clockwise.
• Piri Re'is own commentary indicates that some of his source maps were from the time of Alexander the Great (332 B.C.). 
  
  

  Modern analysis of the Piri Reis map - Surprising Conclusions

  Apart from its great historic interest, the map has been alleged to contain details no European could have known in the 1500's, and therefore proves the existence of ancient technological civilizations, visits by extraterrestrials, or both.
  In response to people who ask how to explain why the Piri Reis Map shows the coastline of Antarctica accurately, the answer is - it doesn't. It especially doesn't show the subglacial coastline of Antarctica, which corresponds to the existing coastline of Antarctica around most of the continent anyway.
  
  
  
  
  The Piri Reis Map, shown below, is the oldest surviving map to show the Americas. It is not European, surprisingly, but Turkish. It bears a date of 919 in the Moslem calendar, corresponding to 1513 in the Western Calendar. It is in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul
  The map was lost for a long time and only rediscovered in the 20th century.
  Apart from its great historic interest, the map has been alleged to contain details no European could have known in the 1500's, and therefore proves the existence of ancient technological civilizations, visits by extraterrestrials, or both.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

So clearly the claim that the Piri Reis Map matches a map centered on the Middle East is total garbage. At left is an azimuthal equidistant map centered on 0, 0. The fit of Africa and Spain is far better and the fit with Brazil is surprisingly good. Features on the South American coast down to southern Brazil can be identified with certainty. Beyond that, though, the map is fantasy. It doesn't match either South America or Antarctica very well.
So, apart from claiming vague similarities between the Piri Reis map and Antarctica, what positive, specific evidence do you have that the map shows Antarctica?

The Marginal Notes

The marginal writings on the map are very revealing. Translations are in The Oldest Map of America, by Professor Dr. Afet Inan. Ankara, 1954, pp. 28-34 and available at a number of Web sites. Until 1922 the Turkish language was written with Arabic letters, but the language on the map is Turkish, not Arabic.
Most important is that references to maps of Asia, plus some fragmentary lines south of Africa, indicate that this was originally a world map which was torn in half along the eastern edge. Wouldn't it be marvelous to see the other half?
Most of the bizarre claims made for the Piri Reis Map utterly ignore the marginal notes, which pretty conclusively show the map is entirely 16th century terrestrial in origin.

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Cartography of the Piri Reis Map

Below is a tracing of the coastlines on the map. Western Europe and Africa are easily recognizable, the Azores, Canary Islands and Cape Verde Islands are fairly accurate both as to location and the number and arrangements of individual islands. Eastern South America is also easily recognizable, but there are a lot of things not so easily recognized. The map, by the way, is very clear on the existence of mountains in the interior of South America (in brown on the tracing).

Europe

The coastline of France and Iberia is well-drawn. There are four major rivers shown in Iberia, from north to south the Atlantic rivers are the Tagus and Guadalquivir, and the east-flowing rivers are the Ebro (north) and an unknown river in the south (there are several minor rivers it could be).
The rivers are very inaccurately located. The Tagus enters the Atlantic at Lisbon as shown, but does not have a hook in its upper reaches. The Duoro, to the north, does, but it's not shown. It looks very much as if the draftsman confused the two rivers.
By the way, the Spanish syllable guad- that begins so many place names comes from Arabic wadi, valley. Wadi-al-yahara, valley of the flowing water, became Guadalajara, for example.

Africa

The western bulge of Africa is pretty well drawn and the offshore islands are as well (though too large relative to everything else).
There are a couple of small rivers in Morocco that could correspond to the northernmost river. The river emptying at the center of the bulge is the Senegal and the next one south is the Gambia, followed to the south by the Guinea. The two rivers do not join but do approach closely. The south-flowing river is probably the Sassandra in the Ivory Coast.
The welter of lakes and rivers inland do not exist as shown but may reflect some garbled knowledge of the Niger headwaters and its inland delta.
Some people have claimed the map shows the Sahara as it was during the Pleistocene, when it had huge inland lakes. There are several reasons to doubt this:

• If the rivers of Iberia, which was occupied by Moslems for 700 years, are inaccurately shown, why should we think the map of Africa is any more accurate?
• No amount of flooding the basins of the Sahara could make the Niger top its drainage divide and flow to the Atlantic. It's just too high. In fact, it's the highest land for a thousand miles. You could flood the Sahara enough to put Khartoum on the Atlantic and still leave the Niger drainage divide above water.
• Sailors navigating the desert coast of west Africa would be interested in where to find fresh water now, not where it was during the Pleistocene.

North America

North America is frankly a mess on this map. The only voyages to North America by 1513 were voyages to Newfoundland beginning with John Cabot in 1498, and some Spanish sightings of the southeast coast of the U.S. It was only in 1513 that Balboa reached the Pacific and Ponce de Leon discovered people who can't punch ballots correctly in Miami Beach.
The marginal notes refer to some of the islands and coasts north of South America as "Antilia," clearly referring to the Antilles. The lack of good detail is puzzling since there must have been much better maps of the Caribbean by this time. If it's a real place at all - "Antilia" was a legendary island of the times. The big triangular island in the far northwest could be Newfoundland. It's close to the right latitude and even pretty much the right shape. Given that the most detailed knowledge of North America was in the north at this time, the big island off the coast is much more likely to be Nova Scotia than one of the Antilles. Supporting this is the fact that a nearby note refers to St. Brendan, an Irish monk who according to tradition sailed far into the North Atlantic in the sixth century. He might conceivably have reached Newfoundland or Nova Scotia but is pretty unlikely to have reached the Antilles.
The mess of North America is important. It's ridiculous to claim, as many people do, that there are ancient or extraterrestrial secrets lurking in this map when something as big as North America is so crudely drawn.
Robert Bywater and Jean-Pierre Lacroix published a very interesting hypothesis in Journal of Spatial Science vol 49 (1); 13-23 (2004) They suggest that the islands off North America might actually be Asia. The dream that the Americas might somehow be joined to Asia died hard, and remember, this map predates Magellan by a decade so nobody really knew how wide the Pacific was. As late as 1634, Jean Nicolet sailed into Green Bay expecting to meet the Chinese. It's worth considering.

Secrets in the map?

It's the other stuff that fascinates people. Among other claims:

• The map shows the earth as seen from space
• The map shows the subglacial topography of Greenland
• The map shows the subglacial topography of Antarctica
• The map is aligned with the earth's energy grid (whatever that means)

Below is the Piri Reis Map with modern maps superimposed. We can see that Europe and Africa are pretty good but with lots of inaccuracy in detail. Promontories and bays are exaggerated, a natural enough tendency in a day when navigating by landmark was a matter of life and death. The Azores, Canary Islands and Cape Verde Islands are accurately located but again, exaggerated in size. Also note a hint of cartographic breakdown where the coast of Africa meets the right edge of the map. Brazil is pretty recognizable, but South America is too big compared to Africa and Europe, the Atlantic is way too narrow, and South America is compressed east-to-west. Also, what are the big islands offshore? North America is essentially imaginary.
Now one thing we can count on navigators of the 1500's being able to measure accurately is latitude. On the east side we can clearly see the tip of France, so the top of the map represents about 50 degrees north latitude. So right away we can forget about this map showing Greenland, subglacial or not. The coast of subglacial Greenland, by the way, won't look very different from the present coast, for the simple reason that most of the Greenland coast is rock, not ice. There's nothing on the map that even vaguely resembles Greenland.
The Piri Reis Map does not use any systematic projection, although as noted above it's close to a cylindrical equidistant. It tries to get features accurate to shape and relative location, and it tries to plot accurate latitudes, but there is no reasonable transformation of the present earth that will yield the Piri Reis Map. (You can, of course, come up with a mathematical transformation that will transform any map into any other map, but any transformation of the real world into the Piri Reis Map would be so convoluted and ad hoc that it would prove nothing.)

South America

The scale of South America above was chosen to give a good fit in latitude from the north coast to the tip of Brazil, presumably the best-mapped part at the time the map was drawn. We can see that the match between the modern map and the Piri Reis Map is pretty good for some distance south of that, both in scale and in geographic detail.
That long stretch of coast on the bottom of the map has been claimed to be Antarctica, a place not known to humans until the 19th century.









Start with the obvious. The tip of Brazil is easy to place (A-a). To the west (b) we have a large river flowing into a broad recess. This can only be the Amazon (B). The big island to the northeast on the Piri Reis Map may be Marajo Island, the big island at the mouth of the Amazon. Whatever, the fact that there is no island in mid-Atlantic as shown doesn't bode well for the idea that this map drew on ancient advanced knowledge.
To the south, the sharp recess in the coast of Brazil (C-c) is easy to see on both maps. At d we have a large river with a big delta flowing out of a convex coastline, and a big island offshore (e). It's a nearly perfect match for the Orinoco (D) and the island is Trinidad (E). One of the two rivers at g is almost certainly the Magdalena (G) but it's not clear what the other one is. Possibly the Magdalena is the river to the east and the Darien is the river to the west. The coastal bend north of Panama is fairly clear (F-f) but everything north of that bears almost no resemblance to any modern maps.
Moving south, it's tempting to identify the big river at h with the Rio de la Plata (P), except the Rio de la Plata is too far south and empties into a large bay, not on a bulge in the coast. The Piri Reis Map actually matches the real coastal bulge at H far better, except there's no river there. But there is a city called Rio de Janeiro, or "River of January" because the discoverer mistook the complex bays there for the mouth of a large river. In fact, the real coastline there looks rather like the Piri Reis coastline, if you squint a bit. It certainly looks more like it than anything on the map looks like Greenland! If we buy this, the smooth concave indentation to the south (I-i) falls into place.
The southern compass rose on the map would place the tropic of Capricorn on the small coastal bump halfway between c and h, and that would favor the big river being the Rio de la Plata. So we have to conclude that either the latitudes or the coastline (or both) are inaccurate south of c. The coastal fit seems too good to discard, and the marginal notes in this area explain how Piri Reis synthesized his map from a number of sources, so it's not hard to see how latitude might have suffered a bit in the process. Remember, he didn't have the raw latitude observations to go on.
Thereafter, the Piri Reis Map drifts into the Twilight Zone. It shows South America swinging far to the east. Given that the map so far has done fairly well in latitude, we can be sure the coastline is not Antarctica. Also, if the map draws on ancient knowledge to show things no 16th century explorer would have known, why is the coastline continuous? So why isn't there open water between South America and "Antarctica?" You can't seize on an accidental resemblance to a couple of bumps on the coast of Antarctica and blithely ignore the failure to show the Drake Passage!
Most damning of all to the Antarctica interpretation is that the marginal notes refer to the coast in this region being discovered by Portuguese ships blown off course. One note refers to the land being "very hot," which probably rules out Antarctica. The Piri Reis Map itself explicitly says the information in this area came from European sources. Atlanteans and extraterrestrials need not apply. We have isolated sightings of coast made by ships far off course and unsure of their location. Small wonder the map is wildly inaccurate.
Considering that we have had a good match so far by assuming the Piri Reis Map shows relative latitude accurately (although not nearly as well as north of the equator; the scale of South America is too large), and that coastal features like points and bays are accurately rendered, then south of the smoothly curving coast at I-i there must be a cusp on the coast (j-J). The next prominent point k could be the point beyond the Rio de la Plata (K). The latitude is about right compared to the rest of South America.





Above is an alternative interpretation of the mystery area. It requires us to assume the latitudes are badly off, something not hard to envision in maps of that era. However, it matches the curves in the coast. Point k might even correspond to the tip of Tierra del Fuago.

Some Real Mysteries About the Map

The map seems to show more detail than Europeans were likely to have in 1513. Pizarro hadn't been to Peru, yet, so how did Piri Reis know about the Andes? Did somebody hear tales of mountains far inland? Also, the detail on the South American coast seems a bit rich for 1513. Was the map begun then and completed later? Was the map copied later and the date miscopied? But if the map was derived from ancient sources that contained details otherwise unknown to Europeans, why are so many parts of it so crude?
There's also a marginal note opposite South America that says "It is related by the Portuguese infidel that in this spot night and day are at their shortest of two hours, at their longest of twenty two hours. But the day is very warm and in the night there is much dew." That would indicate a far southern latitude, but note that the report explicitly comes from the Portuguese, not from arcane ancient sources. It's possible that some Portuguese expedition was blown very far south, not to Antarctica where the days are rarely "very warm," but perhaps to 50 south or so.

Let's Hear it for Piri Reis

For 1513, this map shows an astonishing amount of detail. The notes on the map explain that the map was synthesized from about 20 maps, many of which were captured from Spanish and Portuguese ships in the Mediterranean. It was also supplemented by accounts given by captured Spanish and Portuguese sailors.
Not a map from some ancient Atlantean civilization, not a map created by extraterrestrials, but a first class piece of naval intelligence. Considering that it was created by a sailor whose country never participated in the age of exploration, and that it's drawn wholly from second-hand sources, it's an astonishing piece of work. It seems to contain up-to-the-minute details derived from enemy maps, many of which would have been tightly-guarded secrets.
There's a class of crank that hates the idea that other people might have real accomplishments, because they never accomplish anything themselves. So Shakespeare didn't write his plays, other people did; Robert Peary didn't reach the North Pole as he claimed, and so on. And Piri Reis wasn't a gifted admiral and good intelligence analyst, but had to get help from ancient lost documents. Get a life, folks.

"Most of the bizarre claims made for the Piri Reis Map utterly ignore the marginal notes, which pretty conclusively show the map is entirely 16th century terrestrial in origin."
Surely, assuming the translations of his notes are correct:
"The-hand of this poor man has drawn it and now it is constructed. From about twenty charts and Mappae Mundi-these are charts drawn in the days of Alexander, Lord of the Two Horns, which show the inhabited quarter of the world; the Arabs name these charts Jaferiye-from eight Jaferiyes of that kind and one Arabic map of Hind, and from the maps just drawn by four Portuguese which show the countries of Hind, Sind and China geometrically drawn, and also from a map drawn by Colombo in the western region I have extracted it. By reducing all these maps to one scale this final form was arrived at. So that the present map is as correct and reliable for the Seven Seas as the map of these our countries is considered correct and reliable by seamen."
Which seems to conclusively prove that he may have drawn this in the 16 century, but a lot of it is based on much older information.

Which seems to conclusively prove that he may have drawn this in the 16 century, but a lot of it is based on much older information.


Hadji Muhiddin Piri Ibn Hadji Mehmed, better known as Piri Reis, was a Turkish admiral and cartographer who produced many historically important and remarkably accurate maps of the Mediterranean during the first half of the 16^th century. Perhaps his most famous map, drawn in 1513, is known as the First World Map. This map has been the subject of much speculation and contention due to some of its striking and peculiar characteristics, specifically its depiction of South America and what may be Antarctica.







Drawn on gazelle skin and measuring 90 cm x 63 cm , the map was lost to the world until its rediscovery in 1929 in Istanbul’s Topkapı Palace, a discovery that has sparked decades of debate. Text on the map states that Reis drew it based largely on ancient cartographical information that he gathered from other maps drawn by Roman cartographer and all-around Renaissance man Claudius Ptolemaeus (better known as Ptolomy) who lived during the 2nd century AD. (Ptolomy, it should be noted, introduced the use of longitude and latitude, which are essential tools of modern cartography). Reis also drew information from Indian, Portuguese, and Arabic maps, and even a map drawn by Christopher Columbus. Some of his source maps, historians speculate, were derived from those housed in the legendary Library of Alexandria before it burned in 48 BC, depriving the modern world of incalculable volumes of ancient knowledge.
Synthesizing information from such diverse sources, Reis compiled one of the most accurate world maps of the 16^th century. Here is an illustration of the remarkable precision with which the First World Map depicts the eastern coast of South America
What makes this map truly fascinating, however, is the land mass depicted to the lower right. While some claim that is it a misplaced representation of Patagonia, others contend that it is in fact the coastline of Antarctica. This latter interpretation has forced historians to drastically reconsider the timeline of ancient geographical knowledge.





Kitab-? Bahriye is one of the most famous premodern books of navigation. The book contains detailed information on the major ports, bays, gulfs, capes, peninsulas, islands, straits and ideal shelters of the Mediterranean Sea, as well as techniques of navigation and navigation-related information on astronomy. The book also contains information about the local people of each country and city, and the curious aspects of their culture. Kitab-? Bahriye was originally written between 1511 and 1521, but it was revised with additional information and better-crafted charts between 1524 and 1525 in order to be presented as a gift to Suleiman the Magnificent. Piri Reis drew these charts during his travels around the Mediterranean Sea with his uncle Kemal Reis. The revised edition of 1525 has a total of 434 pages and contains 290 maps.
Kitab-? Bahriye has two main sections, with the first section dedicated to information about the types of storms, techniques of using a compass, portolan charts with detailed information on ports and coastlines, methods of finding direction using the stars, characteristics of the major oceans and the lands around them. Special emphasis is given to the discoveries in the New World by Christopher Columbus and those of Vasco da Gama and the other Portuguese seamen on their way to India and the rest of Asia.
The second section is entirely comprised of portolan charts and cruise guides. Each topic contains the map of an island or coastline. In the first book (1521), this section has a total of 132 portolan charts, while the second book (1525) has a total of 210 portolan charts. The second section starts with the description of the Dardanelles Strait and continues with the islands and coastlines of the Aegean Sea, Ionian Sea, Adriatic Sea, Tyrrhenian Sea, Ligurian Sea, the French Riviera, the Balearic Islands, the coasts of Spain, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, the coasts of North Africa, Egypt and the River Nile, the Levant and the coastline of Anatolia. This section also includes descriptions and drawings of the famous monuments and buildings in every city, as well as biographic information about Piri Reis who also explains the reasons why he prefered to collect these charts in a book instead of drawing a single map, which would not be able to contain so much information and detail.
Copies of the Kitab-i Bahriye are found in many libraries and museums around the world.
Copies of the first edition (1521) are found in the Topkapi Palace, Nuruosmaniye Library and Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul, Library of the University of Bologna, National Library of Vienna, State Library of Dresden, National Library of Paris, British Museum in London, Bodleian Library in Oxford and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
Copies of the second edition (1525) are found in the Topkapi Palace, K?prülüzade Faz?l Ahmed Pa?a Library and Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul and the National Library of Paris.



I used several web pages as a souce